Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:4
His Grace
Let His grace Heal your heart Soothe your soul And ease your sorrow Let His Son Share your grief Mourn with you And lift you up Let His mercy Cover your sins Wash you clean And give you joy Everlasting
During the first six months of 2020, as COVID-19 continued its rampage, David’s health continued to decline. He spent his days sitting in his recliner, often working on our finances, doing his best to ensure I’d be provided for when he was gone. When his frustration with his frailty got the better of him, he would exclaim, “I can’t do anything!” But he still tried.
Once in a while he’d make his slow way downstairs to his basement wood shop and try to work on a small sculpture, but he couldn’t manage more than an hour before he had to rest. Sometimes he’d go outside and attempt a bit of yard work. The last big chore he managed was power-washing the deck. It was hard not to discourage that exertion, but I held my tongue. He needed to feel useful; I couldn’t take that away from him. I checked on him frequently but didn’t hover over him like a mother hen. He needed to feel independent, too. Although we didn’t talk much about these things, I knew he dreaded becoming a burden to me. He never was, nor would he ever have been, no matter the cost in time or effort.
David and I had always been big huggers, and our hugs became more and more desperate as his body failed. One day not long before he died, we clung to each other in the kitchen, both knowing our time together was quickly winding down. I knew he was clinging to life for my sake. He was miserable and ready to go, but he didn’t want to leave me alone. That day, as we held each other tight, I whispered in his ear, “I’ll be all right when you’re gone, you know. I’ll miss you every day, but I’ll be all right.” David didn’t say anything; he just held me tighter. He was so thin by then that I could wrap my arms all the way around him.
On the morning of Thursday, June 11, 2020, I was just getting up when I heard a loud thud from the living room. I called out David’s name as I ran to see what had happened. He was lying face down on the hardwood floor with his quad-cane under his right side.
I could see instantly what must have happened: He had risen from his recliner, turned to walk into the hall, and tripped over an outrigger of the quad-cane. With his right hand gripping the cane’s handle, he hadn’t had a chance to adequately break his fall.
I knelt beside him, calling his name over and over again, but he didn’t respond. I called 911, then removed the cane from beneath him and sat beside him on the floor, waiting for the ambulance. David’s eyelids started fluttering as he regained consciousness. He kept trying to get up and I had to keep urging him to lie still.
When the ambulance came and the emergency medical technicians got David onto a stretcher, I saw the blood and bruising on the right side of his face, at the temple. I knew the location of the injury and his loss of consciousness boded ill. As I watched the EMTs put David into the back of the ambulance, I thought about the powerful blood thinners he took and I knew he wouldn’t be coming home again. Then the ambulance drove away, taking my heart with it.
Because of COVID, I couldn’t go with David to the hospital. The healthcare workers who kept me informed by phone told me David had been taken first to a hospital half an hour away for evaluation, then transported to a larger hospital better equipped to handle brain injuries. That hospital was nearly two hours away. I waited numbly all day for the call that came around five o’clock, telling me I could come to see him.
When I got there at about seven that evening, David was semi-conscious. He knew I was there and seemed to know who I was. He could respond to the nurses’ questions and instructions to raise his arm or leg. I’m sure he was heavily medicated to alleviate the pain of his injury. The whole right side of his face had turned purple, but he was calm and even seemed happy. I think he knew his misery was coming to an end.
I had snipped the first tiny pink rosebud from the last plant he’d bought for our garden. When I showed it to him, he smiled. After I went out into the hallway and called Susan, I went back in and told him she sent her love. He smiled vaguely and said, “That’s nice.” Those were the last words David ever spoke to me.
As the next few hours passed, David became less and less responsive to tests of his brain function until he was unable to respond at all. The neurologist came into David’s room and showed me the progressive CAT scans of the bleeding in his brain. The area consumed by a white cloud of blood on the negative image had grown rapidly until it engulfed his entire frontal cortex. Then the doctor told me what I already knew from looking at the scans: “Everything that made him David is gone.”
This was it, the day I had feared for twenty-four years. I had expected a heart attack or stroke, not this, not a fall caused by tripping over his own cane. More than that, I hadn’t anticipated being all alone when the end came.
Susan couldn’t leave Philadelphia until Sunday. I consoled myself with the relief that David was no longer suffering and that he wasn’t stuck full of tubes. But he was in a hospital, and I didn’t want him to die there.
The hospital’s policy was to transfer dying patients to hospice care. I knew of a wonderful hospice center just forty-five minutes from home, but it had only eight beds and they were all full when the hospital first checked. I resigned myself to driving to a hospice much farther away, but then, at the last minute, a bed opened up at the one I preferred and David was transferred there late on Friday. Totally exhausted, I drove home, filled out and faxed the transfer paperwork, and then crawled into bed, trying not to think about the lonely years ahead.
The hospice was a lovely place, with a garden visible through sliding glass doors, soothing music, beautiful images of nature on a wide-screen TV, and a kind and caring staff. I sat beside David’s bed all day Saturday. Although his heart still beat and his lungs still drew breath, I knew he wasn’t there. I requested that his pacemaker be disabled so his poor, tired heart could finally rest. I was so worn down by grief that I just wanted this ordeal to end for both of us. I wanted my beloved husband’s spirit to be released from that diminished and battered shell.
Release came in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I drove back to the hospice to say my final goodbye. One glance at my husband’s dear face told me that his spirit had fled to its new home. I didn’t know where that was or exactly what he’d find there, but thanks to the grace of a loving God, I knew David wasn’t gone forever. He was no longer suffering the pain of mortality and I’d see him again one day.
Knowing those things did little to ease my grief and loneliness. As I undertook the many onerous chores that follow death, I grieved my husband’s absence to the depth of my soul. Because of his brain injury, we’d been robbed of the chance to say a meaningful goodbye. There were no tender words between us, no final hug or kiss. He had simply faded away, unable to hear or comprehend my final, “I love you,” unless it was in spirit.
David had never been one for effusive expressions of love. He demonstrated his love in his respect for me, the way he held me when we danced, and our frequent and fervent hugs, and that was enough. But there was one precious moment near the end when he spoke his feelings out loud.
We were driving home from the blood clinic one Friday when he suddenly said: “I don’t know what I’d do without you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.” I will always treasure those words in my heart.
The pandemic prevented holding a memorial service for David. Truthfully, I wasn’t up to planning one anyway. After his body was cremated, Susan and I scattered some of his ashes in the creek behind our house, along with red roses that grew on the pavilion he’d built in our back yard. Susan took a portion of the ashes back to Philadelphia and buried them in a special spot in her garden.
Grief is a complex emotion. People talk about “the five stages of grief” as if it’s a scientific progression everyone experiences in the same way, but that’s not true. Grief — especially the extreme grief of losing the love of your life — waxes and wanes over time, and everyone’s “stages of grief” come in their own time, or not at all.
I was never angry at David for dying, or at a God I didn’t believe in at the time for “taking” him. I was grateful that he’d gone quickly, that his slow decline and increasing misery had been cut short by that fall. I suppose the trauma of its suddenness brought on a certain sense of disbelief, but that didn’t last long. I accepted that he was dead, or at least that his body was. I didn’t try to bargain away David’s death or my grief. Since I didn’t believe in that sort of God, who was there to bargain with?
One of my cousins had lost her husband six months earlier, and talking with her helped. She assured me that my grief wouldn’t follow prescribed stages, that it might seem to be softening and then come roaring back to knock me off my feet again. Oh, how right she was!
One thing that kept me from drowning in a tsunami of tears was planning a new life on my own. During the long months of David’s decline, I had distracted myself by mentally planning solo road trips. I’d pack up our red Ford Escape and hit the highway, traveling mostly on back roads, seeing the sights, visiting family and friends across the country.
Daydreaming about the pleasures of the open road kept me from sinking into a morass of grief before David died. After he was gone, I began following Facebook groups and YouTube channels about women living on the road, and researching how to set up an SUV as a camper. I hatched plans to go on a long road trip as soon as COVID allowed.
I was afraid to spend money at first. David had handled our finances and I was content with that; I’ve always been somewhat math-phobic. I knew we were okay financially, but without David’s Social Security, I wasn’t sure how much income I’d have. As I looked at the numbers, I discovered to my relief that David’s obsession with making sure I was provided for had paid off. I wouldn’t be wealthy, but I’d have enough to be comfortable. My biggest decision was whether or not to sell the house and, if I did, where would I live? My siblings were far away, in California and Utah.
Before David died, I thought I’d probably stay in our house. It was paid for, and a reverse mortgage covered the costs of upkeep. After he was gone and the loneliness set in, I began to think about moving closer to my siblings or maybe spending all my time road-tripping and car-camping, staying with family and friends in between. That possibility appealed to my independent streak, and my dreams of adventure distracted me from my loneliness and sorrow. I began to prepare in earnest, buying road-trip and camping gear and planning different car-camping setups in the Escape.
When I wasn’t actively distracting myself, I sank deeper and deeper into my grief. At first, I slept on David’s side of the bed, but lying in that double bed alone became unbearable. After I bought a sleeping bag and a narrow mattress for car camping, I made a nest on the floor of the bedroom in front of David’s old oak dresser and slept there every night for weeks. I told myself I was practicing for sleeping in the car, and that was true, but more than that, I found solace in curling up inside a sleeping bag on that narrow mattress. Lying there in fetal position, hugging myself, I felt comforted. Even so, many nights I cried myself to sleep.
On October 6, 2020, almost four months after David died, and after I’d moved back to his side of the bed, I fell asleep with tears of longing in my eyes. I missed him so badly it was like physical pain.
That night I dreamed I was sitting up in bed. Suddenly David was there beside me, looking many years younger and perfectly healthy, his hair and eyebrows as black and thick as they were when we first met.
I said, “Oh, I miss you so much!”
“I know,” David replied in his familiar gravelly voice, “that’s why I came.”
We held each other tight, and it was wonderful. I woke feeling happy and grateful. I knew that was no ordinary dream. David’s spirit was actually there beside me.
Now I know my dream that night was a gift from my Heavenly Father, who loves even His wayward children more than we can comprehend. He sent His beloved Son to suffer for us, to take upon His perfect self every human frailty so he would know how to succor us in our hour of need. In their great love and mercy, the Father and the Son allowed my dear husband to reach back through the veil between life and death to comfort me in my sorrow, and I will be forever grateful for Their astonishing grace.
While I still planned to keep the house, I devised another means of distraction: I bought a spinning wheel and set about turning my house into a fiber arts studio. I rearranged the furniture and spent the solitary winter months learning how to spin wool fiber into a serviceable wool for weaving small rugs. It was a skill that required many hours, days, and weeks of practice, so it served my purpose well.
As the first Christmas without David approached, with the pandemic lockdown still precluding gatherings, I found the will to decorate the house the way I used to. I had moved one of David’s tall, abstract sculptures to the front porch, and now I strung it with colorful Christmas lights. It looked beautiful against a backdrop of snow and I wished David could have seen it. On Christmas Eve, I had an epiphany and wrote it down in my occasional journal: “I could live a wholly unconventional life!” I didn’t know exactly what I meant by that. I think it was another attempt at distraction.
I missed David’s laughter and wacky sense of humor so much. When he was in a playful mood, which was often, before his health declined, he would sometimes break into song at unexpected moments, imitating Elvis or a flamboyant opera singer. The funny thing was, when he attempted to sing normally, he sounded like a constipated bullfrog. But during those short bursts of playful parody, his voice was amazing.
We had such fun during our forty-four years together. We weren’t perfect, but we were perfect for each other. Nothing can dim those golden memories. When I think of David now, which is every day, it’s with warmth and gratitude instead of tears and sorrow. I’m so grateful to my Heavenly Father for bringing my dear eternal companion into my life in the most unexpected way.
Throughout the winter of 2020-21, I continued researching and buying car-camping gear. In February I did a trial fit in the back of the Escape and bought a rooftop cargo box to hold all the gear that wouldn’t fit in the car.
In March 2021, COVID vaccines became available and I got my first two doses. In April I started planning my cross-country road trip in detail. I was nearly ready to go when I realized I had more to do before I could leave. I didn’t have a will, and that would present a huge problem if I died during the trip, or really whenever I died. With no children, my siblings would be my heirs, but who would be responsible for handling the business of death? I couldn’t leave it to chance, so I had a local attorney draw up a will and specified my wishes following my death.
As for the house, good friends had rented out their own house for the summer, so I suggested they stay in mine while I was gone and they jumped at the chance. With all the arrangements made, it was finally time to hit the road.
On June 1, 2021, just two weeks shy of a year since David’s death, I set off on the first leg of what would turn out to be a 10,000-mile road trip over the next two-and-a-half months.
After spending a few days with Susan near Philadelphia, I headed west across the middle of the country. My plan to stay off interstate highways had to give way to a family crisis: My brother Scott’s life partner, Nancy, was very ill with a rare and aggressive form of cancer and Scott needed my support. So after two days on secondary highways and an afternoon visiting the Serpent Mound historical site in southern Ohio, I got on Interstate 70 and made a beeline for Santaquin, Utah, where my youngest sister, April, lives with her husband, Ron, and Lynne was about to arrive. I’d stay there for a few days and then continue west to Nancy’s house in Santa Rosa, California. Our other sister, Rita, was flying to Utah from Southern California. We hadn’t all been together for many years and I was looking forward to a joyful reunion.
I’d lived back East for forty-five years, the first fifteen in New York City and the rest on Eastern Long Island. Surrounded by flatlands, I missed the mountains of my youth. You might not think of San Diego, California as mountainous, but just to the east, where I grew up, mountains are always in view.
As I approached Denver on Interstate 70 on June 9, 2021, I eagerly awaited my first glimpse of the Rockies. Mountains rising in the distance had always been one of my favorite sights on cross-country road trips, and the Colorado Rockies were the ultimate. Expecting those majestic peaks to appear at any moment, I played John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High” and peered intently into the distance.
When at last the Rockies appeared as a purple smudge and then jagged peaks on the horizon, my heart swelled and I burst into tears. I don’t know if I was so moved by the mountains themselves or by what they represented: the last barrier between me and my family. Whatever the cause, I cried so hard I thought I was going to have to pull off the interstate, but I made it around Denver without mishap.
I arrived in Santaquin the next day, June 10. April had driven Lynne up from Southern California the day before. Ron was building Lynne a living space in the basement. She’d been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis after trying for years to help Alan, our schizophrenic brother. The stress had taken a heavy toll on her physical and emotional health and, at nearly seventy-six, she couldn’t do it any longer. Alan refused medication, and his illness wouldn’t let him accept help or housing from anyone else, so, sadly, he went back to the streets.
On Sunday, June 13, my sisters and I went to church together. It had been many years since I’d set foot in an LDS chapel. Santaquin Fourth Ward encompasses a neighborhood made up mostly of young families, and the chapel was filled with mothers, fathers, and children sitting together. I was impressed by the love radiating from those beautiful families. Even teenage sons were affectionate with their mothers. The contrast with the outside world was stark and impressive, and my heart was moved.
I had planned to leave for Santa Rosa on June 14, but that was the first anniversary of David’s death, and I awoke feeling sad and fragile. I put off my departure for a day and my dear sisters surrounded me with the love and sympathy I sorely needed. I set out for Santa Rosa on June 15, taking Interstate 80 west from Salt Lake City. Forced to drive at high speed in heavy traffic through Sacramento, California, I vowed never to take that route again.
I hadn’t seen Scott since our mother’s funeral in 2004, and very few times in the years since I’d left home to attend BYU in 1965. In spite of a master’s degree in psychology and success as a drummer, my brother was still suffering from the emotional pain of his childhood. He was only two-and-a-half when our father died and our mother more or less abdicated child-rearing. Scott always said I was the one who taught him how to comb his hair and brush his teeth, not Mom. My memory of those years is hazy, but I don’t doubt the truth of that story.
Scott had been searching for a mother savior all his life and, after a failed long-term relationship, he’d finally found one in Nancy, a fellow drummer. She was several years older than Scott, just a few months younger than me. I’d never met Nancy before that trip, but we hit it off immediately. A hairdresser, Nancy was still able to work at that point. Scott had broken his foot, so I helped out around the house.
One day Nancy drove the two of us out to the beach at Jenner, about an hour away. We shared stories of our lives, discovering that we’d both been transcendental meditators in the early seventies and both quit because we got too good at it and scared ourselves. Nancy was open, honest, and a little flakey, and I could see how much she loved my damaged brother.
Scott was his usual intense self. He felt very strongly about everything and had a habit of believing he was always right and anyone who disagreed with him was flat wrong. He had alienated our sisters with his ridicule of their religious beliefs to the point that they rarely spoke. Our sisters were politically conservative, and Scott railed against them for that, too. He assumed I felt the same way, but I had decided to put our differences aside and simply love them. The clashes over elections on social media were a thing of the past for me, but not for Scott. He couldn’t forgive and he couldn’t forget.
Scott’s intensity made him hard to be around, and his abandonment issues were surfacing with a vengeance as he struggled with Nancy’s illness. He thought he could handle his own emotional problems, but it was becoming all too clear, even to him, that he couldn’t. In private, Nancy asked me to help convince Scott of two things: that he needed hearing aids, and that he had to get professional psychological help. During several emotional conversations, I finally persuaded my brother of his need for both of those things and he agreed to seek help.
After a week in Santa Rosa, I returned to Santaquin on U.S. Highway 50, “The Loneliest Road in America,” driving across the middle of Nevada through mountain ranges separated by long stretches of desert. I hadn’t had a chance to car-camp on the way west, so now I took the opportunity to spend a night at Bob Scott Campground in the Humboldt Mountains of Nevada. It was a beautiful spot with lovely views, surrounded by pine trees.
I loved sleeping in my little nest in the back of the Escape, and the mountains began to heal my weariness from spending a week with my intense brother. I loved him dearly, but he wore me out.
My sisters had never pushed me on matters of faith, and I didn’t know until much later that April and Lynne had been praying all along for me to return to the Church. But Lynne loves to talk, and on a road trip to Southern California that June to attend our aunt’s delayed memorial, she talked about Christ’s Atonement. I don’t recall her words, but I do remember being unfamiliar with the concept as she explained it.
I knew the Bible said Christ died for our sins, but many Christian churches don’t seem to understand or emphasize Christ’s Atonement the same way Latter-day Saints do. That conversation stuck in my mind alongside my impressions of those affectionate families in Santaquin Fourth Ward. My Heavenly Father was opening tiny cracks in my hardened heart.
Before I left Long Island, I’d planned to do a lot of car camping and visiting with relatives in Northern and Southern California, as well as driving up to Washington State to meet my secret brother. I wanted to drive up through Idaho, then go west to the Pacific Coast, but that was a disastrous year for wildfires. Some days the smoke from fires in California drifted all the way to the Utah Valley, filling that high-desert basin with a gray haze. I had several wildfire apps on my phone, and whenever I checked them my heart sank. No matter which route I chose, wildfires raged in my path. So I stayed in Santaquin until July 22, then I drove back to Santa Rosa on Highway 50 through the smoke of distant fires. Nancy was failing fast.
When I got to Santa Rosa, Nancy was in the hospital. It was clear to me by then that she was going to die. I think Nancy knew it, too, but Scott refused to accept reality. Months earlier they’d hired an “alternative cancer coach” for an exorbitant fee and spent thousands more on enzymes and other supplements he recommended. Every day Scott pushed Nancy to swallow a handful of capsules he was absolutely certain would save her life. “I’m going to save her,” he announced emphatically. There was no point in trying to tell him otherwise.
When Nancy came home from the hospital, she was bedridden. I helped Scott care for her for the next three weeks until her sister and brother-in-law arrived to help. They could see the handwriting on the wall as well as I could, but Nancy’s two grown sons and Scott were adamant in their denial until the truth became too obvious to refute.
Scott was in bad shape. Although I didn’t know it at the time, he’d already been diagnosed with serious health problems related to alcohol abuse, including anorexia. He ate next to nothing, smoked cannabis, and drank wine all day. His body couldn’t take much more.
But there was one stroke of beauty amid all the sorrow. The morning after I arrived for this second stay, I went for a walk to gather myself for the trial ahead. When I returned, Scott was waiting at the door, calling for me to come and see something.
I walked into the living room, and there on the wall and ceiling was a big, beautiful rainbow. It began at a little shrine to our father that Scott had set up on top of a bookcase and spread up the wall and across the ceiling.
We stared at this miracle in astonishment, both sure it was a sign of our father’s love. Discovering the source of the rainbow — a CD lying on top of a nearby bookcase, reflecting the morning sun streaming through the window — didn’t diminish our belief that our dad had sent it for us. There was purpose and grace in that.
“Daddy’s rainbow” appeared every sunny morning, consoling and comforting me, but it wasn’t enough for Scott. His denial, and then his devastation when he finally accepted reality, found their only outlet in me, his big sister. He leaned so hard on me that I nearly broke. I was still carrying my own grief, and the added burden of Scott’s was too much. I was crumbling under the strain.
Meanwhile, Lynne was suffering the physical and emotional effects of multiple sclerosis, grieving the loss of her home and her independence, and feeling guilty for leaving Alan behind to fend for himself, although there was nothing more she could have done. She needed my support, too, but I was in Santa Rosa.
The day after Nancy’s sister and brother-in-law moved in to help care for her, I said a wrenching goodbye to Scott and Nancy and drove away. I was worn to the bone with sorrow and exhaustion from lack of sleep. Many times during those agonizing three weeks I’d longed to escape, but I always pushed myself through one more day until help arrived. Then I could bear no more. I spent the last night curled in my sleeping bag on my car-camping mattress in a tent set up on the back deck.
I wonder now, if I’d had the consolation of prayer and the strength of faith, would I have been able to help my brother more? The answer isn’t as clear as it seems, because if I had already returned to the Church, Scott would have felt completely estranged from his family. He might not have even wanted me to come. I see a divine hand in the precise timing of my return.
Nancy died on August 16, 2021, and I left Utah for Long Island on August 23, planning to stop at Lynne’s eldest daughter’s home in North Carolina. Three of Gina’s five daughters had recently had baby boys, including one set of twins. Lynne, Rita, and Rita’s eldest daughter flew out and we had a wonderful visit, but Scott was constantly on our minds.
I spoke and texted with my brother as I drove east, trying to help him deal with his raging grief, urging him again and again to seek professional help and even locating resources for him, but he always found an excuse why he couldn’t follow up. Rita spoke with him too, but he deflected all our efforts. Even though he’d agreed to seek help before Nancy took a turn for the worse, he’d never sought that help, and now it seemed it was too late for him. He was deteriorating rapidly, sinking into a despair so deep he would never recover.
Just over two weeks after I arrived home, Scott was found dead in his bed. Unable to face life without Nancy, he starved and drank himself to death. Scott professed no religion, but he believed in reincarnation and had told me more than once that he was “done.” He didn’t want to come back ever again, in any form.
I can imagine my brother’s surprise when he crossed the veil and found that he was more alive than ever. I’m sure he was even more surprised to learn that his LDS sisters had been right about everything. I know, because the Holy Spirit told me, that Scott eagerly awaits his temple ordinances, and that he has joyously reunited with our mother and father.
I don’t pretend to know exactly how the post-mortal spirit world works. I know only what the scriptures and our prophets have told us and what my few precious glimpses beyond the veil have shown me. It seems to be a waiting place, and in that waiting place spirits who knew and loved each other in mortality may meet in joyful reunion.
Not long after Scott and Nancy died, while I was driving back to Utah after selling my house on Long Island, I was graced with the gift of their presence for a fleeting moment. I didn’t see them; I only sensed their spirits hovering near. Without words, they gave me to know that they were happy, and then they were gone. It was yet another tender mercy from my Heavenly Father for which I will be forever grateful.
Since then I’ve received several personal revelations regarding Scott. One of the most precious came on February 22, 2023. It was simply this: “Scott loves you and looks forward to his endowment with priesthood power.” What sweet words!
Memoirs of a Prodigal Daughter 