I have written this very personal account over several months from May 2019 to March 2020. By retaining the personal elements of this exploration, I hope it may resonate with others. It is not something one can deal with dispassionately. I hope even more that the insights I have gained through losing my wife will stand on their own and be useful also to those who are not experiencing loss at the moment. I am posting it as the Covid-19 pandemic is sweeping the world. Maybe that is appropriate as we all come to terms with mortality and our smallness in the face of events we cannot anticipate or control.

Jonathan Cook.

Losing one’s life partner calls everything into question in a dramatic way. I have written this to describe my continuing journey to understand the questions and look for resolution. My journey is by no means complete, but I hope my interim reflections might strike a chord with others going through the same devastating struggle. And I hope it will be helpful too for those who are not currently facing bereavement – it would have been nice to have some of these insights earlier, before being forced to by events.

Religious beliefs and meaning in life, identity, emotional security and stability, social relationships, and even practical matters like domestic habits, all are tested through the fire of remorseless aloneness. They move from theory to hard experience.

When Sally, my wife for 44 years, died on 20 April 2019 my faith had to respond. It was no longer enough to speculate about life, meaning and eternity and leave it for another time to come to conclusions. I needed to know what I believe – almost desperately.

These notes were written over a period from May 2019, a month after Sally died, till March 2020, so are some early thoughts on what I think I have heard the Spirit say, and lessons I have begun to draw from it. There are many good books on bereavement and I will not try to repeat them by offering ideas on how to cope. Instead, this is a very personal account of how my Christian faith has responded to losing Sally.

I was brought up in an entirely committed Christian home. My dad was a minister and the son and grandson of ministers, and my mom too was the daughter of a minister. I know they had questions and I am sure they had doubts, but it was exhilarating to catch their powerful and resilient faith. It was exciting to share their ministry as a child and to see God at work in peoples’ lives often in a dramatic way. My parents somehow managed to combine rich intellects and questioning minds with a vital and living faith that brought me a tremendous sense of security and confidence.

Sally was my father’s youth pastor before we married, and although she had a very different childhood, during which she learned to distrust change and loss, and her conversion came as a later teenager, she too shared this expectation that God is lovingly active in our lives.

Over the years I have struggled a bit to justify that wonderfully unreserved trust in God that Dad seemed to exude and that I am privileged to have caught from him, while subjecting faith to the questioning that an academic career and an honest mind require. I have come to accept that God does not usually intervene to save us from sorrow or illness, but does accompany us through them. I did not question why it was Sally, with so much still to offer, who fell to a particularly difficult strain of ovarian cancer. I am repulsed by the arrogant and self-centred teaching that some conservative “Christians” lay on the shoulders of suffering people, who have to believe against the evidence that they can control what God will do through their faith. What a burden. So much of what they teach seems to me to be entirely contrary to what Jesus taught. So I have needed to reconcile deeply-held faith with quite angry, urgent questions.

A challenge for many years was trying to find someone to discuss these matters with, as I did not want to weaken anyone’s faith by challenging conventional beliefs. This was even true with Sally, who did not seem to accept as easily that God’s ability or willingness to intervene was limited. I never quite found the words of comfort I longed for, and I guess this reflection is part of that search still. I think I am emerging with a more robust understanding of God. 

Over time I have discerned dimly, and am continuing to clarify slowly, a way of relaxing into the love of God that seems consistent with intellectual honesty. Let me trace what seems to me to be evidence that eternity is a thing, that life as we know it is just part of that eternity, (defined as loving), and that we are invited to participate in this loving eternity now in anticipation. These thoughts are informed by Christian theology, but I hope they will make some sense to those of other beliefs or none.

My diary from while Sally was still alive, but weakening, reflects the struggle to understand death:

“This thing of death is so puzzling. My mind cannot grasp it. It seems illogical that all these memories just switch off as the brain shuts down. They’re gone, together with the person’s unique personality, gifts and perspectives. What remains in her influence on others is just very vague, imprecise and sometime simply misleading echoes in the shadows cast by her onto others. Then those too fade and disappear. It is true [in the words of a hymn I have particularly resisted] that time bears all its sons away; they fly forgotten as a dream dies at the break of day. So I have to get used to that. Nothing is permanent. So don’t hang onto it?

“St Paul says love lasts.

“So in our home the slides and pictures and artefacts and vulnerable memories and documents and precious mementoes – all these are transitory, with value only insofar as they can contribute love?” 

We have a house filled with scrapbooks, boxes of things for children to do, photos, and precious things that Sally has created and stored. She had difficulty letting the past go, always fearful that the next step would not be as good, so I think preserving history was part of creating security in her life. Despite this, throughout her life, in the face of her fears, she embraced and made magnificent new meaning of each new phase (such as marriage, moving city, motherhood, grandmotherhood). Then, as I shall relate, she gradually let go of everything magnificently in her last months. That is one lesson I take from this experience: the gift of letting go. To my surprise I now find I am struggling to let go still, and needing to learn from her. From my diary as I struggled with sorting all that she left behind:

“Will I regret it if I let everything go? Is that the task of this stage of life; to let go? Kind of Buddhist relinquishment? Jesus crying out ‘It is finished?’ ‘Into your hands I place my spirit”.”

Once more, Sally was ahead of me. In those last few months she learned to let go quite amazingly, despite her life-long clinging to what she had. It did not happen all at once. She let go bit by bit, and I think learnt to trust as she went. She even relaxed about her most precious grandchildren, as she realised their parents and the other grandparents were quite able to stimulate and love them like she would have longed to. I am still trying to work out what letting go means in practice for me. Without imminent death ahead of me, I need to retain some stuff and some commitments – enough to live fully and fulfil my duty as father, grandfather and citizen. So how much does keeping aids to memory (like scrapbooks and correspondence and diaries) contribute to this? I have not yet answered this.

On the day she died, she heard the doctor tell her it was the end, and she declined going on a ventilator. Earlier we had discussed ourselves and with the doctors what we wanted in different scenarios – something I would warmly recommend all couples do well before the moment of decision comes. It removes the anxiety of working out what to do under incredible pressure. Then I arrived and confirmed this with the doctor. When I went in and said to Sally, “It looks like the time has come”, she nodded. She could not speak through the oxygen mask, but later when we were all chatting around her bed, she gestured us all towards her and we hugged. I think she was then loving us and letting us go finally. What courage.

So the first life lesson I have learnt through all this is about letting good things go courageously to embrace whatever comes next. 

Six weeks before Sally died, on a day when I was made aware that dying was a distinct possibility, I went for a lonely and quite fearful walk in the streets around the hospital where I spent my days during those periods when she was admitted. The medical team had just explained that there might be only a matter of weeks left.

As I walked I conducted a conversation with God in my mind. Of course there is no way of demonstrating that there was anything involved other than my imagination, but I was struck by the insight in the imagined replies to my plaintive points, and by the way they were supported by people’s loving help over those days. Human angels just seemed to pop up at the right time. And even if it was entirely imagined, I found the thoughts helpful. Richard Rohr points out that of course God speaks through our imagination – in fact how else would God speak to us?! The following is based on my diary as I wrote about the imagined conversation after the event:   

“Father, I’ve been getting little panics about the prospect of not having Sally’s voice to answer my questions and prompt me with wisdom. It is both scary and tragic.” Then I imagined the Father explaining that God would look after me. The Spirit has already organised lots of people to help, and I should remember to be silent and hear God’s wisdom when needed and at all times.

“Okay. That works.” Sally and I had been discussing what books to dispose of from our crowded shelves, but I concluded in this imagined conversation that I would keep the helpful spiritual books and keep studying to understand better how God works with us.

But then I imagined Sally’s voice saying “But don’t isolate yourself, Jon. Keep in contact with people. Grow friendships”. [I can still hear her voice pronouncing “Jon” – how precious] “Yes, Sal; you’re right.” Then I imagined the Father explaining that if I want God to look after me (I do), then I should understand that God comes with friends – loads of others God cares for too. And God would expect me to join in caring for them. They would bring God’s caring to me and I to them.

“Yes, that makes sense. I will look out for those I have been called to care for. I’ve made a reasonable job of standing beside Sal. I can be supportive of others; obviously in a less intense and intimate way, but still solid and careful. In fact I have probably been somewhat selfish in not looking beyond the immediate family often enough. Sorry.”

Then I imagined the Father saying to Sally that God was really sorry that she may need to leave before she feels she had completed her mission, especially with the grandkids. But she would have to leave sooner or later and God would want her to know that she really has laid a very sound foundation. She can have complete peace in leaving the grandchildren in the hands of four great parents who have been watching and learning and imitating her. Trust them! We discussed this later.

Then on Thursday 18 April 2019 Sally was admitted with a fierce infection that must have entered through the tube that had nourished her. On Friday they moved her to Intensive Care. We declined the ventilator and on Saturday we all gathered around her bed for the last six or seven hours of precious time together. I authorised the adrenalin to be stopped and during the afternoon she slipped away. The awful moment had come. 

There is absolutely no turning back from that. Much of my mourning for months afterwards was longing to wake up from the nightmare and just go back to normal. “Normal” was how we used to live together; this strange new experience was like a tough business trip away from home that should come to an end and I would be back to Sally at home. As my sister Margaret commented, one feels that, having worked so hard at dealing with the emotional and practical consequences of bereavement and managed the process so well for so long, one should be rewarded now with an end to the experience and a return to normal. But that normal is gone. The big task is to accept that there is a new normal, and to make that new normal something good and worthwhile. My current challenge, nearly a year after Sally died, is to turn grief into gratitude for those wonderful years, acknowledge that they are past, and find new meaning and fulfilment and joy in an unexpected new era of living by myself again. It will take a while.

And maybe through bereavement I can learn to face death and become inoculated against that fear, although I have not actually ever been aware of fearing my own death. When I am sure that death cannot rob me of love, then what is there left to fear? So it is true that perfect love drives out fear. That is what I would like to describe next. If the first lesson was about letting go, this one is about entering into a new, eternal reality of love.

The next day was Easter Sunday and all nine of us (four sons and daughters-in-law and four grandchildren) went to church together.

Copy from my journal, 21 April 2019; Easter day and the day after Sally died:

“I feel incredibly supported! The four kids are Sally continuing to love and care for me! And so many relatives and friends .The Lord has indeed looked after me through human angels.

“This morning in church I suddenly had a mental image of a joyful, loving, happy and caring Sally enveloping the whole church.

“I thought – but that’s supposed to be God, covering us with God’s love, not Sally!

“But then realised that if we die in Christ we join God. Jesus prayed that we may be one with him and the Father – us in God and God in us. So why should Sal not now be perfected as part of God? It’s what Jesus prayed for.

“AND Jesus said he goes to prepare a place for us. “In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” So there is one God household, but with many rooms, one occupied by Sally. She is there and also here with God.

“AND we are called to become part of this Kingdom now in anticipation. So right now I can join Sally in being one with God! Joy!”

That has been a very helpful image. It has transformed my own understanding of God’s love and our calling to love in God’s image. It has given me a new picture of what the human race is designed to become, and the path to get us there. More below.

The adrenalin seems to last for several weeks after bereavement, and I was clearly protected at that stage from the worst of the loss. Then it wears off in bits as one becomes able to face more of the loss. So mourning takes a long time. I’m still overwhelmed by periods of grief. Maybe it will get worse still. At ten months I am generally better off than after three months, but struggle still to grasp the new reality, and every step of letting go seems to require a new round of grief.

Is there evidence of life after this life? Of course Christians believe in the resurrection; but is there evidence? I heard an interesting story about a doctor who went to visit a patient’s mother who was housebound. As I recall the story, he would take her blood pressure and generally check up, while the daughter went to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. While he was doing this as usual, a man appeared in the room’s doorway, looking as if he wanted to know what the doctor was doing there. “I’m taking her blood pressure and checking up on her health,” he said and the man went away. When the daughter returned, he asked who the man was. She was startled and searched the house, as there was not supposed to be any man in the house. Then he described what he was wearing, and she was shocked, because those were clothes her father wore, including an unusual old jersey her mother used to object to. “Maybe he just visited,” the doctor suggested. “No, he died ten years ago.” 

The next day the old lady died.

So here was a neutral observer who did not know the family history and I do not think had met the father. So that cannot be explained by memories or wish-fulfilment or perceptual tricks. The doctor did not have prior experience of what he saw. It seemed to be that the old lady’s husband had come to fetch her – the doctor said that in his experience sometimes a loved one does come to fetch someone at their death.

A friend who lost his wife four or five years ago describes how on three occasions, while walking in different parts of their home city, he and a close companion stumbled upon pieces of rusted tin cut in the shape of the initial of his late wife’s name, lying in the street. His friend had already come across an identical initial while out walking. At the very time that she was thinking about his late wife, there it was on the pavement in front of her. Two of the other discoveries were strongly linked to moments of significance involving his late wife, and he and his companion took them all as a sign of her close presence with them. While neither of them recall where and when they found the fourth initial, they have all four. Once or twice could have been coincidence, but how could this happen four times?

Many people talk about comforting signs they come across suggesting that their lost loved one is present and caring for them. I would acknowledge the value of these, but my rational mind would generally dismiss them as creations of the intense wishing for just such reassurance. The Egyptian pyramids and each culture’s death rituals indicate the extraordinary lengths to which we will go to avoid the finality of death. So I know how our minds will conjure up what we wish to see. But those two stories are difficult to explain away.

I don’t know quite how to understand that picture in my mind of Sally, radiantly alive on Easter morning, with her/God’s arms over us. How very much I would love for further evidence! But it has led to helpful reflections. I suppose in the end this has to be a matter of faith informing a healthy approach to ultimate questions.

I am interested that on the Easter morning I was startled to see Sally’s face in the place that I assumed would be God’s. It was not what I expected. So it feels like a gift.

That has led to a hugely significant understanding of our relationship with God. We are created in God’s image and Jesus prayed, as recorded in John 17:21 ff, “Father, may they be one in us, as you are in me and I am in you. . . . With me in them and you in me, may they be so completely one that the world will realise that it was you who sent me and that I have loved them as much as you loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am . . .”

If this is true, then of course Sally was there with God! She is now in God. She is part of God, made perfect as promised. And this is not just something for the afterlife; Jesus was asking this for his living disciples. So we are invited to become a community that is united with God and each other, living and dead.

So I now imagine my morning prayer as meetings with the Father, the Son, the Spirit and Sally! She and all people, both living and dead, became for me the fourth person of the Trinity. In a sense, while we pray for others, we also pray to them, imagining them enclosed in the love of God.

I also found it helpful to imagine going into God rather than God filling me. The latter is very Scriptural and sound and true, but it can fall into the great modern heresy that Christian faith is all about me. It absolutely is not. It is about “us” and all of creation. So our task while still alive is to anticipate this amazing picture of heaven by living into God and God’s people – merging into this great fellowship.

Does that mean losing one’s identity? Not exactly. Identity is an interesting topic. I know that I have changed over the 44 years I was married to Sally. One of the challenges of bereavement is that it is a shock to one’s identity, which I discovered turned out to be “us” rather than “me”. So I am less concerned now to preserve my identity as an individual. I am a product of my parents, peers, Sally and our children, with all the other influences of society. So who am I? As I grow closer to God, will I not increasingly be formed by that deepest relationship? I hope so. 

So then, if there is an afterlife in which we merge into God, will we recognise each other? I think so. But we will be perfect. A fascinating journey for me was to realise firstly that Sally now loves me perfectly. That’s great. No expectations, judgement, disappointment, misunderstandings or any of the other imperfections that qualify a human relationship. My quirks can be cause for delight rather than disappointment! Now being part of God, she really loves me unconditionally. No regrets. It’s all healed. She is delighted with me.

Then secondly I realised that if she loves like God loves, then she loves everyone unconditionally! Does that mean I am less special to her now? No, it means that, just as her love for me has been raised to a level even higher than it was in life, so her love for everyone is raised to that level. There is no need to be jealous about her loving everyone else perfectly and specially, because she loves me perfectly and specially. What more could I possibly want?

So that is a wonderful illustration of God’s perfect love for everyone – and an image of how we are called to love. We cannot love billions of people perfectly while on earth. We can’t even love one person perfectly, and even that imperfect love is limited to a few people. So our journey on earth is to learn as far as we can to love everyone we come across unconditionally, growing into that delight and joy that I saw on Sal’s face on Easter day. 

And the family is the nursery of that love. Does learning to love everyone mean loving our family less? Absolutely not! We learn to love unconditionally by loving and serving and providing for spouse and children without limits, and with that as a basis, begin to look at how far we can go in lifting our love for others to that level.

This brings us into amazing fellowship with all humanity. The fellowship is perfect in God, and we are called to demonstrate it on earth (what Jesus called the Kingdom of God). That happens as we listen to Jesus and allow his Spirit to invade us and transform our ability to love. It begins with those closest to us in the family prototype of heaven, then extends to the Christian fellowship where we learn to love the unlovable, and then goes on to embrace everyone, worthy or not. If we do this right, we learn to love our enemies, as Jesus taught. We can delight in the lovable parts of our favourite worst dictator or mass murderer! . . . This should not blunt our resistance to evil, but help us to fight evil in society with its positive alternative, rather than slipping into evil means that simply aggravate the problem.

That is so consistent with what Jesus taught! It makes sense of even the difficult parts of his teaching, like the sermon on the mount. Whether in this life or the next, love is our destiny and fulfilment, as a human race and as individuals. This is a calling I can get really excited about. We absolutely can call everyone to join this movement toward God. It is the answer to personal and international problems. If we really adopted it, it would enable us to bring peace, heal the broken, feed the hungry, turn military spending into saving the environment, bring earth into the Kingdom of God.

The world needs this message more than anything else.