My wonderful wife Deb had been living with a weird disease called “sarcoidosis” for the last year and a half before she passed. I had no idea what it was. My mentor Mike, who is a medical doctor, tried to explain it to me but I didn’t fully understand. There is no cure for this disease. Just a lot of unknown. She slowed down in her functioning, but she still lived life pretty normally. The Mayo Clinic states that sarcoidosis is:

“a disease characterized by the growth of tiny collections of inflammatory cells (granulomas) in any part of your body — most commonly the lungs and lymph nodes. But it can also affect the eyes, skin, heart, and other organs.”

It’s important to understand the prognosis of sarcoidosis was open-ended. Doctors didn’t know if this would last for decades or a few days. Science is limited, I understand that. I just assumed she would outlive me. Perhaps I was naïve.

Then, on Sunday October 8, 2023, she got ready for church, felt sick and went back to bed. By the time I got home from church she was really sick; vomiting, dry heaves, fever, soreness, and breathing problems. I wanted to take her to the hospital but she refused, so I connected her with the oxygen machine the hospital had given us.  

She got better as the day went on, and felt good enough to take care of herself Monday morning, so I went to work. That evening she felt good enough for me to travel to the other side of the state so I could be part of a mental health training through the Michigan Department of Correction (MDOC). She insisted I go, so I went. I called before and after each day and she was getting better.  

I spoke to her on Thursday night after she went out to eat with her mother (who was also sick). It was her first meal of the week. She was tired but in a good spirit, looking forward to seeing me the next day. We typically don’t spend time apart so it was a little uncomfortable for both of us. I’m a toucher and hadn’t touched her since the beginning of the week. I didn’t realize that would be the last time I’d ever speak with her. 

Friday was the last day of the “Helping Men Recover” training, which was a wonderful training. As we were finishing up, I received a text at 1:06 pm. It was from Karen, one of Deb’s two closest friends.  Karen and Sue had been friends with Deb since the 3^rd grace. The message “please call ASAP” was fading from the black screen as I looked down at it. I called Karen back immediately. “Deb’s been found unresponsive. She’s on the living room floor. Come home now.”

My heart dropped to the floor. I was stunned. I barely mustered the words, “Is she dead?”

“Just come home now.”

Unresponsive? What a terrible word. Panic seized me. And Karen didn’t answer the question if she was dead or not. It’s hard to explain what happens in moments of trauma, when things aren’t normal. Time moves at a different speed. Thoughts aren’t clear. Things that shouldn’t be confusing suddenly are.  

I told my supervisor what happened and went immediately left. When I got to my car, I called my son that his mom was found on the floor unresponsive, and to get home immediately. Then I called my brother-in-law John (who was about 20 minutes away) and told him Deb’s been found unresponsive and that I was two hours from home. I knew I needed family at my house.

I plugged in my home address in my cell but was very concerned that it wouldn’t get me home. I got lost on the way here and didn’t trust the stupid thing. I was near a highway but for some reason, the map took me through back two-lane roads and residential neighborhoods. I even drove by a lake I don’t remember driving by on the way there. Functionally, I’m terrible at directions. And then, I was in a panic. I had no idea if the directions were right or wrong and I didn’t want to stop to recalibrate. My wife was on the floor, unresponsive. That probably meant she was dead. I had to get home as fast as I could.

But God was good to me. He helped me drive through the stupid back roads. I was so relieved when I finally made it to a highway, though I don’t know which one it was. It was Friday afternoon, and the traffic was getting heavy. And it was just starting to rain.

I drove 80 miles an hour because I knew if I went too fast, I’d be pulled over and waste a half hour getting a ticket. I didn’t have time for that. I had to get home.

I hadn’t stopped crying since I started driving. My stomach felt like someone punched me. I lost my breath and couldn’t get it back in my lungs. I took deep breaths, deliberately trying not to pass out, trying to get more air in my lungs. Thank you, Jesus, for not letting me pass out and getting into a car accident. I think I may have been having a panic attack, but I’m not sure.

Twenty minutes later I got the call from John. “I’m so sorry Andy… but Deb is dead.” He was crying which made me cry more, even though I was weaving through traffic at 80 miles an hour during Friday rush hour. Somehow, God allowed me to partially disconnect with my emotions. It was like they were in the backseat; still present, but distant. It allowed me not to feel the full brunt of my emotions. This is called “dissociation” in the psychological community. It’s a form of denial. For whatever reason, I had disconnected my emotions many times in the past, so I was good at this dysfunctional skill. I just had to get home in one piece and was not at all sure I could. I went into “robot mode,” or something like it. I was trying to figure out what I should do next. My wife died and I didn’t have a category in my little brain to put that experience in. It was outside of me.

How could this happen? Where was God? Shouldn’t he prevent this sort of thing? Doesn’t he love me? Doesn’t he love her? Dozens of thoughts flicker through my head as I continued to drive. I didn’t want to waste time pulling over to process anything. I just needed to get home. 

John gave me more details. Sue, Deb’s other close friend, had been talking with her on the phone when the cell was suddenly dropped. Sue heard no struggling noises, not grunting, no cries of pain. It was like she dropped the phone in the middle of the conversation. Sue tried a few times to reach her but was unsuccessful, so she turned her car around and drove to our home. Once there, she found Deb slumped over to her left side on the couch. Perfectly still. Deb didn’t respond to any tapping on the window or yells from Sue.

Sue called Karen, and they called 911. EMS came through the front window and tried to resuscitate her for the prescribed 20 minutes, using a defibrillator to try to jump start her heart. But she never responded. She had no pulse when they started working on her. She was officially declared dead by medical staff.

As John was giving me the news of Deb’s death, he shared as much as he knew. Then gave the phone to the young officer who was in charge of the scene. He gave me the perfunctory “sorry for your loss” script that sounded like he had rehearsed before the call. I couldn’t blame this good officer for this terrible situation. I just lost my wife, what could he do? I’m sure he was upset too. It just didn’t help that he sounded like someone in his early 20’s.  

“We don’t suspect any foul play,” said the young man, “so there will be no autopsy. You can pay for one if you want.”

Pause. “No, she had sarcoidosis. It must have gotten to her heart,” I said, then tried to explain what this strange disease was but the officer didn’t understand it very well.  

Then the officer threw me for a loop, “I’ll need to stay here until the funeral home picks up the body. What funeral home do you usually use?”

The body?

I couldn’t believe the conversation. I so desperately wanted this to be a terrible joke. What funeral home do I usually use?

My thought to myself, “Oh, I know, I’ll call Deb, she’ll know which funeral home we usually use.” I almost hung up with the officer to call her when I remembered that she was, in fact, dead, and at the feet of the police officer I was talking to. She was, “the body.”

The only name I could think of was Huntoon’s Funeral in Pontiac, the one my father’s parents used about 45 years ago. But that was no good, that was two hours away.

There are times when God, out of his graciousness, intervenes and gently points me back to what I already know. “Let me call you back,” I told him. Still driving 80 miles an hour, I searched through my cell to find Mike, but he didn’t answer. Then called my pastor, and he didn’t answer. So, I called Mike’s wife Barb, and thank God she answered.

“Hi Andy, how are you?”

Deep breath, “Not good. Deb’s dead. Which funeral home do we use?” I’ve since apologized to her for being so terribly rude.

I could tell she was trying to gathering herself. We had been friends for years, but at this moment, all I wanted was the name of a funeral home the church worked with.

“You can use any funeral -”

“Which one does our church work with?” I wasn’t patient. I wasn’t nice. I had to get the answer because a police officer was standing over “the body.”

“I guess we use Pederson.”

“Can you text me that name and that phone number?”

I get foggy on this but I believe I called the officer next and told him Pederson Funeral home. My pastor Don then called, and I gave what details I had. Pederson then called and I gave him what specifics I had to them. I don’t know how I didn’t hit anyone on the highway. I credit God’s hand on the steering wheel. That’s the only explanation I have.

Then the thought hit me, “I hadn’t told my kids.” I wasn’t as worried about others being told, but didn’t want anyone telling my children before me. Nate was at the house, so he already knew about his mom. But Brooke was in Spring Lake and Erin was in Connecticut. I’m their father. It was my job to be the first one to tell them the bad news.

How do I do that?

That’s when the black hole first appeared. It wasn’t a vision; it was an experience. A state of hopelessness and pain, not seen but experienced. I feared I would be lost forever if I had fallen into it. It was both the place of my greatest fear and the fear of that fear.  

I pulled off the highway and called Brooke, but she didn’t answer. I couldn’t leave a voice mail, so decided to call her back. Then called Erin, “I’m so so sorry honey, I’m so so so sorry, but your mom died today.” My heart sank. It’s hard news for me. I’ve always wanted to protect my children from pain, but this time couldn’t. I was giving them pain. I had no power to protect them. I wailed at a small gas station as people walked past me to buy their energy drinks inside. 

“Get home sweetheart. I’ll cover you, just get home. And Adrian, if he can make it.” He was involved in an internship at Yale for his Ph.D. in psychology. He kind of slipped my mind at first, I just wanted my Erin home so badly.

Sometimes it’s hard to make sense of life. There are times when it’s hard to see clearly or make sense of what is happening before my eyes. Anger is useless. It just gets in the way. When you are done, your wife is still dead. And you’re driving 80 miles an hour. You’re afraid the next call will knock out the Google maps. Then you will really be lost forever.

God promises peace, but I didn’t feel any.

What am I supposed to think about during the hour and a half drive home. A part of me thought the world should have stopped. Stores would close down, air planes would be grounded, and the cars on the highway would move to the side of the road so I could drive faster. “My wife died!” How could this be happening? How could she be taken from me? Was there a mistake?

A half hour later, I pulled off the highway again and called Brooke. She had been sleeping at home. I woke her up and told her about the terrible news. She was crying. I hate to break my children’s heart. She and her boyfriend made it to my house before I did.  

 I have a terrible habit of comparing myself to others, so I went to the question, “What would a guy do 100 years ago when his wife died?” If they were farmers, they wouldn’t get any time off from work and would still have to go out and milk the cows that night.

 For whatever reason, an old Welsh proverb came into mind as I drove between the cars on that nameless highway. It was a used by Elizabeth Elliot after her husband was killed by cannibals, the same cannibals the couple was trying to reach with the gospel. “Do the next thing.” Elizabeth used it to help her get through her trauma of losing her husband while caring for her young daughter. The idea is to not figure out the next few days or weeks, but doing the next thing that needed to be done. The next thing I needed to do was to get home. Everything would happen after that. So, all I had to do is not get in a car accident.

 When I finally pulled up my street, I saw several cars at the end of the road in front of my house. No ambulance but there was a police car. As soon as I got out of my car I gathered as many as I could around me in a large huddle and cried. Don was there before me. Man, I love that guy.

 I was asked by someone if I wanted to see “the body.” I looked at the front door of my house and was afraid. I didn’t want to go in. But how could I not go in? It’s my house. That’s my wife. I hesitated, but I knew I had to. For a moment, I was a boy and wanted someone else to do it – to do the hard grown-up stuff I was afraid to do. But it was my wife. It was my responsibility to see her.  I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t hide from this.

 I went inside with Don at my wing. There she was, in the middle of the room, covered in a white sheet. “That’s not her,” I said, “She’s with Jesus already. That’s not her.” For a brief second, I knew she was home, free of all the pain, breathing freely, running, talking with Jesus, free of pain. But all I could think of was myself. My pain. My discomfort.

Is she really dead?

 I remember walking over to her, kneeling down beside her body on my living room floor. I remember pounded my fist on Don’s knee (who was right next to me) as we both cried. I pulled the sheet back to see her beautiful face one last time. There was blood on her face. Blood on her chest, where apparently EMS tried to resuscitate her. I didn’t want to know anything more. All I cared about was that she was gone.  

I kissed her forehead. It was cold and lifeless. “That’s not her. She’s gone. That’s just a shell of who she was.” When I said this, I didn’t know who I was talking to. I didn’t need a response. They were words I said to the room.

 My wife, almost naked, was covered by a thin white sheet as people walked in and out of the house. It seemed disrespectful to me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. I didn’t know what else I could do. She wasn’t going to move. The sheet would never fall off her. It seemed wrong, but what else could they do?  

 “I can’t believe she is dead,” I said, something I said a dozen or so times. I was trying to digest this fact into my brain, into my body. I think speaking it out loud made it a little more real to me.

 My beautiful wife was dead. My precious wife was dead.

 I want her back. I want her with me. But God has chosen otherwise.  

 My theology protected me from going off the deep end. That black hole was inches away, but it didn’t overtake me. I knew where she was. She was with Jesus. That wasn’t my worry. It was the pain I was in. My selfish confusion consumed me. I didn’t know what I should do next.

I was a little boy again. I looked around the room, waiting to be told what to do. I didn’t say anything. Words didn’t seem to make sense. And I didn’t know who needed to tell me what to do next. I was a boy, lost in the mall, far away from the sight of my parents, alone, confused, scared.