From “Telling Stories in the Dark: Finding healing and hope in sharing our sadness, grief, trauma, and pain” by Jeffrey Munroe
Mary had a moment at a window as Cliff died that parallels Mitch’s experience as Sandie was dying. There were wildfires in the mountains around Colorado Springs where Cliff and Mary lived, and their neighborhood had been evacuated. Cliff’s room was on the sixth floor of the hospital and Mary could see the fires from that vantage point.
“If I looked out in one direction,” Mary said, “I could see smoke, which I believed was coming from my house burning, and if I turned and looked in another direction, I could see my comatose husband dying. I was losing my home and my husband at the same time. I remember saying, ‘Take it. Take the house. Take Cliff. But you’re not getting me. I’m going to live. I’m not going down on that trauma ship.’ There are times, like Mitch experienced, when you feel like you don’t have anything left to give and you wonder how bad it can get.”
For Mary, Cliff’s death and the coincident wildfires became a picture of the difference between what happens to us and what happens inside us. “We don’t get to choose,” she said, “what happens to us. But we do get to choose how we will respond. As I looked out that window, I thought of Deuteronomy 30:19 and those words about life and death being set before us. I chose life.”