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There is a specific kind of grief that comes when you lose the person you were supposed to grow old with. It is not just sadness. It is disorientation. It is your world being turned upside down, waking up in a life that you do not recognize, reaching for someone who isn't there, someone who will never come back home, and looking at a life that you carefully built together, a future that you dreamed up together, and realizing that you have to build a new life and a new dream without them. Today I'm going to talk about that because I lost my person.

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Welcome to the Catholic Grief Podcast. I'm Jenny Berba. After walking through profound loss, I discovered that grief and faith are not enemies. In this space, we speak openly about grieving. We bring our grief to the foot of the cross, anchor ourselves in Scripture and the sacraments, and gently rebuild with Christ at the center. If you are carrying sorrow, you are seeing it here. Let's walk this path together.

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Thank you for being here today. This is going to be a long episode and a heavy one. So if you need to pause, come back to it, listen to it in pieces, please do that. Before we begin, let's pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, you are the God who does not flinch from our pain. You are the God who sat with the grieving at the tomb of Lazarus. You are the God who wept. Today I bring before you every heart listening who has ever lost their person, the one they built a life with, the one whose absence still catches them off guard in the quiet moments. Lord, meet them here in the memory, in the weight of what came after, in the life they are still learning to live. And as I share my story today, I ask you to use it not to reopen wounds, but to let every person listening know that they are not alone in this. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. I want to start by telling you a little bit about the life we had. Because grief makes more sense when you understand what was lost. Sean and I were high school sweethearts. We met at Youth Group when I was 16 and he was 17. He was the first person to greet me. He handed me the music for the opening of the meeting, and he made me feel welcome right away. That was Sean. That was just who he was. We got engaged secretly on April 1st, 1999, after fooling all our friends about it. When he took me home that night, he got down on one knee in the driveway and proposed for real. Then came prom season, and our hormones got the best of us, and I was pregnant at 17. We got married on May 28, 2000, when I was 18, three months after I gave birth to our oldest son, whom we named Luke. We grew up together. We learned how to be parents together. We had eleven children together. We lost one, our son Max, who I shared about in episode six. And we spent twenty one years building a life together. We were together for more than half our lives, twenty-three years total. Sean was a beloved middle school orchestra director. He played piano at our parish, and in December of 2019, he was offered a festival director position with music in the parks just before COVID hit. He retired from teaching, received a pay raise, and was now working from home, which allowed him more time with the family. And for years he poured himself into finishing his PhD. Years of online classes and weekend writing and I'll be done soon. Years of me holding down the home front while he worked in our home office. Years of missing family time and fun vacations, staying in the hotel room or the rental house, writing while we went out on our adventures. And he finally finished it. After eight hard years of work, intense research and writing, he had done it. He had earned his PhD in May of 2021. He was now Dr. Sean Roberts. We also welcomed our youngest child into the world the same week of his graduation. Our precious little Gwendolyn Rose. We were finally at the place where it was supposed to get easier. The hardest part was behind us. That's what we kept telling each other. We made it to our next chapter. We could relax and have fun now. And I want you to hold on to that because it matters for the rest of this story. In September of 2021, our family had been enjoying Hallow Screen at Bush Gardens. Restrictions from the pandemic were starting to lift, and we were so ready for some normal. And I'm not saying we contracted it from Busch Gardens. We very well could have gotten it from the grocery store or from church. But a few days after one of our visits, Sean started getting sick. Then more of us did, sore throats, body aches, fevers, and in the middle of a pandemic, you don't have the luxury of ignoring all that. We got an oxygen monitor from Walmart. For a few days, his numbers were fine. Then one evening they started dipping into the low nineties and then the high eighties. He did some deep breathing, and then we decided to go to bed and reassess things in the morning. In the morning, his numbers were worse. And we knew, despite how scared and nervous we were, that we had to call the doctor for next steps. And the doctor told us to head to the ER. Right before we left, we were sitting on our back deck for the fresh air. Sean told the kids to go inside and then turned to me and said, This is going to be a difficult conversation, but it has to happen. And that is not the way you want a conversation to start. Especially not a conversation right before driving your husband to the ER. He said, If I'm paralyzed from the neck down, I don't want to be saved. From the waist down is fine. Then he paused and said, and I want to be cremated. The first two were not new information to me. We had talked about that before, the way long married couples do, usually triggered by a TV show or a news story. But cremation? That one stopped me. We had never had that discussion before. Not once in 23 years. I told him that I'd honor what he wanted, if it ever came to that, but I was so sure it wouldn't come to that. We had time. We had a future we planned. We were going to grow old together, and we were gonna watch our grandchildren grow up, and maybe even see our great-grandchildren. And because we got married so young, we had goals to celebrate our 75th wedding anniversary before we died. We would be 94 at that milestone, so maybe a pipe dream, but not unrealistic. I drove him to the ER and sat with him in the waiting room until they called him back. And when they did, we hugged each other goodbye. We couldn't kiss because we both had masks on, but I regret that so much. I honestly don't remember when our last kiss actually was. Was it at the house that morning on the back deck? In the car before walking in? Or was it the day before? Because the shock of having to take him to the ER overshadowed everything. We said, I love you, and he walked to the back. And that was the last time I had physical contact with him while he was awake. Then I drove home in silence. They confirmed that he had COVID. His oxygen had dropped as low as 68. They put him on a BIPAP machine and admitted him. However, there were no ICU beds at our local hospital, so they transferred him to a hospital that was 45 minutes away, and it broke my heart that he was going to be so far away. But he could still text, and we could still FaceTime, and he was still himself. And he texted me constantly, but there was something in those texts that made me uncomfortable. He kept apologizing to me over and over. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for this. I'm sorry you have to deal with this. I kept telling him to stop, that he had nothing to apologize for, that he did nothing wrong, and that we were going to get through this. I didn't understand why he kept saying sorry, but now in the aftermath, through the healing, I do understand. And while Sean was in the hospital, I was at home getting worse, taking care of our eight children that were still living at home, including our four-month-old baby who I was breastfeeding. I was so scared, not just for Sean or for myself, but for our children. I had already seen the news articles about the kids who had lost both parents to COVID. I could not let that happen to ours. But I could tell that wasn't going to be good enough. So I reached out to a dear friend from our parish who is also a doctor. His wife sang in the choir with Sean, and the two of them had become good friends of ours. I asked him for a second opinion, and he put me on some medications and asked me to keep track of my oxygen levels with the monitor that we had bought from Walmart. I also asked him if he would take us on his patients because I no longer trusted the doctor that we had been seeing. He said yes, and from that point on he became my contact when it came to Sean's condition. There was a day that my O2 numbers were getting risky. So he sent me into the hospital and put me on more medication and on oxygen. Thankfully, I got better and was sent home within three days. However, while I was in the hospital, Sean was getting worse, and our friend, our doctor, came to talk to me in person. He gently explained that Sean needed to go on a ventilator. We had been trying so hard to avoid it. But he told me that if we waited any longer, it was going to become an emergency and it would be better to do it now while they still had some control. And then he told me that Sean had a 50-50 chance of survival. 50-50. A coin toss for the man I had spent more than half my life with. After our doctor left, I FaceTimed Sean. He couldn't talk because of the BIPAP machine. I told him what the doctor had told me about the ventilator. I told him I loved him. He nodded. He agreed to consent to the ventilator. We blew kisses to each other through the phone screen, and we said goodbye. It was so hard to get off that call. When I finally did, I cried and I pulled out my rosary and prayed. That was the last face-to-face conversation we had, and I didn't even get to hear his voice. He sent a video message to all the kids before he would no longer be able to speak, telling them he loved them and he was proud of them. And to this day, they cherish that video. A few days later, when I tested negative for COVID, I was able to go to the hospital to see him in person, to touch him, even if it was through gloves. He was already on the ventilator and in a medically induced coma, so he couldn't see me, but I hoped that he could sense that I was there, that maybe he could hear my voice. During that visit, a Catholic priest came into the room, Father Cassidy. He didn't know us. He served at a parish near the hospital, and he came to give Sean anointing of the sick, which I want to make sure that everyone understands. It is different than last rites. With anointing of the sick, there is still hope for healing. I will be forever grateful that Father Cassidy came and did that for us. He gave my husband the grace of the church in one of the hardest moments of his life. Once I got home from my own hospital stay, I lived in front of my laptop, watching Sean's My Chart. I watched his lab results like a hawk. Every number, every trend, every tiny shift. I do not recommend this, by the way, to anyone going through something similar. It almost became an obsession. Like I was trying to will him better through the data. I had to force myself to step away from the laptop and trust and pray more often than I like to admit. But I wasn't just watching his numbers. I was also researching every spare minute between making meals for the kids and getting the everyday chores taken care of. I continued looking for treatments, for protocols, for anything anyone, anywhere was trying with COVID patients that might give him a fighting chance. I would find something promising and text our doctor and ask if we could try this, but more often than not, the answer was the same. It's too late for that. Or he is not strong enough for that. I think anyone who has loved someone in an ICU knows that feeling. The desperate, frantic need to do something, anything, to not just sit there and watch. But sometimes there is no right thing left to do or to find. Sometimes you have done everything that you can do, and the only thing left is to keep loving them, keep praying, and keep showing up. And I was praying harder than I had ever prayed in my life. I reached out to every friend, every family member, every parish community, every prayer group I had ever been a part of. I posted all over social media. I was begging for prayer. I was begging for a miracle. I believed God could heal him. I still believe that. He could have. There was one night I pulled up his my chart and noticed his oxygen levels have dropped dangerously low, and I had no idea for how long. I called the hospital in a panic. The answer I got was not clear. They told me it could have been his position, or the test could have been taken at the wrong time. I just wanted to be in that room with him, and I couldn't be. A day or two later, they called me and told me they were transferring him to the bigger hospital in Newport News because they felt like that hospital could care for him better. I was glad he was going somewhere with more resources. But the new hospital was even farther away, and the protocols made visits much harder. So I knew I wasn't going to be able to be at his side at the way I wanted to be. So I did the only thing I could think of. I made him a playlist. I gathered together every Christian worship song he loved. Every song we had ever sung together at Mass. I made a playlist that was 24 hours long. I put it on an iPad, took it to the hospital, and asked the nurses to please just plug it in and let it play in his room. In case he can hear it. On the off chance, let him hear something that reminds him who he is and whose he is. I found out later that the nurses loved it too. They told me his room felt peaceful, that they liked being in there. I think about that a lot, even in a hospital room. In the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of everything falling apart. There was peace. Because the presence of worship changes a room. The presence of worship brings hope. I want to pause here for a moment. Because there's something I carried through all of those weeks that I still don't fully know how to make sense of. While Sean was in the hospital, I was posting on Facebook constantly, asking for prayers and posting updates. And at some point, I noticed that the Facebook algorithm had started showing me content for widows. Articles, support groups, reels. I was speechless. Sean was still alive. He was fighting. The thought of me becoming a widow had not even entered my mind. And I refused to let it enter my mind. So I clicked hide on every single one of those posts. Hide, hide, hide. Like if I could just get them off my feed, I could keep that reality off the table. And somewhere in those long days, another memory came to me. When I was a little girl, I asked my mom about the V-shaped hairline at the top of my forehead. And she told me it was a widow's peak. I remember asking her if that meant that I was going to be a widow. She laughed a little, the way moms do when kids ask a question out of left field. And she said, no, of course not. That's just what they call it. I hadn't thought about that memory in decades. But it came back to me as I prayed for my husband who was in a coma in the hospital. I try not to read too much into little things like that, but looking back, it may have been God's way of softening the ground beneath me before it crumbled. There are other things that I can see now as well. Sean and I had both been feeling a pull to spend more time in prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament. For me, I just had this feeling in my gut that I needed to be praying for peace, but I didn't know why. Sean seemed nervous, almost scared, especially about a cough that he had had for over a year that the doctors could not figure out. The week before we got sick, he had told me about an experience he had in the chapel. When he closed his eyes in prayer, he saw the face of Jesus. It startled him so much that he opened them and tried closing them again to see it one more time, but he couldn't. Over the months before Sean had died, he had been reaching out to old friends, people he had lost contact with, people he had had fallings out with. He was making amends, reconnecting. He became more adamant about taking pictures, especially with the kids, and saying yes to more of their requests. One night, just a couple days before he went to the ER, he asked me to pray the Padre Pio healing prayer over him. I don't want to make any claims of what Sean did or didn't understand, but he was a man of deep faith. And I believe God sometimes gives people gentle nudges when something is coming. Looking back, I can see that God was preparing us, not in a way that made it easier, but in a way that was tender and faithful. It was God not leaving us to walk blindly into what was coming. One more thing that is so interesting to me when looking back is the final text messages he sent. The very last conversation Sean and I had through text before they put him on the ventilator and in a medically induced coma. I wrote, We've got this. It's not your time to leave this earth yet. His response was, Love you. I'm hoping time speeds up now. I said, Love you too. I'm sure for you it will. And his last text to me was, Here we go, I love you. He never addressed what I had said about it not being his time to leave this earth. He just said, Here we go. I also found out later that he had texted his parents saying, see you on the other side, talk to Jenny. She has all the details. The CU on the other side took my breath away. We had been watching and listening to Hamilton the musical. He loved it so much, pretty much had it memorized. But the CU on the other side quote was a reference used to describe seeing them after death on the other side of the veil. When I look back at all those little puzzle pieces, I think that on some level Sean knew what was coming. And the apologies that I kept telling him to stop, they make sense now. He wasn't apologizing for getting sick. He was apologizing for something bigger, something he was sorry to leave me with. I know that was a long aside, but I felt it important to share. So now let's get back to the timeline. And as a reminder and to help solidify the timeline for you, he went into the hospital on September 26th. Seven days later, he was put on a ventilator on October 3rd. On the afternoon of October 22nd, the hospital called. They told me to come to the hospital, that they didn't think he had much time left. It had been twenty six days since the ER, nineteen days being on the ventilator. I'm not going to try and describe what happens inside of you when you get a call like that. Anyone who has gotten one already knows. I got to the hospital and they let me spend some time with him. Then they took me to a private room to discuss end of life options. That conversation is indescribable. They were asking me questions that Sean and I had never fully discussed. They were asking me to make decisions I was not prepared to make. Decisions that I should not have been making, not at just thirty nine years old. We were supposed to have more time. Life had finally felt like it was getting to the good part. After that conversation, I left the hospital. I went home to my kids. I hugged them, had dinner with them, and tried to get some sleep. At 3 AM the morning of October twenty third, the hospital called and told me to come back. I got dressed, got in the car, and drove. It was pouring down rain. It was dark, and I was so scared. I started praying the rosary. I cannot explain what that drive was really like. Trying to navigate the roads through both raindrops and tears. The weight of knowing what I was driving towards. The hail marries one after the other, like a lifeline I was holding on to with both hands. The Roserie is a prayer I have always gone to during times that I didn't know what else to do. It is the kind of prayer that you can easily say when you don't have any words of your own left, where all you can do is repeat what generations of Catholics before you have repeated, and you let that prayer carry you when you can't carry yourself. That drive was sacred. Even now, more than four years later, I can still feel it. I got to the hospital. I went to his room and pulled up a chair right next to his bed. I can't tell you how many times I prayed the rosary that day. But at one point I remember whispering to Sean, this isn't how our story is supposed to end. Because it wasn't. We were supposed to grow old together. We were supposed to watch our grandchildren and maybe even live long enough to see our great grandchildren. I called our friend, our doctor, and I asked him quietly, is there really no hope? There was a pause. And then very gently, he told me what he could about the lab results and what was most likely coming, and what was true, even though neither of us wanted it to be. I thanked him and hung up. The hospital room felt so small and the air felt stale. I picked up my rosary again and it felt heavier than usual. I started to pray again. But this time it wasn't praying for a miracle. Instead, I prayed for peace. I prayed for the grace to accept whatever was coming. God's will be done. When I was done praying, I called our parish priest, Father Gregory. We hadn't known him long. He had just come to our parish in July 2019. But he became part of our family very quickly, coming over to family dinners and even celebrating Mass on our back deck a few times. He stayed for a while, and we talked and prayed. And after a little bit, I asked him to give Sean last rites. He looked at me and he quietly asked, Are you sure it's the end? Are you sure he needs last rites? His voice was almost desperate. I said, Yes. God has given me a sense of peace. He has suffered enough. And then quieter to myself, I said, We have suffered enough. Father Gregory and I read a Bible passage together. We said the prayers, and he delicately anointed Sean. And then he sat with me in the silence for a bit before leaving. If you ever have the chance to call a priest for someone you love who is dying, please do so. Even if you are not sure, even if you don't know what exactly to ask for, just call. It matters more than you know. After Father Gregory left, I started making phone calls. I called his parents, I called my parents, I called our kids, I FaceTimed with them and told them that if they wanted to say anything to Sean, to their dad, now was the time. That was the hardest thing I have ever asked anyone to do. But everyone who loved him got to say something, even if he couldn't say anything back. And when everyone had said what they needed to say, I stayed and waited and prayed. I was right by his side when he took his last breath. My own breath caught. I whispered, I love you so very much. And I saw a little tear glistening at the corner of his eye. And I stayed there with my head on his chest for a few moments, because I wasn't ready for the next part. The nurse came in to turn off the machines. She said, He's handsome with his facial hair, isn't he? I actually chuckled. That's my defense mechanism. I laugh when things get too heavy or too awkward. I told her I had never seen him with facial hair, but he had never grown it out. I was surprised to see it was mostly a red orange, with some brown and gray mixed in. Even in the worst moment of my life, there was this strange little human moment. And I think that is grace too. God knew I needed that little breath, that little laugh. Our friends, the doctor and his wife from our parish, came right away. They were there within minutes. They said they would sit with me in the hospital room, with Sean on the bed until I was ready. I didn't want to go home. I couldn't go home, not yet. I couldn't walk into that house and wake up my kids to tell them that their dad was gone. I needed a night. I called my friend Kitty. Kitty had become a widow just a little before the pandemic hit. She knew. She was one of the few people who really knew what I was stepping into. She told me to come stay the night at her house. Our doctor drove my car, and his wife drove me in their car because they didn't want me driving alone. And in the car, on the way to Kitty's, she asked me something so simple. She said, tell me about Sean. Now I'm going to share something that I've only spoken about a few times and only one time publicly on a Facebook Live that has since been deleted per Facebook's new rules with live videos. The first words out of my mouth when she asked me to tell her about Sean were he wasn't always a good man. I shocked myself with those words. It was one of those moments that you didn't realize what you said until it was too late. A very raw moment. I don't remember much of what was said after that. But I want to pause here for a minute because I think it was one of the most honest things I have ever said about being a person. Sean was a good man. He was. He was a good father. He was a good husband, especially in the later years of our marriage. He loved God. He loved his family. He loved his friends. He loved his students and his colleagues. And he poured himself out for all of us. But he was also a human, a real, whole, complicated person. We had seasons in our marriage that were hard. We had hurts that we carried. We had things we had to work through. We got married at 18. Growing up together means you see every version of each other, including the ones that are still learning how to be the person God is calling you to be. And in that first raw moment of widowhood, before I had any chance to shape the story into something palatable, the thing that came out of me was the whole truth. He wasn't always a good man. And he became a good man. And I loved him, and I am grieving him, all of it at the same time. The world wants you to talk about your person in perfect memory, like they were a saint, like they never had a hard moment or never said a harsh word. But the people we lose are real people. Loving them means loving the whole truth of who they were, not just the part that fits on a funeral program. There is a saying that I have heard in the grief circles that I have been part of the past four and a half years. When you lose a parent, you lose your past. When you lose a child, you lose your future. When you lose a spouse, especially while you are still young, you lose it all. That is what it felt like because Sean was my past, my present, and my future all at once. And when he died, it wasn't just one loss. It was all of them all at the same time. But I think it's also important to say that you should not compare one grief with another. Another thing that is said in grief circles is that all grief is the same, yet all grief is different. Give each other grace and do not try to compare. It all hurts. And you don't know how until you experience it for yourself. And circumstances also change the grief. I have more to share, but I'm going to stop here for this episode. The next episode I will talk about those first moments, days, weeks, and months of becoming a widow, the fog, the things that had to be taken care of, the secondary losses, being a mother of many without the man that helped bring them into the world, and the struggles of what others expected of me. I do want to leave you with one last thing though. I did not get the miracle that I was so desperately begging God for. It hasn't been quick or easy. But over time, this is what I have come to know. God was with me every step of the way. And he continues to guide me along the path of my life. Despite not getting the miracle that I was so desperately asking for, I still believe God is a loving God. I still believe in Jesus. I have witnessed too much in my life to be able to deny them. God was there every step, even in the parts I still do not fully understand. Psalm forty six verses one to two states, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea. The earth had changed, the mountains had shaken, and the whole foundation of my life had come undone. And in the middle of that psalm, it did not promise that God would pull it all back together the way it was. It promised that he was a refuge, that he was strength, and that he was a very present help. Present. That word is important. He was not distant, not far away, but present, even when I could not feel it. And as we close, I want to invite you to take just five minutes, light a candle if you have one, and remember your person out loud. Say their name. Tell God one thing you loved about them, one thing you miss about them, and one thing that is still hard. Remembering is not staying stuck. Remembering is honoring, and honoring is holy. Thank you so much for being here today. I know this was a long one and a heavy one. If this episode met you where you are, I'd love for you to subscribe, leave a review so others who need this can find it, and share it with someone who might need to hear it this week. And if you are walking through the loss of a spouse right now, please know I am praying for you. I am praying that God meets you in the quiet of this week and that you feel held because you are held by God even here. I love you.