She's from Chicago. She planned a trip to Virginia in a desperate attempt to just "get away and hide" as she said. Her two daughters back home are gluten-free, dairy free, and everything else-free, so we all decided to go get rich, creamy, carb-y italian food since she needed some people to indulge with her. The restaurant was small -- a local store-front place -- with natural lighting and tuscan decor. The 6 of us sat at a long table in the center of the room. We began with small talk and when conversation shifted to what she does for a living, she started. Stopped. Then said, "do you know my story?" We shook our heads, innocently, and she delivered the blow. The blow that left me in tears in the middle of Francesco's -- me, a mere stranger to this woman -- so moved that my eyes welled up and spilled over.
See, within 20 months, Ann lost a man in 3 generations of her immediate family: first her son, then her husband, then her father. She's planned 3 funerals, inherited a company she doesn't quite know how to run, and became void of every male figure in her life that mattered to her.
Last weekend was not only her birthday, but the 2 year anniversary of her 21-year-old son's death, who died in a plane crash while flying with friends on a college break. It was just a few months later, while grappling with unimaginable grief, that they learned her husband, Dan, needed a kidney transplant. What a miracle it was that Ann was the match and could sacrifice one of her own kidneys in hopes to save her husband. They both underwent surgery and everything was deemed successful. That is, until Dan collapsed after the procedure and to this day, the doctors couldn't tell you why. Seemingly left alone and forced to face the most ugliest faces of loss, Ann's father was there to console her. Although he was ailed with heart issues, he poured his life into his widow daughter. When she mentioned something needing to be done to her house or odd jobs that typically required a man, he readily volunteered. "you don't even know what it is yet!" Ann would say. But he would reply, "it doesn't matter. I'll be there." It wasn't long before his heart couldn't keep up and he too went on to be with the Lord.
Beautiful Ann talks SO fondly of her men that still fill up every inch of her heart. She doesn't smile much, but when she does, it includes laughter when re-telling a sweet memory. Like when her son, Josh, spent the summer back home on their farm instead of doing a college internship. They employed him to pick and sell tomatoes and onions on their Illinois land. Josh and Ann spent hours together out in the fields. And she quickly learned that if she stayed quiet, he sure wouldn't. "He talked the day away," she says, "He would just talk, and talk, and talk. And I would just listen." She chuckles when recalling the way he hated working with crops and announced at the end of summer: "I am never doing that again." Her smile vanishes and is replaced with the hoarse words: "and two months later...he died."
Or the way she describes her and her husband's experience with the grief counselor after Josh's death: they would go in, sit down, and Dan would always talk first. He'd say a few words and then be done -- leaving the rest of the time for Ann to unload her sorrow and confusion and desperation. As she recollects, it's as if she forgets we're there and instead, she's in that counselor's office once again. She isn't making eye contact. She's looking away. She lets out the most heartbreaking combination of a contemplative sigh mixed with reflective laughter, and says, "he didn't even really need to go, but he went for me...he went for me every time."
Beautiful Ann talks SO fondly of her men that still fill up every inch of her heart. She doesn't smile much, but when she does, it includes laughter when re-telling a sweet memory. Like when her son, Josh, spent the summer back home on their farm instead of doing a college internship. They employed him to pick and sell tomatoes and onions on their Illinois land. Josh and Ann spent hours together out in the fields. And she quickly learned that if she stayed quiet, he sure wouldn't. "He talked the day away," she says, "He would just talk, and talk, and talk. And I would just listen." She chuckles when recalling the way he hated working with crops and announced at the end of summer: "I am never doing that again." Her smile vanishes and is replaced with the hoarse words: "and two months later...he died."
Or the way she describes her and her husband's experience with the grief counselor after Josh's death: they would go in, sit down, and Dan would always talk first. He'd say a few words and then be done -- leaving the rest of the time for Ann to unload her sorrow and confusion and desperation. As she recollects, it's as if she forgets we're there and instead, she's in that counselor's office once again. She isn't making eye contact. She's looking away. She lets out the most heartbreaking combination of a contemplative sigh mixed with reflective laughter, and says, "he didn't even really need to go, but he went for me...he went for me every time."
So. Here is Ann. A woman who hasn't seemed to age one bit in spite of her turmoil, sitting beside me, tossing her pasta with her fork, choking out the horrors of her world and the vaulted pain she relives at night. And I am in stunned silence, trying to sift through my feelings; my compassion bubbling up until it about overflows. Sure, I knew what my heart needed: I clung to my Dad after lunch, sought out my husband to hold onto him just a little tighter than usual, hugged my 18-year-old brother who's also my best friend. But that was all for me. What about Ann?
Your heart always aches when you hear a story about terrible loss, but I'm not sure it really BREAKS until it's right in front of you, and you hear her order her entree, and you see her sip on her coke, and...and you hug her and can actually feel her exhaustion. And when the person who survived it is good, and beautiful, and real, and strong. Oh...so, so strong.
At the end of our lunch, as we were walking to the car, I asked her:
"Ann, have you ever considered writing your story down?"
And her response sunk down low into my gut and left me with goosebumps all over.
She stared at me, looked at her niece (who I later learned has been encouraging her to do the very thing), and responded with:
"God is still writing my story. But I don't want my loss to be wasted. And not used by God. So maybe one day I will."
Phewwww... THAT is what I call TRUST.
She faced the horror every parent dreads when she buried her only boy and the baby of the family. She survived life's tumultuous storms with her life partner -- including an accident leaving him with prosthetic legs -- only to have him suddenly gone when things finally seemed all right. Then she lost the only man she had left -- the one who mourned with her through all the agony, the one who was there from the very beginning -- her Dad. And yet she still trusts God? She still gives Him the credit for writing and crafting her story?
I can't say whether or not I could -- if I were in her shoes -- do the same thing.
At one point in the afternoon, amidst Ann's brave vulnerability and our wide-eyed stillness, she told us she has a life-song. It is a song she had sung at all of the funerals -- and then, without coordination, amazingly it was sung at Josh's friend's funeral (who died with him in the plane crash) AND also at the university's memorial service honoring the two boys' young lives. It's a song I know well -- although will never, ever, ever listen to the same way. The lyrics to the chorus are as follows:
"what if your blessing comes through rain drops?
what if your healing comes through tears?
what if a thousand sleepless nights are what it takes to know You're near?
what if trials of this life are Your mercies in disguise?"
"Blessings" by Laura Story
So, even now, as I write this, I haven't yet answered the question that seems to repeat in my mind: "what about Ann?" But I know of someone who DOES have an answer, and who is confident in the part He plays in the continuing story of beautiful Ann and her beloved men...
"Father to the fatherless, defender of widows -- this is God, whose dwelling is holy" Psalms 68:5
*If you feel comfortable, please take a moment and pray for Ann -- that she would continue to experience Jesus as the Lover of her soul and the Knower of her heart.
