With another shaking hand, I dialed my mother. It was the middle of the night in Paris, but I didn’t care.
Voicemail.
“Call me, Mom,” I managed through sobs.
Next was Anna. If she didn’t pick up, I was going to lose it. I was going to let this black cloud engulf me, and I’d never get out of it.
“Hey, bestie. How is life in Farmville?” She sounded her usual cheery self, and for a moment, I just wanted to keep her like that, to absorb my best friend’s normal voice before I broke her with this news. She loved James like a brother. I’d known her since we met at church camp when we were twelve. This would ruin her. “Ella, you there?” A bit of concern laced into her voice.
“James died in a robbery. He was shot.” I sounded like a robot. One second sobbing—the next, I was devoid of any emotion.
‘God, help me.’
“What?” Anna said, her voice clearly warning me that if this was a joke, she would kill me.
I wished it were.
“He’s gone, Anna. And I don’t know what to do…”
“No!” she shouted in a guttural wail, sending chills down my spine, and then she burst into sobs. Hearing her break broke me. We cried together then, not speaking for the next ten minutes. Finally, when she could find her voice,she spoke in a fragile whisper. “Hold on. I’m coming,” was all she said, and then she hung up.
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 washappy 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 asmall 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. Whatshouldhave 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 anare you seriouslook. “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.
