Good Friday

Originally posted April 17, 2020

“Have you thought about when you want to have the service?” my Dad asked softly.

I stared blankly, physically unable to formulate a response.

“I know it’s hard,” he continued, “but you have to make a decision.”

Still nothing.

I wanted to dialog about it, as if I actually cared, but it was like my brain just couldn’t, wouldn’t, let me speak.

It was Tuesday morning, March 27, 2018. My husband had been dead for a little over 24 hours. I was 38 weeks pregnant. My lips were swollen and chapped from sobbing; my eyes stung, and my head was ringing with that buzzing sound you only get from being drunk or beyond physically exhausted.

I was catatonic. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t feel. I wanted to melt into the eerie silence of my bedroom and pretend this wasn’t real. It didn’t feel real. It felt dark and foggy, like a bad dream.

“Stress-paralyzed” was an inside joke I used to make when I felt overwhelmed and needed him to make the final decision. Except now, he wasn’t here. If I could have let him choose the day he wanted to be buried, I gladly would have. I honestly wouldn’t have cared if anyone else would have made the decision for me.

“Well, it’s supposed to rain all week, but Friday is supposed to be nice. Sunshine and clear skies…. and Friday is ‘Good Friday’ too,” he said with an optimistic nudge in his voice. “I think he would have liked that.”

A simple “okay” was all I could muster.

More Decisions

A few hours later, I was at the funeral home making more impossible decisions.

“Do you want the casket open or closed?”

“What clothes do you want him dressed in?”

“Who are the pall bearers going to be?”

“What do you want on the service leaflet?”

“What scriptures do you want to use?”

“What music do you want played?”

“Do you have pictures for a slideshow? We need those by tomorrow.”

“Have you written the eulogy? We also need that by tomorrow.”

The dizzying onslaught of questions and decisions that had to be made right then seemed endless… and insane. “Of course I haven’t thought about any of this. He’s been dead for one day. He was 36. Why would I have ever thought about any of this at this point in our lives?”

My inner-monologue raged.

I wanted to snap at the service coordinator, and point out the obscene injustice of this ridiculously unfair situation and these impossible questions, but I didn’t need to. My giant pregnant belly said everything that needed to be said about that. So I tried to be positive and decisive, but my brain couldn’t move past the fact that I’d just signed my husband’s death certificate and picked out the wooden box he was going to be buried in.

“Is this really my life?”

I kept asking myself, but wanted to remain unconvinced of the answer.

___________

The four days between Monday and Friday felt like weeks, and yet, at the same time, I barely had enough time to get all the things done that had to be done. All my brain could do was replay the minute details of the morning I found him dead over and over and over again, as if my subconscious was searching for any unnoticed clue that might help this tragedy make more sense.

I kept finding myself lost in thought; trapped in that memory of him lying there. It was almost impossible to think of anything else. But thankfully, with so much help from my church, family, and so many amazing friends, I somehow managed to make enough decisions to actually have the service on Friday.

That morning, I felt anxious and jittery. I stayed up way too late into the morning writing his eulogy and was running on 2 hours of sleep, on top of hardly any sleep anyway. Luckily for me, a few friends came over to help me get ready or else I’m not sure I would have actually made it there on time.

“At least my hair looks pretty,” I thought to myself, when I looked in the mirror that morning and saw my blotchy, tear-stained, swollen face and blood-shot eyes hiding behind my glasses. My black maternity dress was stretched to max capacity; an amethyst stone he surprised me with when I was pregnant with our first baby hung around my neck, along with my wedding ring, because it wouldn’t fit over my pregnant sausage fingers.

“This is as good as burying your husband at 38 weeks pregnant gets,” I said, and walked out, determined to celebrate his life.

Time-warp

I don’t remember the church luncheon hosted for our family members before the service, really, at all. I remember staring at a plate full of brisket, that on any normal day I would have devoured, pregnant or not, but that day, the very thought of eating anything made me nauseated.

The next thing I remember is standing in front of the two wooden double-doors that open to the center aisle of our church sanctuary. I stood there, analyzing the wood grain of these giant oak doors with glistening polyurethane finish, trying to distract my brain with any unimportant detail I could find. The curse of being a writer, I suppose – that even when you’re actively trying not to observe details, your brain is still tucking away nuances of the scene for future use.

My dad was standing at my right side with our arms locked, holding my hand in his, and there was a casual chatter throughout the crowd of people behind me waiting to be seated with the family. I don’t remember how long I stood there, but it felt like forever.

Finally, the service coordinator came over to me and asked if I was ready. I nodded yes, and as she and another person swung open the sanctuary doors in unison, a hush fell over the crowd behind me and the sea of people before me. My dad squeezed my hand, and we took a step through the threshold.

Instantly, my mind was transported back to another aisle we walked down arm in arm – a beautiful aisle adorned with flowers and smiling faces on each side and a handsome man standing at the top of the steps in a light-grey suit looking stunning, albeit slightly terrified, but stunning nonetheless.

That exact same shyness I felt on my wedding day hit me in the chest as I realized every set of eyes in the room was staring at me once again – something I’ve never enjoyed. My eyes bounced back and forth across the aisle as I recognized every face, unable to hold eye-contact with anyone for more than a split second because the sympathy in every down-turned smile and falling tear was utterly overwhelming.

I looked ahead and saw our Pastors standing at the front of the sanctuary with solemn faces, because instead of standing next to a groom ready to receive his bride, they stood in front of that beautiful mahogany box that I’d picked out three days earlier with my sleeping groom inside.

And much like my wedding day, the platform and the altar were filled with beautiful flower arrangements, so many that it reminded me of a floral boutique. But there on the big screen above the stage was the picture of the man I loved more than life, next to the words:

In Loving Memory of Chadley L. Robinson October 21, 1981 –
March 26, 2018

Worship

One of my favorite things about my husband was the reckless abandon he displayed when he worshiped the Lord. He didn’t need pressure from the crowd to raise his tattooed arms high above the heads of everyone else. He was usually one of the first people to throw his hands up in the air, with total disregard for how that might make others feel. He didn’t care. He was there for one reason – to meet with God.

So many times in watching him worship, I have thought that the way he splayed his arms slightly to the sides with wrists turned out, reminded me so much of every depiction I’d ever seen of Jesus hanging on the cross, with wrists much higher than his chest, sunken from the weight of humanity pulling him down; the moment of total surrender to the will of God when Christ willingly breathed his last breath and hung lifeless.

The way he worshiped reminded me of that – a mighty man in a moment of full-surrender to his Savior, open and willing to do whatever the Lord asked of him. It was always such a humbling sight for me to see him this way; a powerful reminder that no matter his flaws, or what we fought about on the way to church that morning, that he LOVED God, and at his core, his desire was to make his life a pleasing sacrifice to the Lord.

He loved to praise God, so it only seemed fitting that we started his memorial service with worship, because whether he was alive here on earth or alive in heaven, God was still worthy of my praise. I fully believed that on March 30, 2018 when we buried him, and even though life has become exponentially harder since that day, I still believe it now, two years later.

We sang three songs. The first two were great suggestions from our worship pastor; songs I thought might minister to the other guests, but the last one – that song was for me.

I Surrender All

I didn’t grow up in church, so discovering hymns was something I did voluntarily as an adult, years into my Christian walk. I fell in love with I Surrender All from the first time I heard it.

The notion of “surrender” felt foreign to this self-sufficient, super-independent girl in her 20s, but as with most spiritual remedies, we have a way of resisting the things we actually need the most; the things God is asking us to do. The world says “surrender to God” is chains of social restriction, but I found out that it was only through surrender that I became truly free.

This song is a spiritual marker for me. The way the Israelites would build a small monument as a place of remembrance where they encountered God – that’s how I feel about this song. It reminds me of the way God set me free so many years ago, and yet, surrender is still a daily, ever-deepening choice of the believer that is never fully complete on this side of eternity.

I had it sung at my wedding right before I walked down the aisle. I could hear it coming through the heavy wooden doors to the lobby where I was standing – the perfect symbol of what I wanted my marriage to be; one of mutual surrender to the Lord and to each other no matter what we faced.

My heart joyously praised the Lord in the laying down of my own individual identity in full surrender to God and to my husband on our wedding day, and it only felt right that I ended our holy covenant of marriage the same exact way – in a posture of surrender.

I worshiped with everything I had in my heart that day, like him, without a care as to what the 400+ people there thought about it, and by the end of the last song, my heart was at peace with God even in the midst of such an awful, unfair circumstance.

What followed over the next hour was the most beautiful display of glorifying God and honoring someone’s life that I’ve ever seen. I’ve watched the service recording back a few times, and I’m still in awe of how our Pastors were able to so accurately describe him and the wonderful man he was, all the while exalting the name and the power of the Lord. There is nothing I would change about his memorial service.

I’m sure we’ve all heard the saying “Live your life in a way that the Pastor doesn’t have to lie at your funeral” or some variation thereof. There were no lies spoken that day. I and so many others can attest that he really was that great of a husband, father, friend, and messenger of the gospel.

It feels strange to say that the day I buried my husband was one of the best days I’ve experienced since he died, but it’s true. It was an easy day. Only in the sense that it’s not hard to celebrate someone as incredible as he was, and there was no shortage of light-hearted and heart-warming things to say about someone so authentic and so unique. It felt good to laugh about his quirks and gush with love over his obvious affection for me and our kids; and most of all, it felt so deeply satisfying to know that everyone in the room left with a genuine glimpse of who he was, how he lived, and the God he served. It was comforting to know that, even for just an hour, everyone there was as captivated with him as I was.

Truly, the only thing I disliked about his memorial service, was that it eventually had to end; that I couldn’t just live in that moment of honoring him for another few hours. Being surrounded by 400 people who support you is amazing. Going home to and empty house, where you don’t know what tomorrow looks like, is terrifying.

Burial

I don’t remember much about the graveside service itself. I don’t remember what our Pastor said, I think, because I was already starting to get anxious about going home and facing our children.

I do remember hugging a lot of people, and waiting for people to leave so I could have one more moment alone in the quiet next to his box before they lowered it into the ground.

They don’t usually open the casket at the graveside service for another viewing, but after almost everyone had left, and the cemetery workers were preparing to close his grave, the funeral coordinator approached me (because I was still nearby) and let me know they were going to open the casket to remove the corner decorations so that I could have them as keepsakes.

When they were ready to close the lid of his casket forever, I stopped them suddenly and asked for one more moment of time, and even though the sunset was rapidly approaching, they obliged me.

I stood there staring at him one last time, desperately taking in the details of his face, texture of his hair, and courseness of his hands that I’d found so much security in, terrified that one day I might forget these things about him; hoping that just a few more moments might solidify them in my memory permanently.

He obviously didn’t look exactly like he did living, but he looked so much better than he did when I found him the morning he died, so there was a lot of healing in seeing his face relaxed and hands folded peacefully across his abdomen, ready for eternal rest. And one last time, I whispered,

“Love you forever. Miss you always. See you in eternity, Love.”

I was the last person who saw him in life, and something felt so sacred about being the last person to see him in death as well.

I stepped back and nodded to the coordinator that I was done, and she closed the lid and rapidly started preparing the surroundings for his decent into the earth.

I stood there right by the grave opening and watched the entire process. I watched them carefully lower his casket; and then skillfully lower the lid to the concrete enclosure down over his casket; and then finally, the mounds and mounds of dirt they had to bring in to actually close the grave.

Shovel by shovel, I watched, and like a sad scene from a movie, when the top of the concrete box was almost completely covered in dirt, I threw a purple flower from one of the arrangements down into the pit with him. Purple – our wedding color – one last symbol of love for the last time I’d ever see him on earth.

Finished

I went home and was emotionally exhausted and sort of numb and not sure what I was supposed to feel next. But I was proud of the day and the way we honored his life, and for some reason, I felt like this moment needed to be documented, so I snapped this picture in my bathroom. I guess I thought I’d want to remember what I looked like on the day I buried my husband, and he always loved pictures of my giant pregnant belly 🙂

• 

As I was lying in bed that night, I couldn’t help but think of what the disciples must have been feeling almost 2000 years ago after they laid Jesus in the tomb and rolled the stone over the opening. Even in my uncertainty, I couldn’t fathom how terrified and distraught and hopeless they must have felt that night.

I knew that even though this tragedy was unforeseen and devastating, it did not nullify the plans that God is still working out. They did not.

I knew this, because in two days, I was going to get up and go to church on Easter Sunday and worship the risen Savior. They did not.

And I knew then, and still today, because of that resurrection, I would see my husband again someday in eternity. They also did not.

What a blessing, what hope we have in knowing in our darkest hour, what they did not; knowing that Sunday is coming, and that subsequently, our eternity is sealed. The death and resurrection of Christ came once, and yet will reunify us all forevermore. It’s the proof of God’s providence; the down-payment on the promised beauty and glory and wonder that is to come when all things are made new; the blessed hope. What a gift we have to cling to this hope when our world falls apart.

This realization about the disciples is the reason his burial will always be associated with Good Friday in my mind. The date on the calendar matters little. Whether March 30th or April 12th or any day in between, I buried my husband on Good Friday.

_______________

The day my husband died was chaos. There are hours and hours of time I can’t remember at all – a response to trauma, I’m sure. But one thing I do remember is kneeling down beside my bed that night, after everyone went home, and crying out to God. This indignant feeling came over me while I was weeping, and I remember praying, “Lord, if this is my lot, then okay, but I want to see souls saved from this.”

In that moment, I think I was picturing people giving their hearts to God at his memorial service. What I didn’t expect was our two older children giving their hearts to God over a year later after multiple conversations about their Daddy being in heaven and how they could get their too someday.

The idea that his death has and will continue to impact their eternal lives so much is the most humbling answer to prayer I have ever received.

I know, even in some illusionary explanation of his death, if he would have been presented with the choice of dying right then to save his children in the future, he would have accepted that offer in an instant, even knowing how much heartache this would cause, because our end-goal as parents was always to raise kids who know and love Jesus.

His life in exchange for their eternity would have been an easy decision, even fraught with so much pain. I imagine Christ came to the same conclusion when he was willingly nailed to the cross on Good Friday.

Blessings,

Shannon