This was originally written a month after my wife’s passing as an answer to everyone who wondered how I was handling it all. I apologize, of course, for how long-winded it is. But even still, this was just a small part of how God had provided for us and prepared us for the tragedy. If you only want the short version, it’s this: the God Cassie and I believed in is still good and, as Cassie sang to me so many times in the weeks before God received her, “What’s true in the light is still true in the dark.” We trusted him to take care of us before the accident, and he has not let me down since her death.
Cassie’s was not the first death our family went through in the past few years. First was Grandma Mary, who Cassie loved dearly, and whose passing Cassie witnessed a few months after we married in 2015. Our hearts broke with the Pulse nightclub shooting and with the loss of a friend from our youth later in 2016. Then Jennifer Holderby, a wonderful servant and young mother in our church family, passed suddenly one night in January of 2017. Almost exactly one year ago we mourned the unexpected loss of Frank Atkisson due to a motor vehicle collision, a man devoted to being a light in every community he was a part of, and whose wife I was blessed to serve alongside at the Grace Landing independent living home. And my loving and prayerful aunt, Linda Pack, went to be with the Lord this last summer after years of fighting against breast cancer. Not to mention the various funerals hosted by Kissimmee Christian after the passing of some incredible senior saints the past couple years. And if that weren’t enough, I would often come home from my job at a local trauma center, with eyes glassy from crying at the thought of losing Cassie the way I had witnessed strangers lose the person they loved most. Cassie and I were not unfamiliar with death.
For all these reasons and more, Cassie and I had spoken many times about the means we hoped the Lord might use to take us home to him. And we spoke about how whoever was left behind should remember the other. Cassie had no fear of what might happen to her soul after leaving her body behind, but she was terrified of what the process of leaving would feel like. She was scared of suffering. I knew this. And the Lord knew this. But “God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.” And I am assured that Cassie may have been jolted for only a brief moment as she was struck by another car, but would otherwise have had no suffering, that she was likely unconscious from the time of impact, and that there should have been no pain from then on—exactly what Cassie would have wanted and exactly what our family needed to know.
And more than that, because of the cause of death, Cassie was able to donate organs (something we had talked about on more than one occasion) to those desperately in need of them. So not only did she not suffer in the losing of her life, but she saved the lives of others who were suffering terribly and nearing death themselves. Not to mention, the mechanism of injury and the organ donation process gave us more time to look at her beautiful face, to hold her precious hands, and to say goodbye to what was left of the Cassie we knew while her soul moved on.
Cassie and I would often argue about who loved each other more; and as strange and bizarre as it may sound (or maybe not if you knew us), the arguments would often end when we got to the subject of death. If it got to that point, I would always say some version of, “I love you so much that I hope to die last, because I couldn’t stand having to leave you alone,” and she would counter with a version of, “I love you so much, that I hope to die first, so I don’t have to live without you.” I thought it was a weird argument to have then, and I still think it was a ridiculous thing to do, but I also couldn’t find more comfort in something that seemed so little at the time.
With all the talk of dying, I got to know exactly how Cassie would want me to handle her death. Of course, we didn’t talk about every difficult decision our family had to make; but it seems like she gave me everything I needed to at least have some guidance in those difficult decisions. We talked about the trivial aspects of her memorial too—she wanted everyone to wear colorful clothes, she wanted it to feel more like a time to celebrate (like she would be celebrating in heaven) instead of a time to cry to ourselves, she wanted Rodney Fletcher to sing, she wanted Davis Vismund to play his clarinet, she wanted her best friends to speak, she wanted to be buried in Jacksonville, and she wanted people to walk away from the memorial more in love with God than when they walked in. And she told me exactly how she would want me to keep living my life if she should ever have to leave my side to be at Jesus’ instead.
Still, that is far from the only way I believe God had been preparing us for this difficult time. For a number of months after graduating from UCF, I could not get rid of the idea of starting a journal. It was an idea I had played with before, but never felt pressed to do until October or November of last year. So after laying down to bed with Cassie every night, I couldn’t sleep or have peace until I wrote down everything we did or a piece of every significant conversation we had. So I now have 4 months of detailed accounts (bordering on too detailed) recorded in a journal of every daily adventure I would go on with my wife.
Unfortunately, many of those months of journal entries end with “Cassie was still pretty anxious today.” She had been wrestling with anxiety for most of her life- obsessing over things that most people wouldn’t think twice about. The structure of school, family, sports, and routine during her youth with her parents made it all manageable and minimal, also helping her to just appear over-committed to making people happy instead of stressed about making things perfect to please others, like she actually was. Not that she was always anxious. There were really only two major periods where her anxiety was crippling in the course of our relationship: the first few months of marriage which was due partly to all the lifestyle changes during that time and partly to witnessing her grandmother pass away; and then the last several months of our marriage, due to a few triggering events and years of built-up stress from stretching herself too thin. There were plenty of times I would come home late from work to find that Cassie had been crying on the couch because she was alone with her anxious thoughts too long. People knew Cassie for her joy, and I don’t want you to think that the joy she was known for was all just a mask. She was genuinely happy and excited to be around others. Sharing her time with others brought her nothing but joy, and in those same moments she would give that Christ-derived joy freely and graciously. It was only after a lot of stress or a lot of time alone with her thoughts that she would become overwhelmed by the anxiety.
And it broke my heart to see Cassie’s heart being broken by a few nervous thoughts. But truthfully, for the last two weeks of her life she had been happier at home than she was the previous 5 or 6 months. She found a devotional to help her keep focus on God above all her fears. She received a lot of relief in setting up a routine of studying God’s Word or a devotion in the morning and then praying with me all the nights I would be home. Cassie had started seeing a counselor, maybe only four times total over the course of a few months, who helped her see through the storms and who helped her begin to work through some of the trauma of her early childhood. In fact, the weekend Cassie passed away was one of the most wonderful weekends we ever had together. I can rest at ease now, knowing that the God who could bring her so much comfort and peace by faith in him alone, and who could and did overcome any fear she had, is now able to embrace her with the fullness of his love.
Along with the other circumstances that helped me accept the terrible reality, there was at least one unexpected benefit that came from Cassie’s anxiety. For March and some of February, I tried practicing mindfulness or meditation at times, just to see if it seemed like something that would help her. I never had any real stress to apply it to then, so I can’t even be sure that it would have helped her. But when the time came, the techniques helped me to breathe when my breath was taken away, to focus when decisions had to be made, to stop and make sense of things when I was overwhelmed, and, most importantly, to be able to speak meaningfully with everyone who mattered most, even when tears would have flowed easier than words. I tried to love Cassie by helping her overcome her nightmares, but loving her through her shortcomings gave me a way to get through my own nightmares instead.
The weekend she passed we both made arrangements to not work so we could relax together in Jacksonville (her favorite city on the planet) for a much-needed break—and I’ll note that trying to take off of work for a whole weekend usually never panned out considering we had at least 4 or 5 jobs between the two of us. We spent Friday night talking and talking with my family. We spent Saturday walking our dog around, going to a plant sale, spending time over at her sister’s house, and spending hours on end with her parents. We watched the movie Paul, Apostle of Christ with them which was an even greater blessing than I ever anticipated—Cassie was looking forward to meeting Paul in heaven more than anyone else in history, short of the Lord himself. It even let us talk for a short time about how excited we were to go to heaven (and how we knew it probably wouldn’t be anything like the weird wilderness depicted in the movie). Then Sunday we got to worship together at the church she grew up in. Her parents and I got to spend a few more moments hearing her wonderful voice and seeing how passionate she was as she would rock back and forth, belting out lyrics.
After doing a couple more of her favorite things, we left Jacksonville early to get back to Kissimmee because Cassie wanted so badly to attend a small group she helped coordinate. She was one of the major voices that dreamt up, planned, and grew the new Bloom Young Women’s ministry at Kissimmee Christian Church; but she regretted that she normally didn’t get to attend. So after I made sure multiple times that she wanted to make the 150 mile trek back south so early, we packed up and headed out. We still left a little late for her to get to the small group on time, so I offered to drop her off at the café they were meeting in so she could be there early instead. I offered multiple times, but every time she insisted on spending a few more minutes with me, she insisted on helping me unload the car, and she insisted on driving herself to the small group. So she did. And the last words we got to say to each other were “Goodbye” and “I love you.” All the double checking I did and all of the stubbornness she had would wind up taking a lot of the possible guilt from my shoulders later. It took away all the “what-ifs” that I could have asked—I know that no matter how much I insisted on doing that day differently, Cassie would be stubborn enough to go to the church group she had made and to help me even in the smallest ways possible. And I know that there were no last words I would regret less than “I love you.”
She went to her small group. And I went to mine. I came home, and when she didn’t I started making calls to see where she was. A good friend called me back and said he thought he saw her car in the middle of an intersection, but with no Cassie in sight. I immediately started driving to the emergency room closest to the accident. Now I’ve already mentioned that I worked at a trauma center; it was the same trauma center that Cassie was taken to following her accident. I didn’t know that she was taken there. I didn’t even know that it was her car in the accident. I just knew I would regret not going as soon as possible if it were her; and I got a call on the way saying it was. I started to prepare for the worst. I arrived at the ER and security let me right through because I brought my work ID with me, the work ID that I only had because Cassie wouldn’t let me quit that job one year earlier.
Before I knew where she might be I peaked at a nearby computer screen. I saw on the patient tracker that the person in trauma room 1 was there for “MVC TBI”—motor vehicle collision, traumatic brain injury. I felt my heart break in that moment. Just four days previously, in the last lecture I had attended for my classes at UCF, I listened to my professor teach for an hour straight on traumatic brain injury. I had just learned about the various kinds of injury, what health care providers can fix and what they can’t, what signs they look for, what tests they run, and what the outcome is in the best and in the worst scenarios.
A trauma provider walked out of the room and I told him I thought my wife was the one on the table. The look of concern and fear on his face prepared me for terrible news. The doctor came, a doctor I worked closely with for more nights than I can remember and who I loved dearly for her devotion to her patients. She brought out a blood-crusted wedding band for me to look at to confirm that it was my wife. I didn’t let that ring out of my grasp for the next 44 hours (I counted the hours later). I had worked with everyone who was in that room caring for her—every doctor, every nurse, and every medic. I had talked and shared with many of them on several occasions. There wasn’t a single person there who I wouldn’t have trusted my own care to; and I am so thankful that they were the ones there for her that night. I could trust that not a single aspect of her care was overlooked, nor a single procedure done wrongly.
I had thought about what I would do in this situation many times. And it went exactly as I had always expected—I started to cry as much as I would let myself, I clung to the smallest amount of hope even though I knew in my heart that the future we dreamt of would never come true, and I kept on loving Cassie in every way that I still could. Her face was still beautiful, except for two small cuts above her eyebrow. So I wiped the blood from her brow, I kissed her on the forehead, and I held her hand as I walked our friends and family through the reasons she would never open her eyes again.
I keep being told by those same friends and family that I seemed strong considering the circumstances, but I am sure that it was because of them that I even had the strength to stand. I was constantly wrapped up in someone’s arms, constantly assured of the great love for me and for Cassie, constantly seeing what seemed like the entirety of our church and family pour into the ICU waiting room, constantly being supplied with every necessity that I didn’t think I would ever need, and constantly being informed of the hundreds of different families and churches across the state, across more than half the nation, and even in far-flung places across the globe who were praying for us. Even though it felt like my heart was ripped apart and leaking all the love provided by the relationship Cassie and I had, an even greater amount of love was being poured in by God, his church, our family, and our friends.
And I felt so much love and comfort from God. I really hesitate to share due to the personal nature of it, but I have been encouraged to, so I will. For several years, after learning about and doing a condensed spin off of St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, I have wanted to do a certain modified version of them. To give you some background, the Exercises are basically just a way of praying certain things for a few weeks, with the intention of relating more to Christ during the Easter season. Normally I would start, but then flop out around week number two. This year, with Cassie reminding me to stick to it, I began praying and fasting (as much as a diabetic can) through the weeks leading up to Easter. On Sunday March 11, I began to only pray thanksgivings and meditate on every good thing in my life for a week straight. My heart and soul were so focused on how much God has blessed me and on how loved I am by him. On Sunday March 18, I began to pray and meditate only on the ways that I have separated myself from God. And so my heart, having just been reminded of how much the Lord has done for me, was then struck by how much I truly needed him at my side to be whole, above everything and everyone else. But I still got a little bit sidetracked on the last day or two of that week (which I’m grateful for), because Saturday, March 24, was when we were in Jacksonville to enjoy time with family.
On Sunday, March 25, Palm Sunday, the prayer plan demanded that I shift all my attention and all my focus on Jesus’ path to the cross, his trial, his crucifixion, and his burial. And so I did, beginning with Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem—that is to say, beginning with meditating on Jesus’ determination to go to the place where he would be crucified. When I came home from my church small group, and Cassie was not there, that is what I was I took time to pray through as I waited in vain for Cassie to come home. I was praying about what it must have felt like for Jesus to walk into a city of people who would later kill him, after spending his whole ministry trying to help them. I was praying about what it must be like for Jesus to spend so much time pouring into his closest friends, knowing that they would later have to watch him die. And after going to the hospital, I would continue to be reminded every couple hours of what Jesus was preparing for and trying to accept as God’s will for his life, as I tried to accept the death of my wife.
I expected the couple of days in the hospital to be difficult. But at every moment I felt the lowest, I would be reminded of Christ. I would remember, as I tried to continue to draw close to him, that he had walked this path before me. That as much as I could suffer, Jesus knows what it is to suffer, he knows what it is to feel desperate, and he knows what it is to feel alone, crying out to God for help despite knowing it is not a prayer he will answer the way we want. As much as it took out of me to get there, when I would reach down to the depths of my sorrows, I would still find the Lord—able to weep with me, able to give me comfort, able to wipe my tears away, able to give me strength to not only lift myself, but to lift up our family as they wrestled with the same fears and doubts of facing a world without Cassie.
I had hoped to know Christ more by praying through his journey to the cross. But I never could have imagined the sheer amount of pain that would come with knowing his one simple prayer… “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” The way the Gospel paints the picture, Jesus knew what was coming, and he had to watch everything fall into line until all he could see was the cross before him; when he prayed that prayer there was already nothing that could stop the misery set out for him, but he was still begging for another way if there could be one. And knowing there really wasn’t any plan except the one he was about to die for, he still submitted to the Father. He knew everything the Father had in store would be painful beyond words, but would be the only way to bring everyone suffering in the darkness back into his glorious light. And I prayed, “Father, take this cup from me,” over and over and over again, despite seeing that everything had fallen together as though it was always going to happen, and despite knowing that there was nothing that would turn back time to save my wife. And because Jesus had prayed it in the face of his own suffering, I was able to find it my weak and broken heart to submit to God’s loving wisdom, praying, “not my will… but yours.”
Late into the night on Good Friday, the day Jesus was put on the cross, I stayed up writing my words to speak at Cassie’s “Celebration of Life” service to honor her in her death. And on that same night, the night Jesus was buried, I had to pick out the clothes to bury Cassie in and begin to decorate Cassie’s casket, so it could be finished in time for the interment. Again, every time I had to reach into the worst of my grief, I found our Lord there, able to guide me when I could not see my next step through the darkness.
Easter Sunday, April 1st, was the day I was supposed to begin focusing on the resurrection and all its implications, according to the prayer plan I was following. But my Easter began with the memorial service the Saturday before. And unlike previous weeks, it was not remotely difficult to give all my praise, and thanks, and love, and worship to Christ for having conquered the grave. Out of everything that our Lord provided me, and more than anything he promises to provide his church, I can assure you that his resurrection provided hope. The empty tomb gives me assurance that he will not stand idly by while we despair; that hundreds of his disciples could walk with him after witnessing his crucifixion gives me assurance that he will not let us stand alone when the futures we look forward to the most are crushed; and that the martyr Stephen saw Christ standing at the right hand of the Father gives me assurance that he is always eager to receive his followers into his loving arms after we have spent our lifetimes wrestling with the chaos and evil surrounding us.
So I have received comfort, hope, and even joy from our Lord directly. But if that weren’t enough, I have received the same from my memories of Cassie—because she was Christ to me in everything she did. While I can’t remember every conversation that we had (though I probably wouldn’t want to remember every argument), and I sometimes even struggle to remember what her laugh sounds like (because she had a lot of different laughs), there are at least two things that I cannot stop remembering even when I try: her singing voice and the many times she went so far out of her way to just make my life a little better. While these Christian songs, the ones she knew from camps she would go to, or from worship she would lead at church, or just from her own library, keep haunting me by playing over again in my head to remind me of the wonderful person that’s gone now, it’s like Jesus is already there to ease my pain, because he was already present in those same memories of her worship. And while the memories of her near constant devotion to make sure I was encouraged, comforted, or straightened out when I needed it can be painful to be reminded of, they are even more reassuring and inspiring at the same time, because Christ was already in those moments that I’m remembering, shining through her kind acts.
I have felt pain. And our families, our friends, and our churches have suffered grief at her loss as well. But our reality is this: there has only been one unspeakably terrible tragedy, but it has been surrounded by a deluge of incredible blessings—more than we have been able to count (and we have tried), with no end to them in sight.
People have asked, “Why would God let such a terrible thing happen to someone like Cassie?” But that has never been the question I asked. I believe God may have been responsible for every other good change that happened in Cassie’s soul, making her the wonderful person we knew. But I can’t bring myself to try and blame Him for a car accident; we call it an accident because no one wanted it to happen, least of all God. My only questions have been these: “Where is God in all of this?” and “Why would God let so many good things happen to us?” The first has been answered many times over—God was there preparing us for this terrible thing, he is comforting us amid our grief, and he is making beauty from the dust (like he has since the beginning) as so many people turn to him or to their loved ones because of the tributes to Cassie’s life.
Why would God let so many good things happen to us? The question comes from circumstances that I’m grateful for, but it is still is the one that I struggle with the most. Tragedies happen every day, to people across this city and state and country and creation, to believers and non-believers alike. But out of all the millions of people who must suffer, and out of the millions who will have to grieve someone they loved, I wonder why I was so blessed. I wonder why I was so blessed to have gotten to say, “I love you,” and “Goodbye,” when so many people regret their last words spoken. I wonder why I was blessed (and our friends and family were blessed) to have spent such a wonderful time with her immediately before she died, when so many people wish their last few days together were spent caught up in each other instead of caught up in the mess of day-to-day life. I wonder why I was so blessed to have all the assurance of knowing the people who would take care of her at the end of her life, when so many people feel thrust into a cold and foreign place when they are called to the hospital to say goodbye to their loved one. I wonder why I was so blessed to be comforted and prayed for by thousands of individuals with their families and their churches, when so many have to face this alone and without anyone to support them in the hardest nights. I wonder why I was so blessed with someone so amazing as Cassie, someone who Jesus used in every way to make me the man I was meant to be, someone who looked forward to heaven with all of her heart. I wonder why, when so many people are left with fear and doubt as their better halves get stolen away from them. I wonder why the blessings keep falling like rain, when for others the pain seems like a desert to struggle through with no end in sight.
I don’t know. It will be the first thing I ask when my faith becomes sight. For now, my soul is content to know that Cassie lived and died trying to love God and love others with everything she was. I know it because the love she sent out has returned to me one hundred-fold. So for everyone who wants to know how I am or what I will do now: I look forward to loving God and loving others the same way she did, at least while I wait for the chance to serve our God at her side again.