Life is wild. One minute you’re trekking to a playdate, half overwhelmed, half comforted by the constant chatter of the two tiny voices who accompany you everywhere.
Then, another minute you receive a text. The text might mean nothing: Anything you need from Walmart? Or it might change the course of life as you know it. On Friday March 24, 2023, I received both texts from my mother. First, the Walmart text. Then, a couple of hours later: ‘Can you please pray for Lindsey? She’s had a small stroke.’
That text commenced an eight day journey for our family full of the usual suspects that often accompany major life changes: around the clock hospital visits, weeping, begging, asking why/how/what if, and maybe most notably, wondering what life would look like after.
You understand from a relatively early age that you are going to outlive your parents. Years earlier, I had come to terms with the possibilities of things like dementia, cancer, or how time can ravage the human body on behalf of my mother and father. But when I had imagined that life, a life without the people who raised me, it had always included my sister, Lindsey.
Maybe that’s why, the week we spent in the hospital, as a wide span of potential outcomes quickly narrowed to only one, was a week that at the time I didn’t know how to make sense of. I didn’t know what questions to ask, what prayers to pray, what details to note.
I was just there, witnessing.
When we returned to New York, in many ways, I had more help than I knew what to do with. Friends offered to do dishes, meals were graciously delivered, constant texts were sent with love and care.
But what I didn’t have was a guide telling me what to expect, helping me make sense of all that had unfolded. I read books, I attended grief groups, I spoke with people one-on-one. But the prevailing message I heard was “everyone’s grief journey is different.”
On many levels, this is true. Everyone’s college experience is different. Everyone’s wedding is different. Everyone’s experience learning how to parallel park is different. But they’re also kind of the same.
If you’ve lost someone close to you, you’re aware there are certain milestones: breaking the news to others, seeing your loved one’s name and death date engraved on stone, fearing the unknown of a new life. I wanted not simply to know these things would happen, but how they felt.
So while every grief journey may be different, I am sharing mine in hopes that it will help someone else who is in the early days of their grief have a better sense of what to expect.
There are 5 distinct sections in this grief memoir: First, the week of March 24, for context regarding how Lindsey passed (see below). Then, four sections of how I experienced grief. These sections are further subdivided into chapters. After this week, I will be releasing chapters as they are ready.
A couple notes:
First, when someone close to us is experiencing deep grief, it is natural for us to want to say the right thing, or at least, to not say the wrong thing. Generally, I was spared insensitive comments, but not always. I have incorporated these moments into this story because they were impactful, but I have changed details around specific conversations to avoid incriminating anyone. I have certainly failed countless times by either saying the wrong thing, or remaining silent when I should have spoken up, so my goal in including these moments is not to shame or disparage anyone, but simply for us all to learn to be more gentle.
Secondly, this is by no means a prescription as to what grief should look like. Rather, it is a witness of my own grief in the hopes that if and when you find yourself not knowing how to make sense of the mess you are in, you might find solace and companionship here.
I have worked very hard to maintain honesty even when that may compromise relatability. Thus, some aspects may sound surprising or unrelatable.
Whatever it may be to you, this is simply my story. May it help light your path.
The week of March 24.
Splitting in two.
It’s 3:35pm on a Friday when I get the text: Can you please pray for Lindsey? She’s had a small stroke.
I’m sorry, a stroke? My mother’s text simply does not compute: my 36 year old sister is the epitome of health. She hikes, she puts herbs on her salads, in college she tried to convince me to go vegan. People like her don’t have strokes.
I am in the middle of a chaotic afternoon disguised as a playdate, unable to focus on much other than the screaming children around me. I say a quick prayer and put my phone down.
But after a moment I realize I have not taken this text seriously enough. This is not an ‘I’ll pray later’ moment. I am instantly split into two people: half of me in New York City with my children and a plethora of toys, the other half of me on the phone with my mother, trying to make sense of second-hand snippets from my sister’s husband, who is halfway across the country in Denver, where they live. They are at the hospital now. She is stable. I am told. Fine, fine, she’s going to be fine, is what I think to myself.
It’s 7:30 pm when the kids are in bed and I finally have a moment to breathe and ask if it’s real. I need to absorb what’s happening, but I don’t know how to absorb it. My sister has always felt fragile to me: getting carsick on road trips, requiring extra sunscreen for her porcelain skin, turning down the music because of a headache. So, in some ways, this odd medical diagnosis doesn’t feel as scary: it’s in line with my mental picture of Lindsey. Strong, but delicate. She will get through this just like the windy trips we used to take to the mountains. We just need to wait it out.
It’s two hours later when I get more information about the stroke and google it. Basal artery stroke, sometimes the result of whiplash. It has a 95% mortality rate. Thank God Lindsey is okay, I think. Thank God she got to the hospital quickly. She’s stable. Thank God.
But it’s 10pm when I become more concerned. She’s waiting for an operation to remove the clot that caused the stroke, but she has been waiting hours–too many hours.
She has to be moved to a nearby stroke center for the operation–they plan to care flight her. But despite the fact that winter is supposedly over, snow and high winds are coming, so the helicopters are grounded.
She’ll take an ambulance instead. But, no. Because the weather is bad, all the ambulances are out serving other people’s emergencies, not at the hospital where she is, where our emergency is.
So she waits. On pins and needles, we all wait. I obsessively check and recheck ‘find my friends’ to see whether her little face has moved to the new hospital, but it is stuck at Rose Medical Center.
It’s 1am when I hear: the surgery has gone well.
It’s 10am on Saturday when my parents, who are enroute to Denver, tell me: but she’s had a second stroke. The doctor says she probably would not survive a third. We need to wait a few days for the swelling in her brain to subside before we’ll know how much damage the strokes caused. I’m told there is a very wide range of outcomes. Death, paralysis, limited ability to communicate… I’m told these things are possible, but I know deep down they are not. She’ll be fine, she has to be fine, I just know it.
It’s 5pm when I speak to Lindsey on the phone. She can’t speak, but my mom assures me she nods as I talk to her and pray over her. “It’s crushing, absolutely crushing” my mother says, to see her like this. “She may not make it out of this” my mom says, but my ears are deaf to her comment. She’s stable. She’ll be fine.
It’s 6am on Sunday when we book our flights for later that day. Our apartment goes into overdrive as we pack for an indefinite period of time, trying to piece together how we’ll survive with two young kids without a stroller, pack-and-play, or baby gates while we stay in my parent’s not-baby-proofed three story condo. As I pack, I intentionally avoid putting an all-black outfit in my bag, as if packing it might somehow seal my sister’s fate. Don’t be depressing Haley. As our uber is about to arrive to take us to the airport, I run back to my room and grab the all black outfit and stuff it in my bag. I feel nauseous.
Denver.
It’s 4pm on Sunday when we get to Denver. Friends have picked us up from the airport with car seats and snacks for our children, a pastor’s wife has brought us dinner, a high school acquaintance who I have not spoken to in 10 years has sourced a double stroller and dropped it on our doorstep.
My mother welcomes us and begins unpacking groceries a friend delivered. “Eggs, organic tomatoes, organic apples” she oohs and ahhs over the sustenance. She has been so focused on my sister since Friday, she has hardly slept or eaten. “Bread” she pulls out the paper-wrapped loaf and then distinguishes “Good bread”, tears forming in her eyes. When your world is falling apart, even a loaf of sourdough can bring you to tears.
It’s Monday morning when I finally get to see Lindsey in person, in room 427 of the ICU. As soon as I enter the room, I go to her bedside and begin singing to her. She doesn’t respond, but after decades of bantering, finishing one another’s sentences, and winning every family game because of our secret coded signals, I feel like I can read her mind: “Don’t give up on me.” she’s begging “I’m here–I’m in here!” She’s scared, I can tell, so I try to soothe her: “We know you’re in there, Lindsey. We’re not giving up on you!” I flood her with verbal encouragement. She needs to know to keep fighting, that we’ll never give up on her. Now that I’ve seen her, now that I’m here, I am sure–so sure–that she will be fine.
But it’s 1pm on Monday–only a few hours later–when her pupils are no longer responding to light. I struggle watching the nurses lift her eyelids to flash the light into her eyes again and again, but with no response. It’s fishlike. It is not the Lindsey I know, whose warm hand I now hold. I watch the numbers on the screen in a daze. I feel a little dead inside.
When I get back to my parent’s condo, we walk around Sloane’s lake–the same lake where Lindsey has often pushed her daughter in her stroller. The sun is rudely shining as if our entire world is not falling apart, but the mountains to the west are still covered in snow. Lindsey was always horrible with directions. When she got her driver’s license, for our first excursion without our parents she wanted to drive to the local library (she was also not cool). We ended up at Terminal B of DFW airport. She joked that since moving to Denver, the mountains were the best hack for her abysmal sense of direction. “Since I can always see them, I always know that way is west.”
It’s 10am on Tuesday when I’m back in room 427, but when I enter the room, I immediately know that something has changed. I can’t feel Lindsey, not like I could yesterday. Her body is in the same place, in the bed right where I left her, but something is different. She’s not here. The room is empty somehow.
I walk a few laps around the ICU and see patients in other rooms. Some rooms have visitors but most are empty except for the resident inside, patients just quietly resting. A couple patients have lovely colored quilts on their laps. The quilts look carefully placed as if to keep the patients warm as they fight for their lives in this cold and lonely ICU. How thoughtful that someone brought them these quilts, I think to myself, wondering how many weeks she might be here, what her recovery looks like. I should have brought her a quilt. I want to get Lindsey a quilt.
It’s 11am on Tuesday when the doctor calls Lindsey’s husband into her office by himself and I have treasured time alone with Lindsey.
I look around, absorb this horrible scene of her wired to countless screens and pouches and wish there was a sign or a guidebook telling me what to do. I try to pray, but it feels forced. I feel out of place in my body, next to my sister who is fighting for her life. I tend to be surer, stronger than this, but I feel frozen. More than anything, I’m disoriented by the fact that I still can’t sense her. I know she was here yesterday–right here–but somehow I’ve lost her. The only thing that feels right is to play worship music, so I pull out my phone and play “I will arise and go to Jesus.”
It is a short 15 minutes later when I get the text from my mom: “Tell Lindsey to run to Jesus”... “Run like the wind to Jesus”. My parents have been conferenced in to the doctor’s conversation with my brother in law. Lindsey is brain dead.
It’s noon on Wednesday and I’m back. To my shock and relief, I feel Lindsey again. She’s back in the room, back in her body. But, something is different. She is not scared like she was on Monday. She is not absent like she was on Tuesday. Today, she is peaceful. Maybe she knows it is over and she is peaceful. I am told we will wait for the recipients of her organs to be lined up before disconnecting her from life support. I am the only member of my family in the room with her while nurses do some scans to look for any final signs of brain activity.
As I sit with her, my husband texts me he feels a need to be hopeful for some reason. I pray and a tear falls from Lindsey’s eye. I clench her hand, waiting–did I make that up? Am I crazy? Another tear, I can still see it tumbling down her cheek. It’s there. It’s really there.
Trying to remain calm but with a shaking voice, I blurt out to the nurses “A tear! A tear fell!” Adding “Is that normal?” to make myself seem less crazy. The nurses glance at one another and then at Lindsey, but they can’t see the tear, it has already been absorbed into her gown. I sense their distrust but I insist that I saw it. I am sure I sound crazy but I don’t care. If there’s even a fighting chance we have to take it. The older nurse looks me in the eyes and with the type of compassion that could melt an iceberg she says “I believe you”. They call the nurse on rotation. My hands begin to shake.
“It is normal - this happens all the time” the nurse on rotation hurriedly assures me as she rushes in. “I just put Vaseline in your sister’s eyes to help them stay moist - this happens sometimes. I’m so sorry, I should have warned you. I’m so sorry.”
I double over in my chair, weeping. For a moment, for the briefest moment, I had thought maybe–just maybe–they were wrong. Maybe there was still a chance. Maybe Lindsey’s tear somehow meant there was brain activity and that she wanted to fight. Yes, you should have warned me, I think. She hugs me as if she’s helping, but in that moment it requires all of my self control and maturity not to scream at the top of my lungs at her. How dare you hug me? After you let me think there was still a chance?
It is 2pm on Wednesday when I have some protected alone time with my sister. We’re not sure how quickly her organ recipients will be lined up, so these may be my last moments alone with her, just the two of us.
As hard as it is to be here, knowing how temporary it all is, I’d rather be here in room 427 than anywhere else. My husband and children nearby feel like a million miles away. My entire life outside of this hospital somehow feels fake. For these short hours, all that matters is holding my sister’s hand and watching her breathe.
I place my palm in hers and am comforted by her warm hands. I think of all the times she has grabbed my hand: walking out of school to meet our mother, swinging on our backyard playset, the way she would double-squeeze my hand when we prayed before meals as a family.
I feel like I should pray but I don’t know what to say. Everything feels forced. So, I try to talk to her. But despite decades of feeling effortlessly at ease with Lindsey, I am ill equipped to speak. I am not up to the weightiness of this moment. I jumble words and tell her I love her. It’s not eloquent or well-said. It’s raw and random and makes me feel like an immature teenager without any life experience. I feel shame for not doing better, for not having a better speech prepared. I feel like I have failed her.
At the end of my spiel, defeated by my haphazard words, I’m not sure why, but I ask Lindsey to hug me. Maybe it’s because I know my alone time with my sister is coming to an end. Maybe it’s because I don’t remember our last hug. But sitting in my chair, holding her hand as the ventilator prompts her body to rise and fall like a metronome, I ask her to put her arms around me. To my own amazement, I feel her. Her loving arms surround me, as if she’s standing behind me wrapping me up in her big-sister warmth. My neck feels warm and I feel comforted. I sob, wishing it would never end.
Later that afternoon, my mom and I walk to the café. “My bones feel hollow,” she says. When we return, there’s a lovely small quilt on my sister’s legs, just like the quilt I saw on the laps of other patients. We’re not sure who put it there, but it is perfectly sized and brings much needed warmth to Lindsey’s otherwise sterile room. I admire the quilt, grateful for whoever put it on my sister’s lap to warm her.
As news spreads of Lindsey’s upcoming passing, other family members fly in to say goodbye. Their presence makes everything seem less like a nightmare but also more real.
I speak to Nana, my 92 year old grandmother, on the phone. She is unable to fly to us before Lindsey passes, so relays her goodbyes from afar. For years my Nana has had a DNR and insists she is ready (“so ready”) to go to Heaven. As we cry together, she says “Tell Lindsey I’ll see her soon, I’ll see her real soon”, as if she will be joining Lindsey in Heaven for coffee in a couple days. “Can you hold on a little while longer? Let’s just lose one person at a time, Nana.” We both laugh.
By Friday, Lindsey’s organ recipients have been found. She will have her life support removed on Saturday morning around 4am. “Be here by 2am” the nurses say.
The first goodbye.
It’s 1:30am on Saturday morning when my husband drives my mother and me to the hospital to disconnect Lindsey from life support. I’m in a daze but am surprised by how many cars are on the road at this hour.
A large white truck nearby is tailing the car in front of it oddly closely. The truck abruptly changes lanes without a signal, then sits for an abnormally long time at a green light. We eventually pass him as he continues sitting at the green light and then I realize: it’s 2am on a Saturday morning. This is prime time for drunk drivers. Given we live in New York City, drunk drivers have not been on my mind in years. But this is not a safe time to be on the road. I clench the handle of the passenger side door.
Ahead of us, the highway curves. Behind us, I hear screeching tires and see the truck now accelerating at full speed ahead. As the truck approaches us, my husband immediately changes lanes to the far left, trying to get out of the truck’s way but as the truck swerves behind us like an unpredictable maniac, there’s still no guarantee he won’t hit us. My heart is racing. Are we seriously about to get hit by this drunk driver? NOW?
As the truck billows toward us, veering across lanes unpredictably, my husband pulls off the road completely and we both turn around to see what the truck will do. I am shaking and praying out loud (and at a very high volume) when at full speed and at the completely wrong angle, the truck crosses all three lanes of traffic, miscalculates the curve of the road, spins out of control and ends up on the raised median, pointing in the wrong direction.
It is scarily obvious: had my husband not pulled off the road when he did, we would have been hit by the truck. In the sliver of an instant, before I can even breathe a sigh of relief that the truck ended up on the median and not t-boned into our car, I feel the slightest pressure on my heart. With that pressure, I sense God saying: Haley, I am sovereign over this. I am sovereign over this drunk driver not hitting you. I am sovereign over your sister’s circumstances. I am sovereign. Trust me.
We call 911 to report the truck and re-route ourselves to the hospital.
When we arrive, we talk through aspects of how the morning will go as if we are discussing the correct way to tie a shoe. We are all so spent, like emotionless puppets being guided through a cruel game of hopscotch. As we are making sure we have collected Lindsey’s belongings from the hospital room, my brother-in-law asks if anyone wants the patchwork quilt that was left on Lindsey’s lap.
It comes to bear that the quilt was a gift from Donor Alliance, the group coordinating Lindsey’s organ transfers. Apparently every organ donor receives one, as a thank you. My neck stiffens. I think of all the quilts carefully tucked into the laps of other ICU patients: quilts I had admired, quilts I had thought were so lovely–they weren’t thoughtful gifts to patients fighting for their lives. The quilts were a bizarre signal that all of those patients were bound for death. A chill runs down my back as an eerie voice in my head articulates what those quilts really meant: “Thank you for your organs”. I have no interest in the quilt.
We change into our scrubs and wait an immeasurably long time while the organ recipient teams and surgeons take their positions. The floor smells like formaldehyde and bleach, everything is stainless steel and cold. It’s darker than I think an OR should be. Why is it so dark?
The physicians disconnect Lindsey’s life support while we are outside the room and then we are told it is finally time to come in. We enter and it’s the first time I’ve seen her all week without her breathing tubes and ventilator. I see her, really see her for the first time since this mess began and all of a sudden and I can’t even pause to process what is really happening because the new level of reality is too raw, too much. I fumble on my phone to read a prayer I have written, but the background noise of the machines and the acoustics of the room are horrible–I feel like I’m yelling but no one can hear me. My voice shakes through my prayer and all I can think is how the army of surgeons and nurses should just give us one minute alone with her, but instead they all stand by dutifully, like masked vultures, waiting for their organs.
When we are eventually ushered out of the OR, I am more ready to leave the hospital than anything I’ve ever been ready for in my life. I never want to come back here.
It is still dark outside as we drive back to my parents’ condo. I feel relieved that the week is over and grateful that Lindsey won’t be subjected to full-body paralysis the rest of her life, which was a serious possibility. But more than anything, I feel so ready to leave Denver. I cannot wait to be in New York, away from room 427, away from the snow on the ground even though it is apparently springtime, away from the lake with a clear view of the Rocky Mountains to the west. I know that returning to our “normal” lives will not be an escape from Lindsey’s death. I know that. Nothing will ever be normal again, but I desperately want out of this city.
The second goodbye.
My parents drop us off at the airport and as we are unloading bags and strollers, tears stream down my face like an endless waterfall. We have bags to check, security to go through, toddlers to wear out before a long flight home, but my feet are cemented to the pavement. Despite my ache to escape this city only hours before, I no longer care that there is a flight that will gladly leave without us if it has to.
We booked this flight earlier this week, knowing it would leave only hours after my sister was disconnected from life support. At the time I just wanted to get away from everything this week had held for our family. But now that we are here, saying goodbye, all I can think is why on Earth did we think this was a good idea? I haven’t cried saying goodbye to my parents in at least 15 years, but today is different.
All of a sudden, saying goodbye to my parents at the airport is almost harder than saying goodbye to my sister in the OR.
Of course, there is more caution as we say goodbye. Our week together has been a painful reminder that life is risky and dangerous even when it seems safe and normal. My mom tells me to be careful–”so, so, very careful”. You don’t need to tell me to be careful, I want to tell her, as I silently pray a new prayer, one I will repeat daily for months and years to come: Please Lord, let me outlive my parents. Please, Lord, please, do not let them bury another child.
As much as I want to fly home, as desperately as I want to be away from the awfulness of the week, it feels like a violation of my soul to be flying 2,000 miles away from my parents. After our week together in room 427, I am fully convinced that no one else will ever be able to comfort me in the way that my parents can. No one else will ever understand what really happened, how it felt. As desperately as I want to escape Denver, I do not want to face this new life, a life without Lindsey, without them. There is a safety with my parents, a comfort of being under their wings, and I fear being away from them.
We exchange dozens of teary ‘one last hugs’ and I finally peel myself away from the curb. As we walk into the airport, my son requests a snack, just like he does every other day. As I grab a granola bar, it hits me: my upcoming resumption of normal life–being back in our home, my husband returning to the office, monotonous cooking and cleaning–all of it will solidify my sister’s death.
The hospital had been a twilight zone: the whole world and all of life’s demands were on pause while we were within its walls. Most importantly, while we were there, in room 427 and even up until her final fighting moments in the OR, there was still a chance Lindsey was somehow going to make it.
But walking away from my parents, as I resume some of life’s most universally basic and boring tasks–fetching a snack for my toddler and getting in line at airport security–I realize that the twilight zone, the safety of “maybe she’ll pull through” is now gone. I left it back in that hospital room. Flying back to New York will put a period at the end of this week’s story, cementing everything that happened from ‘could’ to ‘did’.
This is real. Her death actually happened. I think to myself, walking through the airport.
Tomorrow and all the days after that will be days without Lindsey.
So vulnerable, so detailed, so important.
Thank you for bringing this story into the light Haley.
Wow, this was a heartbreaking, but beautifully written piece. I'm so sorry for your loss. I have two sisters myself, and this piece did a great job illustrating the bond beyond between sisters. Praying for you as you continue to walk this healing journey.