It’s strange, the things your brain holds onto. I don’t often think about the day that Marrett died anymore, but when I do, it’s the same images. His dog cowering under the table watching helplessly while I do CPR. The sound of KFAN, his favorite sports radio show playing behind the instructions of the 911 operator. The waiting on the front porch on that gorgeous summer day to find out whether he would live.

I was shopping when he died. At the mall spending money we didn’t have because it had been a long week at vacation Bible school. Because I was mad about working this hard and still having no money. Because I was mad at him, for reasons too many to list here. I bought a rain jacket, a backpack, some Teva sandals, for the Denali trip we were scheduled to take. Instead, our departure day became the body viewing at the funeral home. It took me months to make use of any of those during-death purchases. Six years later, I can’t wear any of them without thinking of that day.

My last text to him: “does Ceci have a jacket that fits?”. Forever unread. He was dying while I waited in Scheel’s, toddler windbreaker in hand.

Unread texts. It’s one of the few things that still trigger the fear of that day. When I don’t hear from a loved one before they go to bed, or in the timeframe they usually reply, a panic rises. I’m flooded with visions of my dear one in a car crash, having a heart attack, dropping inexplicably dead on the kitchen floor of their own home. Though I know exactly why it’s happening, that it’s a normal and predictable response to my traumatic experience, the part of my brain it takes over is outside the power of reason. This is a fear you can’t talk your way out of.

I wonder sometimes if I will always have this fear, that some inexplicable tragedy will strike again. I know it’s unlikely, but it was when it happened too. This kind of loss changes us in ways science is only beginning to understand, and isn’t always successful at healing.

I’ve done the work: the therapy, the internal family systems, the soothing self talk, the trauma informed care. But the body remembers things the conscious brain would love to forget. So I still find myself sometimes, talking gently to my panicked parts and managing the physical symptoms as well as I can. Until that loved one finally responds and I sob with relief.

Too many of you know exactly what I mean. Your permanently imprinted images, constantly playing sounds, and out of sync reactions to small things betray you too. Sometimes I imagine you too wonder if those bits of your brain will always be broken. I see you grit your teeth, powering through a triggered moment, an offhand comment, a joke that could never be funny to you.

It’s strange, the things your brain holds onto. The ways in which the trauma heightens your sense of other people, and you can see things people think they have gotten good at hiding. It’s the world’s worst super power. The brokenness in me recognizes it in others, and draws us through that brokenness into relationships that depend on shared trauma. I feel a sudden kinship with every widow I meet, and I know better what to say. Or mostly what not to say.

Though my images and experience are unique, it helps to know that my brain’s response to them is not. And it helps others to know that what they feel, what they think, what is suddenly, surprisingly painful after loss does not make them crazy. It just makes us all human. To carry such things is enough without being forced to carry them alone.

In my first bout with trauma after my divorce, my therapist introduced me to Gerald May, a psychiatrist who wrote about spiritual growth and traumatic experience. In his book The Dark Night of the Soul, he writes: “I am no longer very good at telling the difference between good things and bad things. Of course there are many events in human history that can only be labeled as evil, but from the standpoint of inner individual experience the distinction has become blurred for me…I don’t have to look for spiritual lessons in every trouble that comes along. There have been many spiritual lessons to be sure, but they’ve given to me in the course of life; I haven’t had to figure out a single one.”

I suppose that is what I am trying to say here: that Marrett’s death can never be a good thing, yet somehow good has come to me through the experience. I am a better pastor because of the things I never would have chosen to learn. I am softer with others because deep grief finally taught me to be soft with myself. I am not afraid of other people’s pain because I learned (I am learning) that it only gets more frightening when it’s pushed away.

It’s strange, how the unwished for life can still be beautiful, how a broken heart can still find courage to love so deeply, how grief can create its own communities. Thank you for being part of this one.