Grief and Comfort

At 8:25 that morning the telephone rang. It was a call from the George Washington University Hospital with the message that my husband had died of a heart attack a few minutes before. My mind could not comprehend it. How could Peter be dead? Surely God would somehow yet intervene.

“Don’t move him. Don’t touch him until I get there,” was my instinctive reply. After I arrived at the hospital, the young doctor who walked with me to the door of Peter’s room was solicitous. His eyes searching my face, he asked quietly, “Are you sure you want to go in there alone?”

“Oh, yes,” I told him.

Saying nothing more, he withdrew.

As I opened the door and stepped inside the small room, there was the instantaneous awareness that I was not alone. Yet the man I loved was not in the still form on the bed. Though I did not understand it then and cannot explain it now, I knew that Peter was near and alive. And beside him was another Presence of transcendent glory, the Lord he had served through long years—years stretching back to his young manhood in Scotland.

Having already experienced that glory, how could I ever again doubt the fact of immortality? In a deep and intuitive way, beyond argument or intellectual process, deeper than tears, transcending words, came the knowledge that human life does not end in six feet of earth.

Yet the realization of the splendor was not to last. In that still hospital room, at a precise moment, the two vivid presences withdrew. Suddenly I saw Death stripped bare, in all its ugliness. With very human eyes I saw it: the fact of the man so dear to me. There’s nothing pretty about death. Those who sentimentalize it, lie. Carbon dioxide escaping from the sagging jaw. The limp hands. The coldness and white, white pallor of the flesh.

Shivering, I rose to leave the room. I knew that this would be the last time on this earth that I would look upon my husband’s face. So there in the hospital room, I said my last au revoir.

Now there was nothing to do but walk out. I sensed that out beyond the door, out beyond the chilly hospital corridor, a new life awaited me. That was the last thing in the world I wanted. But then Peter had not wanted a new life either—not yet anyway—not at just 46. And already he had embarked on that other adventure.

Two paces from the door, I was stopped by an invisible hand. As I paused, a message was spoken with emphasis and clarity, not audibly, but with that peculiar authority I had come to recognize as the Lord’s own voice: Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life.

It was His personal pledge to me and to a son who would now sorely miss his father.

This comfort had certainly been given me in the hospital room just after Peter’s death. And it had continued during the days of shock and numbness right afterwards, granted, I’m sure, by a loving Father who recognized my desperate need of knowing that He had not deserted me. 

Then I found that some of the loveliest words of Scripture are for the longer-term soreness of heart that follows:

“I will not leave you comfortless.” (John 14:8)

“He hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted … to appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.” (Isaiah 61:1,3)