Chapter One
The End and the Beginning
You know as well as I there's more .
There's always one more scene no matter.
Archibald McLeish
Catastrophic loss wreaks destruction like a massive flood.
It is unrelenting, unforgiving, and uncontrollable, brutally
erosive to body, mind, and spirit. Sometimes loss does
its damage instantly, as if it were a flood resulting from a
broken dam that releases a great torrent of water, sweeping
away everything in its path. Sometimes loss does its damage
gradually, as if it were a flood resulting from unceasing rain
that causes rivers and lakes to swell until they spill over their
banks, engulfing, saturating, and destroying whatever the
water touches. In either case, catastrophic loss leaves the
landscape of one's life forever changed.
My experience was like a dam that broke. In one moment
I was overrun by a torrent of pain I did not expect.
Lynda, my wife of nearly twenty years, loved to be around
her children. Each one of them was a gift to her because, after
eleven years of infertility, she never thought she would have
any of her own. Though she earned a master's degree in music
from the University of Southern California, became a professional
singer, choir director, and voice coach, and served
church and community, she could never entirely let go of her
longing for children. When she delivered four healthy children
in six years, she was overjoyed. She relished the wonder
of motherhood.
In the fall of 1991 Lynda was teaching a unit of home
school to our two oldest children, Catherine and David, on
Native American culture. She decided to complete the unit
of study by attending a powwow at a Native American reservation
in rural Idaho. So we piled our four children into the
minivan on a Friday afternoon to drive to the reservation,
where we planned to have dinner with the tribe and witness
our first powwow. My mother, Grace, who had come to visit
us for the weekend, decided to join us on the excursion. At
dinner we talked with tribal leaders about their projects and
problems-especially the abuse of alcohol, which undermined
so much of what they were trying to accomplish.
After dinner we strolled to a small gymnasium, where the
powwow had already begun. Once again we sat with several
tribal leaders, and they explained the dances that tribal members
were performing and the traditional dress the dancers
were wearing. One dance in particular moved me-a dance
of mourning for a loved one from the tribe who had recently
died. I was mesmerized by the slow, understated movement
of the few who danced before us. The dance, chant, and
drumbeat created a mood reflecting the sorrow that they-and
now we-felt.
After about an hour of watching the powwow, several
children from the tribe approached us and invited our two
daughters, Catherine and Diana Jane, to join them in a dance.
The boys decided to explore the gymnasium for a while. That
gave Lynda and me an opportunity to learn more about the
tribe.
By 8:15 p.m., however, the children had had enough. So
we returned to our van, loaded and buckled up, and left for
home. By then it was dark. Ten minutes into our trip home
I noticed an oncoming car on a lonely stretch of highway
driving extremely fast. I slowed down at a curve, but the
other car did not. It jumped its lane and smashed head-on
into our minivan. I learned later that the alleged driver was
Native American, drunk, driving eighty-five miles per hour.
He was accompanied by his pregnant wife, also drunk, who
was killed in the accident.
I remember those first moments after the accident as if
everything was happening in slow motion. They are frozen
into my memory with a terrible vividness. After recovering
my breath, I turned around to survey the damage. The scene
was chaotic. I remember the look of terror on the faces of my
children and the feeling of horror that swept over me when I
saw the unconscious and broken bodies of Lynda, my four-year-old
daughter Diana Jane, and my mother. I remember
getting Catherine (then eight), David (seven), and John (two)
out of the van through my door, the only one that would
open. I remember taking pulses, doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,
trying to save the dying and calm the living. I
remember the feeling of panic that struck my soul as I
watched Lynda, my mother, and Diana Jane all die before my
eyes. I remember the pandemonium that followed-people
gawking, lights flashing from emergency vehicles, a helicopter
whirring overhead, cars lining up, medical experts doing
what they could to help. And I remember the realization
sweeping over me that I would soon plunge into a darkness
from which I might never again emerge as a sane, normal,
believing man.
In the hours that followed the accident, the initial shock
gave way to an unspeakable agony. I felt dizzy with grief's
vertigo, cut off from family and friends, tormented by the
loss, nauseous from the pain. After arriving at the hospital,
I paced the floor like a caged animal, only recently captured.
I was so bewildered that I was unable to voice questions or
think rationally. I felt wild with fear and agitation, as if I was
being stalked by some deranged killer from whom I could
not escape. I could not stop crying. I could not silence the
deafening noise of crunching metal, screaming sirens, and
wailing children. I could not rid my eyes of the vision of violence,
of shattering glass and shattered bodies. All I wanted
was to be dead. Only the sense of responsibility for my three
surviving children and the habit of living for forty years kept
me alive.
That torrent of emotion swept away the life I had cherished
for so many years. In one moment my family as I had
known and cherished it was obliterated. The woman to
whom I had been married for two decades was dead; my
beloved Diana Jane, our third born, was dead; my mother,
who had given birth to me and raised me, was dead. Three
generations-gone in an instant!
That initial deluge of loss slowly gave way over the next
months to the steady seepage of pain that comes when grief,
like floodwaters refusing to subside, finds every crack and
crevice of the human spirit to enter and erode. I thought that
I was going to lose my mind. I was overwhelmed with
depression. The foundation of my life was close to caving in.
Life was chaotic. My children too experienced intense
grief and fear. John was seriously injured; he broke his femur
in the accident, which required him to be in traction for three
weeks and in a body cast for another eight weeks. People
from everywhere called on the telephone, sent letters, and
reached out to help and mourn. Responsibilities at home and
work accumulated like trash on a vacant lot, threatening to
push me toward collapse. I remember sinking into my favorite
chair night after night, feeling so exhausted and anguished
that I wondered whether I could survive another day, whether
I wanted to survive another day. I felt punished by simply
being alive and thought death would bring welcomed relief.
I remember counting the consecutive days in which I
cried. Tears came for forty days, and then they stopped, at
least for a few days. I marveled at the genius of the ancient
Hebrews, who set aside forty days for mourning, as if forty
days were enough. I learned later how foolish I was. It was
only after those forty days that my mourning became too deep
for tears. So my tears turned to brine, to a bitter and burning
sensation of loss that tears could no longer express. In the
months that followed I actually longed for the time when the
sorrow had been fresh and tears came easily. That emotional
release would have lifted the burden, if only for a while.
Of course I had no way of anticipating the adjustments
I would have to make and the suffering I would have to
endure in the months and years ahead. Still, on the night of
the tragedy, I was given a window of time between the accident
and our arrival at the hospital that presaged, at least
initially, what lay ahead for me. Because the accident
occurred in rural Idaho, just outside the Indian reservation,
we were at the scene for well over an hour before an emergency
vehicle transported the four of us to a hospital-another
hour away. Those two hours between the accident
and our arrival at the hospital became the most vivid, sobering,
memorable moments of reflection I have ever had or will
ever have. I was lifted momentarily out of space and time as
I knew it and was suspended somehow between two worlds.
One was the world of my past, so wonderful to me, which
was now lying in a tangle of metal on the side of the road;
the other was the world of my future, which awaited me at
the end of that long ride to the hospital as a vast and frightening
unknown. I realized that something incomprehensible
and extraordinary had just happened. By some strange twist
of fate or mysterious manifestation of divine providence I had
been suddenly thrust into circumstances I had not chosen and
could never have imagined. I had become the victim of a terrible
tragedy. I ransacked my mind for options that would
provide a way out of the pain I knew intuitively loomed ahead
for me and my family. In that brief window of time I
exhausted all possibilities except one. I realized that I would
have to suffer and adjust; I could not avoid it or escape it.
There was no way out but ahead, into the abyss. The loss
brought about by the accident had changed my life, setting
me on a course down which I had to journey whether I
wanted to or not. I was assigned both a tremendous burden
and a terrible challenge. I faced the test of my life. One phase
of my life had ended; another, the most difficult, was about
to begin. When the emergency vehicle arrived at the hospital,
I stepped out into a whole new world.
(Continues.)
