My children and I were dealt a major, devastating blow to our lives on July 16, 2008—a blow that has and will continue to cataclysmically change who we are and ever will be.  On that early morning, at dawn actually, the man I had vowed to love all the days of my life, the loving and attentive father of my 4 children was riding his bicycle to school when a 21 year old young man driving home from a night of partying struck him and left him to die.  5 grueling days later, my Patrick died of a massive head injury.

Originally, Bill Skidmore was going to sing a song at today’s service.  A song by Iris DeMent titled “After You’re Gone”

There’ll be laughter even after you’re gone
I’ll find reasons to face that empty dawn
’cause I’ve memorized each line in your face
and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me

I’ll miss you, oh how I’ll miss you
I’ll dream of you and I’ll cry a million tears
but the sorrow will pass and the one thing that will last
is the love that you’ve given to me

I was particularly struck by the second line, “I’ll find reasons to face that empty dawn.”  That’s what I chose as the title of my talk today…Facing the Empty Dawn.

Exactly 17 years before my Patrick was struck, I wrote in my journal.  I was a young 24 year old woman on the brink of a very full dawn.  I wrote,

My journal; July 16, 1991; exactly 17 years before Pat was struck

Patrick, I have often told you how lucky and blessed I feel to have you.  Sometimes it doesn’t seem possible.  I’ve had a lot of dreams and hopes for how I want my life to turn out.  I think we both know that dreams can hurt.  Life isn’t idealistic.  The real world can play cruel jokes on us it sometimes seems.  Then why have I been so blessed to have the dream come true of the man I want to spend the rest of my life with?  I want to be with you to discover and realize our dreams.  I want to be with YOU when our dreams are shattered right before us.

And now we’re getting married.  Marriage–a big word.  Rest of our lives together.  Share everything.

…

I feel so lucky, so blessed, almost in a dream.  I’ve dreamed of my “perfect” husband all my life, and now I’ve found him.  We have a good relationship.  I know he’s not perfect, and I know there are going to be trying times.  But, with the attitudes, values, ideas, hopes, communication we have now, I really think we’ll be able to make it.

Change, growth, love, moment, life.

We need to remember ebb and flow, most importantly when it’s ebbing.  It’s not good to be constantly apprehensive, anxious of these bad times–I need to live in the moment and appreciate it for all it’s worth!

Yet, at the same time, I need to be aware of the ebb and to accept it as part of life.  Pat and I have talked of this.

My promise to him is to accept and even appreciate both the ebb and flow, the tears and the laughter, the ups and downs, winters and springs, and to not give up!

We both have a lot to offer each other, our family, our friends, our world. Together, we can offer even more.

Patrick, you are what I want.  You are the one I will love forever.  Each year we’ll be two different people, always changing.  That’s what I want!  I want me to be, you to be, and our relationship to be dynamic, never stagnant for long, always growing.

…

Change can be exciting, life-giving, positive, adventurous, thrilling.

Needless to say, that full dawn appeared and gave light to a promising morning.  Pat and I were married and had 4 beautiful children.  We embraced our parenting with the same mentality as we did our relationship.  We chose to love and to parent mindfully.  To mindfully choose our paths, to be aware and open to the changes and difficulties of our new lives, and to accept what was given.

Little did we know that that “morning” of our marriage was actually a day in all its entirety and would be ended with the darkness of night and nightmares.  A night in which I would have to endure without the one I needed most for strength.  My love who taught me to be strong.  The one who had faith in my strength when I couldn’t see it.  When I entered into that night, I had NO strength.  I still remember huddling, utterly terrified in the dark ICU waiting room in the middle of the night after being told Pat would not survive the night.  I had yelled out, “I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT HIM!!!”   My sisters and friend Kelly had clutched me and desperately reassured me that they would never leave me, that they would be there for me.  And they were.  And they still are.

The Agony of Grief

Grief is a tidal wave that overtakes you, smashes down upon you with unimaginable force, sweeps you up into its darkness,
where you tumble and crash against unidentifiable surfaces, only to be thrown out on an unknown beach, bruised, reshaped.

Grief means not being able to read more than two sentences at a time. It is walking into rooms with intention that suddenly vanishes.

Grief is three o’clock in the morning sweats that won’t stop. It is dreadful Sundays, Mondays that are no better. It makes you look for a face in the crowd, knowing full well the face we want cannot be found in that crowd.

Grief is utter aloneness that razes the rational mind and makes room for the phantasmagoric. It makes you suddenly get up and leave in the middle of a meeting, without saying a word. Grief makes what others think of you moot.  It shears away the masks of normal life and forces brutal honesty out of your mouth before propriety can stop you.
….

Grief discriminates against no one. It kills. Maims. And cripples. It is the ashes from which the phoenix rises, and the mettle of rebirth. It returns life to the living dead. It teaches that there is nothing absolutely true or untrue. It assures the living that we know nothing for certain. It humbles. It shrouds. It blackens. It enlightens. Grief will make a new person out of you, if it doesn’t kill you in the making.

— Stephanie Ericsson

Through my night of hell, this entire community embraced me and my children and supported me as I struggled to face an empty dawn.  The compassion we received will never be forgotten, and will always remain with us.  Through this compassion, I was able to slowly, agonizingly accept the darkness in my life and peak forward to a new morning.  It was with this constant compassion of my family and friends that I was able to embrace grief the way Pat and I embraced our relationship and our parenting.  To embrace it with an open mind, open heart, and open soul.  To accept the suffering mindfully.  To take the horrendous pain of each and every breath and feel it.  To feel it and simply know that there DID exist a dawn.  I had no idea what a new day, a new life could possibly bring for me and my kids.

A new dawn always exists, simply by the laws of nature, ebb and flow, winter and spring, day and night.  I believe, though, that it takes an active CHOICE to awake to the dawn.  Emily Dickinson wrote, “Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.”  In my grieving, I trusted that there existed a dawn, but I did NOT know when or how it would come.  I knew simply to open myself, every door, and say, “YES.”  Yes to the grief, yes to my loss, yes to the pain, yes to what may come.

In the journal entry I previously read to you, I made a promise to Pat: “My promise to him is to accept and even appreciate both the ebb and flow, the tears and the laughter, the ups and downs, winters and springs, and to not give up!” I did not get my wish for Pat to be by my side when all our dreams were shattered, but I CAN keep my promise to him to not give up.

Harold and I met for lunch this past Wednesday to discuss our talk today.  He asked me if I had felt despair during my profound grief.  My answer was yes, I had feeling of despair, no hope.  I was questioning everything—especially the reason to live—the ultimate “Why?”.  Harold asked me what I had discovered as the reason to live.  The most obvious, immediate answer is to choose to live for my children.

But in my darkest hours, I questioned even why they should live, why any of us should live. Patrick and I had struggled to depict for our children the merits of living morally, of working hard for what we believed, of deliberating and making the right choices.  Pat was at the end of an intensely accelerated program at IUSB to become a nurse.  He and I had sold our house and moved in with my parents so I could continue to homeschool our children and he could get his degree.  We were looking so forward to his graduating so we could be our own family again and attain our many dreams.  He died only a couple weeks before he was to graduate.

He rode his bike to school every day to live simply and frugally, to do his part for the environment, and to live the healthy lifestyle he so ardently believed in.  He rode his bike with helmet, reflecting vest, headlight, blinking strobe lights.  He was doing everything right!   Yet, he was killed.  All of it was simply and deeply UNFAIR!!  I struggled with why any of us should have reason to live in such an unfair life.

I was given many answers to my questions of “Why?” by well-meaning people—“Pat was put here for a reason that was fulfilled.  God needed him.  Unfairness doesn’t matter in this life because all will be settled in the afterlife.  You will be reunited with Pat if you continue living the good life. Etc., etc.”  I knew Pat’s dreams intimately.  His life was UNFINISHED! He was on the edge of fulfilling his career dreams.  He loved me.  He loved each of his kids dearly.  WE needed him, not GOD!

So, when Harold asked me what pulled me out of despair, I had to sit back and really honestly think.  It was NOT, I feel I can safely say to this audience, it was NOT a belief in a just and loving personal God.  What I believe offered me the beginnings of hope was the knowledge of cycles of nature, the seasons, the ebb and flow, the rose and thorn, the storm and rainbow.  The dawn after a dark night.  I could simply trust there was a dawn.  I was able to honestly, sincerely, without a doubt pass on to my children the hopes of a new dawn.

Henry David Thoreau wrote:

To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me…. We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.

In the midst of my dark night, I had to also grapple with my feelings and response to Shane McGee, the 21 year old who killed my husband.  Everywhere around me and my children, we were greeted with the most incredible acts of compassion. My children were learning from even complete strangers the power of compassion.  Compassion came to across all religions, all races, all ages.  Compassion was the binding And so, it was easy for me, to look at Shane McGee with compassion.  To consciously choose to reach out to him.  In this world that I was so intimately discovering to be unfair, I did not see how my wanting retribution could possibly make up for what I had lost, to somehow make it more fair.

I wanted to know more about this kid whose life had also been irreversibly affected by the exact same event that was changing my life.  I was actually puzzled when I told the prosecutors I wanted to meet him, and they told me there was only one other case where that had happened.  Most people I met thought it strange and even detrimental for me to meet Shane. But, they were very good at facilitating a meeting between Shane and my family just 2 nights before he was to be sentenced to prison.  I, along with my family and friend Kelly, was able to meet Shane face to face and tell him in detail what he had done to me and my kids.

This meeting of victims and offenders is called “Restorative Justice” a practice which I strongly believe should be readily available for victims to choose if they deem appropriate.  By my saying yes and being open to this restorative justice process, I believe I was given the opportunity to move past negative feelings, feelings that would keep me in the dark night, feelings that would cloud my new dawn.

My most intense, most despairing darkness of night, my horrendous hell,  lasted for 6 months.  It was around Christmas time that I came across a quote by Anais Nin which resonated so deeply with me: 

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud became more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

It was at that point that I could see the faint glimmers of my future begin to take shape in the light of a new dawn.

Since then, I continued to say yes to being awake.  My kids and I have made giant strides toward a new life without Pat, of rediscovering who we are.  And no, my grief is NOT over.  I don’t live from breath to breath in agony anymore, but there ARE hours where I am revisited and crippled with grief.

My journey through grief is like Susan Coolidge writes:

“Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose From out night’s gray and cloudy sheath; Softly and still it grows and grows, Petal by petal, leaf by leaf.”

I do feel as though I have been awakened to an empty dawn, one that promises to be full of more.  Of more laughter.  Of more tears.  Of more living.  I remain open and vulnerable. As it should be. Pat’s gone, but his love remains always with me, Danny, Joey, Tommy, Laura, and all those he touched in his short life.

I have an epilogue.  As I finished writing this talk, a particularly personal and poignant song came on for me to hear.  It’s a song by Howie Day called “Collide”.  When Pat was in the hospital on the 4^th night, my family, friends and I went home, leaving him in excellent hands, knowing that Pat had an amazingly  strong heart that would carry his body through to when the doctors would ease him out of his medically induced coma.

My children had been begging for me to take them to the hospital to see their Papa.  I told them they shouldn’t see him in the state he was in, that they should wait until he woke up from his coma.  They had been insistent, so I promised I would take them the following morning.  The following morning, dawn, never came for their Papa.  Late in the middle of the night, I was called by a desperate-sounding nurse to come to the hospital right away.  In a state of utter shock and physical incapacity, I drove through the quiet, still, eerie midnight streets to the hospital.  Through the entire drive, Howie Day was loudly singing “Collide” to me.  Since then, it breaks me to tears and puts me into the initial throes of grief each time I hear it.  But this time, after I finished writing this talk on the theme of dawn and being open, “Collide” hit me deeper than ever.  Listen to this song:

Howie Day’s “Collide”

Uncle Mike gave us a pillow that had a picture of you and Mama stitched into it.  Your nursing classmates gave us two blankets with your memories, and Uncle Mike gave us one too.  And, you made “Sawyer” for me out of your army clothes. And, I got these little picture frames for my birthday and I put some of your pictures in them.  Mama took a long trip to Mexico, that’s a big thing.  When I missed you and her, I just put the pillow against the wall, I put the blanket over me even if I was hot, I cuddled with Sawyer, and I looked at those pictures.  Sometimes I just cry.

We have made new friends.  Do you know the Bradleys?  You probably do, but just in case, they’re Aunt Sarah’s brother’s family and we’re really good friends with them because they have kids our age.

I have grown a lot.  My hair has grown longer but Mama keeps trimming it to make it look prettier and keep it healthy.  I have my own bedroom now, and just sometimes, I have slept in it.  I usually sleep with Mama.

And Grandpa died.  He missed you SO much!  You were his role model, he said.  Which is funny because you always said that he was YOUR role model.  The night that he died, all his children were taking shifts on watching him, and it was Mama’s turn, and sometimes he would just stop breathing for a little bit but then he would catch his breath back.  And then it happened again, but he never caught his breath back.  He was so bad that he had a hospital bed in the Florida room.  He could barely stand up or walk.  The day before he died, I fed him his morphine. While all the grandchildren were playing outside, I was inside sitting with him, rubbing his arm.  He was pretty much skin and bones!  I miss him so much!  And I miss you so much.

Why do you people have to die?!!!!  Carston, Amy’s son, died too.  He was only 4. He drowned. The person who killed you was Shane McGee.  And he wasn’t even in jail for a year!  Only 9 months!  Grandma knows someone in jail who killed someone and is in for like 30 years!

I wish I could go paddling with you once more.  And just say goodbye.  The night before you died, I said I didn’t love you.  That was a total lie; I was just really mad at you.  I love you so much!  You might think that I don’t love you as much as you love me, but I promise you I love you almost more!!  You’re my daddy.  I wouldn’t even be here if you weren’t even born.  So, it’s weird that you’re not here and I still am.  It hurts us more than it hurts you, having you gone.  I know you want to be with us, but it hurts us so much more because we’re still alive and we feel it.

I don’t know if you’re in heaven or if you’re just dead or if you can’t even read this note, but…..

I love you.

Why am I writing a letter to my dead husband?!!!  Dead–such a hard word to even use in connection with you, with us, with what we could have been, with what we wanted to be.

DEAD.  My God!!  NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But YES.

I told myself after you died that I would be committed to saying yes more often.  Yes to all life had to show me.  Yes to all I could give to life.  Yes.

And now I have to say yes to your death.  Yes to OUR death.  WE are no longer.  All you are, all you were, all we were, will forever be infused within me and carried forward in my ability to continue living and loving.  Forever in our 4 beautiful living and loving children–Daniel, Joseph, Thomas, and Laura.

Stay with me.  Stay with us!

You were so beautiful.  So imperfectly perfect.
WE were so beautiful.  So perfectly imperfect.

We were simple.  We were honest.  We were truthful and trying.  We were hopeful.  Idealists.  Strove to live the best to enjoy the now.  And to enjoy the future.  You were always looking forward, worried about making the right choices now so that your family’s future would be good. happy.  provided for.  loved.  protected.

You had such an admiringly strong sense of confidence in yourself which radiated to all those around you.  A strong, yet very caring, leader.  Such a strong balance of gentleness, compassion, insight, sensibility, and…YES…insensibility.

You changed me.  You gave me strength.  You gave me confidence.

You never quit as a father or as a husband.

……….that’s all I can muster for now.  More later……….

I love you forever,

Nancy

Nancy and I went for a walk in the woods this morning. We talked and grieved and remembered. A year ago today her life, my life, that of my family and the lives of some of my closest friends irrevocably changed. At 7:15 in the morning on July 16, 2008 I received a voicemail from Nancy saying that Pat had been hit by a car. It was already after 8 by the time I listened to her shaky message……I was at the hospital within minutes and there I stayed for the next several hours. “Traumatic brain injury, emergency surgery, induced coma, wait and see.” As bad as it was, I really didn’t think, couldn’t fathom, that Patrick Sawyer, one of my best friends and my kayak coach, training and racing partner, would die five days later. He was too strong, too fit, too smart, too good of a man to die. But he did. And many times I cannot believe it, still struggle with the loss of him in my life.

How has an entire year passed? Even though time has made it a bit less painful, I am traumatized by those two weeks in July last year, that night in the ICU, the sounds, the fear and the finality of the awful news that Nancy’s brother-in-law Chris had to deliver to her, to her sisters Mary and Julie, to me and ultimately to all of our families and friends. I can still see and feel every horrific second of those early morning hours of July 21^st. I have never felt so honored and devastated to have been part of something so intimate in my life….. to bear witness to Pat’s death, to Nancy and her family’s intense and gut-wrenching grief, was the hardest thing I have ever done. By far it was the single worst night of my life, but I feel forever indebted that I was there to hold him, to kiss him goodbye, to hold Nancy and to be held.

It has been such a difficult year. Staying focused and organized, continuing forward, holding on and letting go have been incredible, seemingly impossible, challenges. For months I didn’t sleep well if at all, couldn’t breathe, lost weight, couldn’t concentrate, lost all motivation for any sort of training especially in the boat, had vivid flashbacks leading to panic attacks when I least expected them and just struggled to be there for Nancy and her kids as well as for my own husband and children.

But positive things have happened too. I have deeper, more meaningful relationships with Nancy and others. Ted and I paddle together as much as our family and work schedules allow, trying to continue what Pat instilled and nurtured in us. Tom and I vowed never to leave the house angry, to enjoy each other more instead of taking one another for granted as is so easy to do. I have new friends that I literally met the week of Pat’s accident whom I (and my kids) don’t know what I would do without. These friends, each in their own ways, have encouraged me to enjoy more, to do things I wouldn’t normally do and I am grateful that they are in my life and in my children’s lives. I have seen how a community can come together in the face of tragedy and do good things for a family it didn’t know, for causes that should be known.

And as insignificant as this may seem to some, I am finally starting to get my stroke down in the kayak, finally starting to understand what Pat was trying to teach me for years. Being on the water without him this summer has been one of my greatest physical and emotional challenges as his absence is most acute. I have been hearing him in my head a lot lately as I have tried to perfect my technique. I welcome this, but I fervently wish he were here to see me, by my side on the river, to tell me what he thinks, either yell at me or praise me. I want both.

A year has gone by and I still cry, am crying as I write this, and often find myself stunned that Pat really, truly is gone. Our friendship was unique, I think, because it is hard for married men and women to have close friends of the opposite sex. I was so fortunate and knew it, to have both him and Ted, “my boys” as Tom called them, in my life. My friendship with Pat started with a chance meeting on the water many years ago, but quickly solidified and spilled over into our families, our work and school lives. I miss his laugh, our easy banter, training and racing together, our phone calls and emails, our families just spending time together for whatever reason. I greatly miss him on the river.

I will never get used to his absence in my life and I will forever mourn the years of friendship that we could have, should have had, but I will try to live the life he would have encouraged me to live and to cherish what I do have. As he often said, “just keep paddling.”

All without Pat.  Patrick–my husband, our Papa, our uncle, our brother, our son, our friend, our mentor, our coach, our classmate, our coworker, our competitor, our student, our fellow community member.  He was a lot.  He was everything to me and my children.

I want to write about all his life and death and this past year have been for me.  I do believe I have the strength to do so.  While I’m pondering this task, I’d love to read what others have experienced this year in terms of Pat’s life and death.  With your permission, I’d like to publish your writing to this blog in honor of our dear Pat.

My sister-in-law Sarah puts this writing request so well.  Please read her request and consider sending me your writing.  It will mean so much to me and my children!

Help us celebrate and remember the gift that Pat has been to all of us.  We never want to forget all that he means to us!

One thing that Nancy repeated after Pat’s death, is that she wanted some good to replace his passing.  This past year ‘s journey has been excruciating without Pat, but also, it has not been without unexpected graces and blessings.  We hope that those of you who feel comfortable  will feel free to share with others any reflections you may have about Pat and this past year……

* Are there “Good” or life-giving things that have come from the tragedy of his death?

* Are there things you have done or gone through this past year that you know Pat would be proud of?

* Are there ways you have felt his presence and or help?

* Do you have any “unfinished business” with Pat?  Any sorries you wish you could say? (have said)

* Ways in which Pat is particularly missed, especially after having been without him this past year?

* Are there things you have learned about Pat that you never knew, or things that you learned about yourself in this year?

Love to all!

Nancy

But I am continuing.  And who I am now is forever immersed and entangled within the soul of my relationship with Pat.  Does this make any sense?  I am a new me, forever changed.  I will continue on.  Changing.  But always touched and influenced by Pat.

Carol King’s Now and Forever speaks to me deeply and helps me place Pat in my life now:

Now and forever, you are a part of me
And the memory cuts like a knife
Didn’t we find the ecstasy, didn’t we share the daylight
When you walked into my life

Now and forever, I’ll remember
All the promises still unbroken
And think about all the words between us
That never needed to be spoken

We had a moment, just one moment
That will last beyond a dream, beyond a lifetime
We are the lucky ones
Some people never get to do all we got to do
Now and forever, I will always think of you

Didn’t we come together, didn’t we live together
Didn’t we cry together
Didn’t we play together, didn’t we love together
And together we make up the world

I miss the tears, I miss the laughter
I miss the day we met and all that followed after
Sometimes I wish I could always be with you
The way we used to do

Now and forever, I will always think of you
Now and forever, I will always be with you

How have I been living without him for so long?!

The last month has been so up and down for me.  I tried to ignore the holidays, let them just slip by unnoticed while I hide out in my room.  Fortunately, my family and this wonderful community did NOT let Christmas pass unobserved.  I could NOT give my kids what they really want and need.  But, this community banded together and gave them some material happiness.  I am forever grateful!

I’ve begun looking forward a bit at a time.  I’ve even experienced some glimmers of hope.  When I come off the high of hope, though, I hit bottom so severely.

The snow is beautiful.  This winter has had plenty of sunshiney days.  I was so afraid of the typical South Bend winter with gloomy, dark days.  The snow brightens everything, and when the sun shines, I am overcome with hope and beauty.

While hiding away this last month, I’ve been doing some intensive group therapy via the internet.  There is an internet message board for young widows.  I have spent hours and hours of my time reading and sharing my grief with others who have been through so many of the same feelings as I have had.  It’s been good for me–I think better than a once-a-month (or week) real-life support group.  The anonymity of the internet has allowed us widows to really be honest, candid, and outright about what we’re dealing with.

I look back at the last six months and see such a fog, a blur.  Each day that I lived for these months, I really thought I was rational, aware, and present.  I tried to be.  It’s amazing, though, what the emotional brain and shock can do.  My mental capacity and attention span have severely suffered.

I have been attempting to do some web design jobs again.  It’s been a sorry struggle to stay focused on work.  I know I’ll improve, but it’s been tough dealing with an emotional brain.

Thank you to all of you who have inquired about me during this last month!

I send my love to all of you,

Nancy

The last time I was at the license bureau was this past August, a few weeks after Pat died.  I had to sign Pat off of the cars’ titles and registrations.  That was excruciating.

Today, I was sitting at the bureau with Daniel in the exact same chair as I had sat back in August.  I was remembering how I had broken down and cried in front of the BMV workers back then.  I am so much stronger now, I thought.

Then, the worker asked Daniel if he wanted to be an organ donor.  Daniel hesitated and asked for clarification.  The woman explained in a perfunctory manner.  An immediate, definite “Yes” came out of Daniel followed be a big lump swallowed in his throat.  Then she asked if he wanted total or partial donation. . .

. . . Too much dwelling on an issue so raw and painful still.

I explained to the worker why her questioning was difficult for us.  I broke down crying.  I found myself signing all the documents with blurry eyes and convulsing hand.  Just like last time.

Pat would want to be a part of Daniel’s hitting this milestone.

Love,
Nancy