Death Without Darkness

Emma Sawyer

The last time I heard Sonia sing was Christmas Eve. Standing with all her daughters in front of the church, her glowing face showed all the pride of motherhood and the joy of Christmas. We lit candles and sang together…little lights to hold before us as we sailed into the storm we could not see. Christmas came and went. The day after Christmas, I was climbing into the car with Sonia’s eldest daughter, who was eighteen at the time. Our phones started chiming and ringing, telling us to hurry to the little hospital on the island. That’s where Sonia was.

Eventually, more and more loved ones heard the news and joined us at the hospital. We were such a big group, Sonia’s whole family, my whole family, all of the Whitakers, our pastors and their wives, that hospital gave us a conference room to sit in and to wait. No one cried that much yet. We thought it was just a bad scare, an attack of some kind. Then they said it was a stroke. I didn’t know this then, but my father stood in the hallway and turned his head to the wall to sob because only he knew what Mr. Glenn was feeling. Thirty-seven years ago, my mother nearly died from a traumatic stroke, which would have left my father a widower with two newborns. Now, my father was watching his friend hear the same news. That headache that your wife was being such a good sport about over Christmas? That was a blood vessel flooding her brain.

Our little crew followed the ambulance carrying Sonia into Jacksonville to the neuro-trauma ward. We piled into our cars and kept up as best we could, watching in horror every time the traffic didn’t part and every time the ambulance had to pause. How could everyone not know Sonia was in that ambulance dying? How could they not let her through? We arrived at the hospital full of hope, praying constantly.

Sonia was wheeled into surgery almost immediately. It looked promising. It wasn’t like she was the first person to ever have a massive brain bleed. “Look at my mom,” my family kept saying, “She survived it.” Sonia’s husband started planning what he would do to take care of a debilitated wife. Their house would need to be altered, especially the master bedroom and the bathroom. They might have to get a caretaker. Whatever needed to happen, they would make it work. That’s what “till death do you part” means.

Time dragged forward, and we went to the hospital every day. Sonia’s brain kept swelling. The doctors kept cracking her skull open and stapling it back together. New Year’s Day came and went and she never opened her eyes. Sometimes, when I waited in her room by her bed, Sonia’s fiery, wheel-chair bound mother would roll in and loudly beg her, command her, to open her eyes. She never did. I sat on the couch in Sonia’s room and on the floor in the waiting room with her daughters every day. I folded to the ground when her youngest daughter collapsed, sobbing, in my arms. Every night I touched her cold leg or hand and told her I loved her, even if I didn’t think she could hear. I didn’t want to miss what might be my last chance to tell her. Then my family and I would drive home and go to sleep and wonder if we would get called to the hospital for the last time in the night or early morning.

I’ve never understood waiting on the Lord as I did then. We waited like waiters and waitresses, cooking, cleaning, serving, watching, and waiting and waiting and waiting. We stayed active in service to God while we waited for Him to reveal His plan. Sonia kept going in and out of surgery; eventually her husband was just buying time, not wanting to be the one to make the final call. Her chest rose and fell so evenly, mechanically, as pumps forced air into her lungs. Tubes and cords spread out around her, connecting her to the technology that kept her body stable. We sang to her often. “Blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering, though there’s pain in the offering, blessed be Your name¹…O Father use my ransomed life, in any way You choose, and let my song forever be, ‘My only boast is You’²…We will stand as children of the promise, we will fix our eyes on You, our hope’s reward, 'til the race is finished and the work is done, we’ll walk by faith and not by sight.”³

She loved to sing, and we loved to sing to her. Maybe she heard us and maybe she didn’t, but we reminded ourselves of the light of Christ as we passed under every new wave, and the nurses, doctors, and other sufferers on that floor heard our hope.

After thirteen days, on January 7^th, 2020, the doctors finally declared Sonia brain dead. No more surgeries, no more chances, no more waiting. She was gone. We had gone home already, but the family texted us, and we drove right back out. Her daughters were so calm, so peaceful; Christ eased their hearts for the night with relief and comfort. We wept, but we did not despair. There were no screams, no guttural roars, like the ones we had heard from other strangers while we waited in the trauma ward. Instead, we sang for an hour in the hospital lobby. “In times of waiting, times of need, when I know loss, when I am weak, I know His grace will renew these days. The LORD is my salvation.”⁴ We held each other and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Since Sonia was an organ donor, they would need to take her into the operating room soon to harvest her organs before they deteriorated more.

Every nurse and some doctors on shift come out for an “honor walk” when an organ donor leaves their hospital room for the last time. We walked behind her bed and between the lines of sober healthcare workers to the enormous elevators. Three nurses walked with us, one to push her bed, one to roll her fluids bag, and one to keep the handheld pump going. The nurses had to keep Sonia’s body just active enough to preserve her organs to try to save a few strangers in dire need. If you’ve ever seen the wedding scene in Fiddler on the Roof or a funeral scene in many period dramas, you might notice a similarity: the crowd of people following the honored ones. We followed Sonia. For ourselves, we were her funeral train. For her, we were her wedding party. We walked Sonia to her Bridegroom.

The nurses stopped one last time outside the OR doors to let us say goodbye. Sonia’s daughters sang, “May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind stay always at your back…and until we meet again…”⁵ Sonia’s son squeezed her hand. Her husband kissed her once. She looked so little like herself with her hair shaved, her head covered in black stitches and staples, her body chill and swollen. I wrote to a friend about the moment, and it felt like I was describing a stranger. It was like someone I never knew and never loved. That graying body in the bed was not my Sonia. That was not the Sonia who hugged me like I was her favorite niece and clapped embarrassingly loudly and never knew when to stop talking. We cried. Of course, we cried. And then, in true fatherly fashion, my dad made a joke and said we should go to breakfast. We were alive; we were hungry. We went to breakfast.

I stayed at Sonia’s house with her daughters a few different nights between that day and the funeral, and one night we had a tea party. We turned out all the lights, and we lit candles. There were those candles again. Little lights in an inescapable darkness. There were two services for Sonia, a graveside service and a memorial service, and then life went on. My sister couldn’t sing without crying. My mother wept every day. I got behind in every class and broke down at TV scenes with ventilators. I had flashbacks when I parked in a parking garage for the first time after the hospital garage. Dr. Hake told me, “There are no shortcuts in grief.” We were walking the whole path, but we were walking it together.

I think I can honestly say those were the worst weeks of my life. Death has been a familiar part of my life since I was a child, but Sonia’s death shook our whole family and church to the core. And yet, I have never seen Jesus in the way I saw Him during those weeks. The bond He creates between His children cannot be broken. Jesus walked with us through our loss even as He walked by Sonia’s side in heaven. Our eternal lives began the moment He saved us, and Sonia is living that life to the fullest while we stay behind for a moment. For now, she is further in and further up than we are allowed to go. But we are on the same path. She has begun the first page of the first chapter of the first book of the real story, and we are still in the prologue. We will follow, and Christ will lead. With Sonia’s death, the veil wore so thin that I could almost see into the mystery. The light shone through just enough. Sonia is with Christ and Christ is with us. He is the candle, the lighthouse, the Light. He is the Light that shines through the veil of death, blazing away its victory and burning away its sting, and no wind or rain or wave will quench Him while we stay in this stormy in-between.

Footnotes

1. Matt Redman, “Blessed Be Your Name,” by Beth Redman and Matt Redman, recorded 2002, Track 2 on Where Angels Fear to Tread, CMG, https://open.spotify.com/track/6cuagVmvMJalnJwEEqpsju?si=49fb00f5c6584de4.

2. Jordan Kauflin, “All I Have is Christ,” recorded 2008, Track 1 on All I Have is Christ, 2014, Integrity Music, https://open.spotify.com/track/65kxdpXxTk6IpahSnJBiT1?si=641204fa5c054028.

3. Keith and Krysten Getty, “By Faith,” by Keith Getty, Krysten Getty, and Stuart Townsend, recorded 2009, Track 5 on Awaken the Dawn, CMG, https://open.spotify.com/track/3rYWHA6qsDCT6QPeQnrYcz?si=2e925b36717d4e81.

4. Keith and Kyrsten Getty, “The Lord is my Salvation,” by Keith Getty, Krysten Getty, Jonas Myrin, and Nathan Nockels, recorded 2016, Track 8 on Facing a Task Unfinished (Deluxe Edition), CMG, https://open.spotify.com/track/0lNRoHi9Y3mB3AklVWAtUf?si=6e0b5f3253444ce4.

5. Traditional Irish Blessing

Emma is a senior Classical Liberal Arts major from Florida.

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