"I have no rest; but trouble comes" (Job 23:26b)

I have not posted to my journal since Friday. In the time since that post, I have become a very different man. My family’s world has changed forever.

My wife’s sister and her husband were not just family. They were our best friends. More than that – words like that kind of trivialize the close affection we had in our family. We took our vacations together. Any time a summer movie came out, we went to see them together. My wife and her sister had birthdays two days apart. My brother in law and I have a birthday one day apart. We always, always had good times when we were together, even if we were working hard on wood gathering or renovations.

We did a lot of work on my brother-in-law’s kitchen in the week leading up to our recent family camp, along with my other brother in law. My wife’s sister really wanted the kitchen replaced - it was her one dream for the cottage. So this last Friday, my wife, my youngest daughter, and I went up to the cottage to keep working – we’re nearly done, and it would be nice to finish. It was going to be a week of mundane work, but it is summer – we would have some fun, too.

When we got there, my sister in law was complaining of heartburn, but she had done up a "to-do list" of all the things we had to do to get the kitchen completely finished. We took an inventory in our minds of all the tasks that had to be done, and we dictated them to her. She wrote them down in a French notebook my other brother-in-law had brought up the week of the major renovations. I decided to go to bed, and got my youngest daughter tucked in. I kissed my wife goodnight. My sister in law drank a glass of milk for her heartburn and went to bed.

I got up about 5 AM, and went downstairs to let the dog out to pee. A friend we had brought with us was standing in the kitchen and the light was on.

She told me that my brother in law and my wife had taken my sister in law to the hospital – she had woken up nauseous, cold and clammy, and had asked to be taken. I knew from my friend’s ashen expression that it was quite serious, but I had yet to know how deeply serious it was.

I ran upstairs. I thought about Schrodinger’s cat, as I prayed – if I did not yet know my sister in law’s fate, maybe my prayers could make it all right. I asked God, "Please Lord, whatever health my sister in law can have with these symptoms, please God let her have it."

The phone rang. I ran downstairs, and our friend answered it. I could tell before she got off the phone to tell me that my dear, sweet, funny sister in law – a sweet woman so much like my wife – was lost to us.

Knowing that I needed to get phone numbers, I went out to her car, and started sobbing, lung rattling sobs. Dread, grief, unbelief, the sharp sting of finality, anger? I can’t tell you what I felt. In some measure all of these things. I was useless at looking for phone numbers, that’s for sure.

I ran down to the dock and I raged at the sky; "Lord! Could you not hear my prayers? Why couldn’t you answer them? And if you couldn’t answer them for me, then why not for her?" I let myself get angry at God, because I knew somehow that God was prepared to let me. He is our parent, after all – and parents above all are tough and can take it.

What I did not know was this. My wife and brother would give me the details later:
An hour earlier, my wife came downstairs to let the dog out to pee. When she came downstairs, all the lights were on. She saw our friend and my brother in law carrying my sister in law out to the car. My wife ran to get dressed and dashed into the car with my brother in law. He raced down the back road, gunning for highway seven. If he could make it to the hospital in Perth, maybe things could still be all right.

Bundled into the back seat, my sister in law kicked and thrashed. My brother in law had to lock the car windows, so she wouldn’t hurt herself. My sister in law said she was dying, and then tried to reach for her husband. He was giving everything he had to driving, so my wife took her hand.

Then she said,
"I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!"
"It hurts! It hurts!"
"Please God, please make it stop!"

And then, she stopped breathing. My wife jumped into the back seat, and began to administer CPR to her sister. She was instantly come over with a sense of peace, on the first breath she gave. She knew her sister was gone, but as a last gift, she gave my wife that last connection of souls that let her know everything was all right somehow. My wife knew however that my brother in law could not just let her go like that, so they pulled into the cop shop as my wife continued CPR. The police officer on duty, who I gather was an incredible comfort to them cleared them a spot to continue CPR, and hailed the volunteer firemen. The firemen came, but since my wife knows CPR and none of them had any training she did not, let her continue. After twenty minutes of futile effort, the police officer raced them in his truck to the Perth Hospital, at incredible speeds. It was not enough. It would turn out later she had had a massive heart attack she had no hope of surviving.

When they told me this story, my anger with God withdrew – God had answered a prayer: my sister-in-law’s, not mine. I wanted to keep her here, and my sister-in-law wanted to be released. The night it happened (after a throng of family had come up to the cottage), I flipped open my Bible, and it fell open to Job, and one of the passages I read most frequently. In it God asks if Job was there when the foundations of the world were laid, and if he had understanding.
I must confess I do not. I do not understand God’s plan, but He continues to prove He is aware of what he is doing. At a time like this, our faith is challenged: can we put trust in God?

Ultimately we must. His will is going to be carried out, no matter what. If we do not trust Him, we are in for a life of pain, incomprehension, and questioning. And the moment we do put our trust in him, we are rewarded with the compassion, consolation, and peace of a God who never fails to give these gifts to us, if we are open to them.

Incidentally, when that phone call came and I ran down to the dock to shout at God, two hummingbirds came to the feeder, and stayed there for what seems like hours. My dear, sweet sister-in-law loved hummingbirds – posters, statues, and artwork abound through their cottage.

Hummingbirds never come that early in the morning. And they certainly don’t linger like that.

My beloved sister in law, for whom I was deeply affectionate, was forty-four years old. Please say a prayer for us.