Three Deaths

I didn't know the woman. She was the wife of a co-worker, a co-worker who was no more than a name on an org chart to me, but the story of her death touched my heart with its suddenness and unexpectedness.

She had been suffering from some kind of physical problem for two or three years, one of those annoying kinds of malfunctions of the body that seem to start up some time in the middle years. Nothing serious, nothing that required drastic surgery or massive medication or chemotherapy or radiation. Just a gurgle or a wheeze or a shimmy, the kind of damage that happens to a body when it gets a few miles on it, the kind of thing that gets covered up with a bit of putty or paint or duct tape or a bobby pin.

Something happened over the holidays, some kind of excitement or stress or disturbance that exacerbated the situation enough to cause a little tiny bit of concern, a moment of worry, a trip to the hospital. Perhaps a bit of trouble breathing, perhaps a pain in the chest, perhaps a bit of dizziness. Enough to prompt a visit to the doctor.

An ordinary checkout of a slightly out-of-the-ordinary situation, but an extraordinary result. She never came home. Something went wrong inside that body, some vital function failed to operate properly, some tiny fault multiplied in sequence and brought the entire system to screeching halt.

And a family was left with questions and confusion.

* *

I didn't know the man, either, although most everyone at work did; he was a veteran of the Company, one of those young engineers hired right out of college who had managed to hang on to steady employment for twenty-three years. Married with three children, ranging in age from nine to seventeen, he had been pulling some serious overtime for quite some time, putting in a lot of hours and doing a very good job of it. Many people relied on him. He was one of those people who did what needed to be done and didn't ask for recognition.

He had just finished working a sixteen-hour day and was looking forward to a relaxing soak in the hot tub. His wife and kids were already in bed, sleeping off the rigors of the day. He walked out onto the ice-coated deck, slipped on something, fell down and slammed his head onto something. Blunt-force trauma, they said. Died instantly. And his family slept soundly until the next morning, discovering him on their way to breakfast.

Everyone knew him. He was one of those good guys that everyone wanted to know. People wandered around in shock when they heard. On the day of the funeral, it was impossible to find parking at the church where the service was to be held. Hundreds of people showed up. The sanctuary was full. There was a slide show of his life. He was my age. How is it possible to summarize someone's life in a slide show? He wasn't old, not really. He and his wife had so many years of memories, but so many more to come.

And then he was gone.

* *

I knew the last one. He and his family used to attend our church. We used to babysit his kids when his wife had to work and he had to rest. He was an interesting kind of guy, a mind full of mystery wrapped in an emaciated frame. We had always known of his physical troubles. It seemed like he was eternally on the prayer list for one problem or another, usually associated with digestive trouble. His wife was a wonderful, bubbly, happy kind of person - the only kind of person who could even begin to put up with the kind of man with whom she had cast her lot. They had three children who were somewhat tentative, yet anxious - anxious to be with their father as much as possible, as though they suspected he might not be around forever. They looked at him with anxious eyes, pleading with him to hang on for just a little while longer.

They had gone through some hard times, this family. The wife was the sole provider after her husband had to quit working due to all those physical problems. She accepted this resolutely, working two jobs to bring in enough money to deal with the day-to-day requirements as well as the doctor bills. He got depressed sometimes, depressed enough to cause her to despair, depressed enough to make her wonder if it wouldn't be better for her to cut her losses and start over someplace else. But in the end, she decided to stick it out. She got counseling, she gathered her friends and family around her, she pushed onward and accepted her burden and carried on.

And things were getting better these last few months. He was feeling better, things were settling down into a nice, ordinary routine; he was happier, the kids were doing well, everything seemed to be looking up.

Then one Sunday morning when she tried to wake him up for church, he did not wake up. He was dead. He died in his sleep. No warning, no pain, no suffering. Just ... gone.

He was thirty-four years old. Three kids, seven and younger. A young wife who had just experienced perhaps her best year yet. Many, many friends and family in the area.

We went to the funeral and found, again, that the room was packed to the rafters. No slide show this time, but plenty of pictures on posterboard. Lots of pictures. Lots of friends and family standing and looking at the pictures and sniffling and wiping at teary eyes. They all knew what he had gone through. They all knew how he had started to improve. They had all hoped things were going to get better for him and for his family, that this young family would grow in strength and wisdom and maturity, moving past the struggles of those hard times.

Now the widow sat in the front row of chairs and sobbed as the minister told the audience that he was free, finally free; free of pain, free of depression, free and happy in his new heavenly home, sitting with Jesus and looking down in love at his family. She was not sobbing from happiness at his freedom; she was sobbing because the man who had courted her, the man who had kissed her and held her close, the man who had promised to love and cherish her til death do us part, was gone. She sobbed because the life she had known was now over, and the future was a gray fog with more questions than answers.

* *

Death is hard to understand when we are young, and impossible to understand when we are older. We look through the obituaries in these middle years and react with subdued fear and wonder when we read of those who die young, before their time. Most of the pictures are of old people. Old people have a right to die, a right to go to their eternal rest, after spending a good, long life here on earth. They have earned it. But those young people - how is it possible for them to leave so soon? They have so much left to do! They have children to raise, spouses to support, family reunions and birthdays and celebrations and holidays and all those other events to attend.

I don't recall seeing quite so much death before coming to Michigan. Certainly there were people who died of one thing or another when we lived in Seattle, but it never struck me quite the same way there as it does here. It seems as though there are far more deaths due to motor vehicle accidents out here, especially involving young people. Sometimes it seems like it is one every day. We get numbed to it. It is announced every day in the news, like the fact that it is raining (or snowing). It is the way it is. Death comes to those who are not ready for it, and it happens more often than we expect it, and those of us who are left behind look at ourselves in the mirror and wonder if we might be on the ten o'clock news tomorrow, the victim of a fatal head-on collision or a sudden heart unexpected heart attack or a fall off a ladder or any one of a number of possible ends.

It is acceptable for old people to die. It is expected that old people will die. We can look back on their lives and celebrate their accomplishments and rejoice that they have lived their threescore and ten and now moved on to better things. But for those who leave so soon, those who barely got started (and those who are thirty-four or forty-five or fifty-two have barely started), we feel cheated somehow, that perhaps they deserved a few more years to be with their families, to see their children grown up with families of their own, to get to the point in their lives when they can look back with some satisfaction and believe that their time on this earth was of benefit to someone.

I have always expected death around every corner. Perhaps I am too morbid or too cynical, or perhaps my mind dwells too much on the darker side of life. Every time the clock reminds me that it is past time for someone to be home and they are not, my mind conjures visions of disaster. Every time the car starts to slide a bit in the rain or the slush or the snow, the crash scenarios flash into my brain. Every time I read or hear of a death which comes too soon, I dream of my own, regretting all the things which I have not yet accomplished and wondering how my family will get along without me (knowing full well they have plenty of support from both family and friends).

I hope to live long enough to play with my grandchildren. It is well and good to know that I will see everyone again when we are all up in heaven, but I am enough of a selfish person to desire that experience here on earth. I hope it is not too much to ask.

In the meantime, I think of those people both known and unknown, and send a prayer up to God that their families will be comforted in this time of sadness and mourning.