When Everything Stopped
How two deaths, one calling, and the space between taught me what it means to truly grieve
It was my husband’s birthday. The fall breeze was just starting to drift in, the leaves were turning, and our house hummed with the familiar chaos of a year that had already held so much. Then the phone rang, and everything stopped.
“Mrs. Emily, he’s gone.”
The kindest nurse delivered the news, and I didn’t hold back. I cursed the sky for taking my dad before I could get there, before I could say goodbye. In that moment, the world narrowed to a single, shattering point.
I’d already lost my mother several years earlier, suddenly and without warning. Back then, I didn’t have the space, the words, or the strength to truly sit with grief. I couldn’t let it transform me or draw me closer to the ultimate sacrifice and love of Christ, even though that had been my mother’s deepest wish for me. She understood what I didn’t yet: that grief, like all suffering willingly borne, could become something more than pain. Her death was earth-shattering, but I learned to cope instead of heal. I kept moving.
Losing my father was different. Where my mother’s death broke me open, my father’s gave me, slowly and painfully, the courage to rebuild. The timing still leaves me breathless: their deaths fell exactly one month apart, both on the third day, within fifteen minutes of the same hour. My father passed at 1:40 PM, and my mother passed at 1:55 PM. The synchronicity feels like a language I’m only beginning to learn how to read, a pattern woven through all of it. My mother’s longing for the friend and confidant she found in me. My father having a second daughter late in life, one he hadn’t planned for, who would eventually care for him at the end. Two people who should never have created me but did. It’s as if God was writing something into the fabric of our lives that I’m only now able to see: that we live on in the hearts of those who loved us, that we matter most to those who knew us, and that our stories become the inheritance of those who come after.
My parents were a remarkable, complicated pair.
My mother was born in 1956 to a Catholic family in Texas with deep Louisiana roots. She broke away from the formal Church, forged her own fierce relationship with Jesus, and lived (imperfectly, humanly) with Him as her Lord and Savior until the end. As she lay dying, my daughter and I laughed with her siblings about something Mom had confessed to me as a teenager: her dream man needed long hair, good teeth (or really any teeth, she specified), and a nice butt. In Jesus, she finally met him, and with Him, the peace and love she’d spent a lifetime searching for.
My daddy was born in 1945, just as World War II ended. His own father drowned in the river between Texas and Louisiana shortly after, trying to retrieve a boat motor. Daddy was raised by his mother, older sisters, and his beloved “Granddaddy Bryant.” At sixteen he joined the Navy, served his country, then came home to Texas. He worked in the chemical plants for over forty years, raised my sister who died tragically of cancer, and eventually retired. We were estranged for much of my adult life, yet in his final year, I became his caregiver. Looking back, I believe that was exactly God’s plan.
They were “old” parents by today’s standards. Dad was nearly 50 when I arrived, Mom just shy of 40. I was an accident neither expected nor initially wanted.
Because of their age, I was raised in a world that feels almost mythical now, on a Texas homestead that bridged generations. I grew up somewhere between my mother-in-law’s childhood and my husband’s, shaped by people the same age as his grandparents. I hated it at the time (as kids do), but I’ve come to see it as a gift: I unknowingly skipped an extra layer of intergenerational trauma. What I had was simple, rooted, and real.
Then grief came, and it halted everything.
After my mother, I coped. After my father, I couldn’t. Life paused. Plans dissolved, energy vanished, the future felt impossible. I couldn’t think clearly about anything, not even what needed to happen in order for my father to rest peacefully. For a few days, I functioned on autopilot. I took the time I was allowed from work, but two weeks isn’t enough for three years of grief, pain, and despair hitting me at once. I couldn’t return to this incredibly stressful career I’d built while simultaneously giving myself the time I needed to heal, mourn, and find my true calling.
So I quit my job. My body was telling me what my spirit already knew: this path wasn’t mine to walk anymore. I needed to be home with my children, to support my husband, and to follow where God was leading, even when I couldn’t yet see the destination clearly.
I’ve radically taken my life back in a way that’s unprecedented for me. Through grief, I’ve honed in on what God is calling me to do. I’ve found peace in prayer, and now that I’m at the point of no looking back, I lean heavily into my faith and ensuring that I’m following God’s words and teachings.
Death and grief have radically altered who I am and have led me into a calling I believe is from God. I’m going to lean into it, own it, and make it into something meaningful. This blog is just the beginning, a place where I’ll document the intersection of grief and faith, and how they intermingle. There are more developments on the horizon.
If you’re grieving too, whether you’re a person of faith or simply searching, you’re welcome here. You’re not alone.
Thank you for being here with me on this first post. I’ll be back Friday.