Like a sigh

We live our lives, and then we fly away

As a preacher, I regularly go to the ancient texts of holy Scripture to find a means to express what I need to say to God’s gathered people. Sometimes it’s a mere function of my task, but there are moments when Scripture finds me — rather than I finding it — in a meaningful way for my moment in time.

It was one year ago on this date, March 16, 2025, that Claudia and I last shared a conversation together. It was a beautiful Spring day in Virginia’s Blue Ridge mountains, and we drove the seventy-five minutes to church in relative silence, preoccupied with our own thoughts. Claudia was texting with a young Spanish-speaking man concerning what he thought to be his desperate medical situation. Uninsured, lacking English skills and younger than our youngest son, this young man was anxious and unsettled. The mother of his child had just returned to their Central American country of origin, and he had in his care a five-year-old daughter.

Simultaneously, Claudia was making plans to have lunch with a new family in the congregation, whose home had been partially burned. It was a large family with up to fifteen children (depending on the day and relatives’ work schedules), and my new congregation and we had been partnering to help them find stability. The maternal figure in that family and Claudia were becoming close friends.

Worship was lovely that morning. The congregation, gifted with musical talent, sang the hymns of faith with gusto (as much gusto as the typical mainline, United Methodist church can muster), I continued in a new preaching series (“The Bread of Life”) and all was well. It was a morning that I wore a new green shirt, and as Claudia helped me button my alb and situation my microphone in the minutes before I entered the sanctuary, she playfully slapped me on the arm and said, “Go get ‘em, tiger!” Or words to that effect.¹

We had a meaningful lunch with the Spanish-speaking young man and his daughter, and with several members of the other family we were developing a relationship with, and then made our way back home. Sunday mornings have always been a time of intensity, and we have always enjoyed the early afternoon time of reflection together. We loved our new church, its people and its opportunities. We enjoyed our lunch with new friends.

Looking wistfully out the passenger side window, viewing the beauty of the Blue Ridge mountains, Claudia said: “What a great Sunday. If every Sunday is like this for the rest of my life, I will die happy.” We talked for a few minutes about the mystery of life ahead of us, including our frustration that until our home in Lynchburg sold we could not move to Roanoke.

We arrived home to assume our regular Sunday afternoon locations: she in the bedroom, comfortably sitting in her favorite loveseat, texting friends; and I in the upstairs home office. These were typically quiet moments where we each decompressed in our own preferred ways. It had been some time since I heard anything from the bedroom below, and when I called out I heard nothing in response.

Immediately I knew something was off. As I pushed myself away from my desk and began the trek down the stairs, my adrenalin began to surge. I called her name on my way, and with growing concern I walked into the bedroom.

There on the floor in front of her favorite place in the home was my unconscious wife, sitting upright on the floor, back against the loveseat. She was breathing but unresponsive as I hurriedly called 911 and awaited assistance.

There’s something about a traumatic experience (or series of them) that becomes etched into memory. While I can’t remember what I ate for dinner last night, I can clearly see this scene in my mind all over again. I’ve learned that it is helpful for me to remember, rather than repress, the details, but this remembering is not simply a rehearsal of my trauma. That would only serve to magnify my pain and debilitate my efforts to live onward.

To remember but not rehearse requires a larger narrative, and that is where my practice of reading Scripture (often guided by The Daily Office or The Liturgy of the Hours) and contemplation liberate my soul to move from trauma to transformation.

One of this morning’s Psalms is the 90th. As my eyes read and as my mouth spoke aloud the words, my grief-wrinkled soul found some expansion as ancient words became food for my soul on this very day. Psalm 90 begins with a panoramic vision of Love’s all-embracing expanse: “O, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.”

The Psalmist acknowledges the reality that in the midst of Love’s ever-present nature, our human lives are but a sliver. We may be given seventy years, or maybe eighty, but then, like a sigh, our years come to an end. “They are soon gone, and then we fly away.”

Many thoughtful people in my life have asked how I will spend this day (and the one ten days from now which marks the day she flew away from us). I suspect I will spend these days like most of my other relatively ordinary days. I will wake up and fall asleep about the same times as usual, I will spends some time with Otis, I will text and exchange emails with those whom I love, I will tend to my work responsibilities.

I will, of course, spend more time than usual remembering what once was. I’ll have conversations of a different kind with Claudia. I’ll light candles of remembrance. I will feel her hands with mine on the steering wheel of the Kona, the vehicle she drove less than two months. I will spritz her perfume on her side of the bed. I will talk with those who knew us as a couple, who knew her as a friend, who loved her as a mom.

And I will sigh. A lot.

1. She and I had a years-long runnng joke, stemming from a speaker we both heard in college who related a preaching experience to us in a sermon. He and his wife were in his office before worship, and he unknowingly had turned on his lapel mic. As he was leaving the office, she grabbed in a big hug and said, “Go get ‘em tiger. I can’t wait to get you home after the service!”