Chapter 1 #2
Over the next eight hours that it took her to drive to me, we spoke every hour on the phone.
Sometimes, I would just cry, and sometimes, she would ask me things: how I was doing, if I was okay, what I was thinking.
She almost sounded like she was calling to make sure I wasn’t going to off myself, and if I was being honest, the thought crossed my mind.
I didn’t want to live in a world without my husband.
God had found me the perfect man—a man who helped do dishes, a man whose favorite phrase was happy wife, happy life.
A leader, a provider, a romantic, a comedian, a strong man of God.
And, importantly, a man who was nothing like my father. James was everything.
No. This isn’t real. I’m in a nightmare.
Anna got to my house around two a.m. and I stayed up for her.
I was afraid to sleep alone. Afraid that if I fell asleep with James’s side of the bed empty, it would stay like that forever.
Anna curled up next to me, holding me tightly in her arms like she was afraid I might drift away, and then we both fell asleep like that.
When the morgue called the next morning and asked me if I wanted a burial or cremation…
that’s the moment I fully broke. I disconnected from reality and completely shut down.
I was in disbelief, and Anna kindly offered to go to the morgue and affirm that my James’s body was, in fact, there.
I couldn’t bear to see him like that, to remember him like that.
She was an ICU nurse in Portland and dealt with illness and death on a daily basis.
When she got back from the morgue, she just gave me a small head nod of confirmation, and I’d never forget the look on her face.
Fear. She was scared for me because he was really gone, and now I didn’t know what I was going to do.
The next week was a blur.
My mom flew in from Paris as she and Anna handled all the funeral arrangements and unpacked the entire house.
There was a whispered debate about whether or not to unpack James’s stuff.
I’d already unpacked our master and closet, so in the end, they just put the rest of his stuff in what would have been James’s home office.
Boxes were stacked high to the ceiling, a constant reminder of what could have been. What should have been.
Anna and my mother prayed over me constantly, and what would have normally filled me up and given me hope just made me mad.
God didn’t care! He wasn’t listening. If He were, He’d have protected my husband.
I’d prayed over my husband nightly: for his safety, for our marriage, and for happiness. How could He have allowed this?
God was deaf to my pleas, I’d decided. I could feel my heart hardening toward the Lord. I began to push Him away, no longer wanting worship music on, no longer reading my verse of the day Bible app. I didn’t want anything to do with God right now.
The day after the funeral, Anna had to go back to Seattle, but my mother stayed with me a little longer.
“You know, I could move in with you. It would be fun. I could—”
“Mom.” I gave her an are you serious look. “You’re a well-known European food vlogger. Living in po dunk, Idaho would kill your new career.”
She shrugged. “I don’t care. I’m fifty now. Maybe it’s time to slow down and retire anyway.”
My heart squeezed in that moment. It was so sweet.
So very much like my mom. Fifty was still young, and she had so much more life to live.
She was the selfless housewife of an alcoholic.
She had stayed home to raise me and serve my abusive father’s every need.
But after my father died suddenly at age forty when I was sixteen, she’d turned her love of cooking and traveling into a vlog to make money for us.
The vlog took off overnight, and now she was having the time of her life.
I wasn’t going to bring her down with me.
There was no reason both of our lives should be over.
“Mom, that’s so sweet, but no. I need to just work this out on my own. I’ll be okay,” I lied. The truth was, I wanted to be alone. I felt dark and heavy, and my mom and Anna were all light and bright. I didn’t want to drag them into this abyss with me.
She frowned. “You’re not alone, though. You have me, and Anna, and God.”
God. I wanted to laugh at that but thought better of it.
By the time I was twelve, my dad’s drinking got really bad, so my mom started going to church and taking me with her.
It got us out of the house on Sundays when my father would scream and throw things at the TV while watching football.
But soon, I saw a change in her. Going to church wasn’t just an excuse to avoid my dad’s fits anymore.
She’d found God, and He’d done a mighty work on her inside and out.
And then shortly after, at summer camp with Anna, God changed me, too.
He gave me the one thing I’d been searching for my entire life.
Peace. An inner peace among the storm that was my chaotic life with my dad.
But now… Now I wondered if it was all a lie.
If God were even real. I felt so lost, and I was ashamed to admit it after being such a devoted follower for so long.
“Yes, I do. So you better visit me every three months.” I told her, forcing a smile.
She peered at me for a long moment, doing that thing mothers do when they size up whether you are lying.
I took the chance to look at her face. Brown shoulder-length hair streaked with a few grays, and blue eyes tucked into a bed of slight wrinkles.
Those wrinkles were from laughing. Even though my father had been a monster to be around most of the time, my mother had always made sure I had things to smile about.
And she smiled with me. We’d clung together through the storm of his abuse.
And I was noticing now that we looked so much alike.
“Mom.” I grasped her hand. “I’m so proud of how far you’ve come. You built your dream life, and if you left all that behind for me, it would be like two deaths. I don’t want that, and James wouldn’t want you to do that, either,” I told her.
My mom had been struggling with whether to leave my dad or not when I was fifteen, and then he died, removing the decision for her. She rose from the ashes and built an incredible life, and I wasn’t about to have her ruin it all for me.
Her eyes welled with tears, and she nodded. “Okay. But if you’re not adjusting, I’ll come live with you full-time.”
“Deal,” I agreed.
How did you adjust to this? I didn’t think it was possible.
And I knew my mother had no sage words of wisdom for me because even though we never spoke it out loud, the day my father died, all either of us felt was relief.
Not the soul-crushing heartache I was feeling right now.
She might have been a widow, but she didn’t miss my father, and neither did I.