It is August 25, 2016 and we are in our last hours at the hospital with Shea. Please remember as you're reading this that it is only part of the story, one part seen through the eyes of her two sisters...what we saw and what we felt. There are so many other pieces to this story that we would never want to tell ourselves. Our hope and prayer in sharing this is that more than seeing who is present, you see God's presence.
Lindsey
Once we sat for a minute and calmed down my sweet dad spoke up and said in the most casual way, "Well I talked to Shea last night!" Sara and I looked at him wide eyed and said, "you did!? What do you mean?" He said "well, while I was in the waiting room all night I was laying there and I heard Shea's voice.....she told me that she's okay and she talked about how beautiful Heaven is! She said "daddy! you should see the flowers!" She told me to "please take care of Eva!" and in her voice I heard her say "mom!! I'm okay!"
I was shocked by what he was saying and I wondered for a second if he was joking? I kept saying "really?! Oh my gosh! Are you sure?" I was excited and still amazed. He didn't care that we questioned him one bit! Dad just shrugged his shoulders and said "I'm just tellin' ya what I heard!"
My dad is a super hardworking southern man, he loves to be on the farm, he's constantly fixing something. To him, his family and his farm are everything! Dad has never been the type to talk about God or Heaven and I knew in this situation he wouldn't joke about something like that. His first born daughter is laying on a hospital bed right in front of us on a life support machine, now would definitely NOT be the time to make something up. How absolutely amazing! What a HUGE BLESSING that God gave us to help give us his hope and peace at such a critical moment. I believe God wanted us to know she was safe in Heaven with him. I believe HE knew dad would listen carefully if it was Shea's voice he heard. We kept talking about it and wondering all kinds of different things..what it was like in Heaven, and if she could see her family in here with her? Out of nowhere I thought about my miscarriage that I had before. After having my first child, I got pregnant again at the same time Shea was pregnant, but I miscarried at about 7 or 8 weeks. And I said out loud "my baby is in Heaven with Shea now, I wonder if she gets to take care of it?" My child in Heaven would have been very close to the same age as Shea's own child. And very casually again dad spoke up and said, "she said she's holding the baby right now." He was so confident in what he was hearing from her, not caring at all if we believed him or not. It was absolutely incredible! I knew then that I had that miscarriage for a reason. God has a reason for everything! I can't explain why or how dad heard what he did?! I don't know that anyone can truly explain that, I believe that some things are God's true miracles!
I knew that was my last day with Shea's body, I say body because I could not feel her spirit at all anymore, this was just her shell. This was my sister, best friend, spiritual guide, and my mother. I didn't truly realize till she was gone that she had taken on so many big roles in my life. This was the last day I would see her while she still had a heartbeat. I wanted to remember everything about her. I sat close by her side holding her hand that was still cold feeling and just stared at her. I remember thinking to myself "look at everything! Remember every detail of her beautiful face! This is your last chance!" I slowly looked over every tiny freckle on her face, the color of her skin, her eyebrows and eyelashes, and the way her nose and lips are shaped. I can still picture her hands exactly, and how long she always kept her nails. I could tell that they must had been cut in the surgery room by someone because Shea never kept them that short. Her toes were painted with the same color that she always liked, an orangey red. Shea almost always picked any shade of red for her polish. I didn't want to forget anything about her. I want all her beautiful details to be in my mind forever.
Every single time a new nurse would come in the room, dad would well up with tears and with his shaky voice he would tell that nurse about how amazing Shea is! He would tell them to go to her website and look at the pictures she took and see how talented she is "she's been all over the world and lived a happy and full life, she never gave us any trouble at all...did she bubba?!" He would say with tears coming down his face looking at my mother. He wanted them to know the person they were caring for. He wanted them to know this was not just any other patient, this girl is so special! And with her laying there unconscious, Shea couldn't show the nurses how sweet, Godly, kindhearted and talented she was, we needed to tell them for her! It made Sara and I cry every time he did this. We weren't use to seeing dad cry and being "daddy's girls" it hurt our hearts for him. Not only were we experiencing all of this as sisters but it was also hurting us to go through all of this as daughters. We watched as our parents fell apart, seeing them loose their child in the blink of an eye. All of their actions and emotions stood out so much to us, I felt like we were protective of them, worrying about how they would possibly get through this. Everything we had ever known for our entire life and everything we had pictured for our future was now totally different. Our family wasn't going to be whole any longer, there is a piece of us that will always be missing from now on.
Sara
Hearing dad tell all of the nurses everything he could about Shea each time they walked in, was heartbreaking. He wanted them to know her- to see how incredible of a person they were caring for. He wanted them to see how special she was. I am sure all families are like this as they wait with their loved one in the ICU. I think if dad didn't have an old flip phone, he would have pulled up her website on his phone to show how talented she was. He kept talking about how she had traveled the world and gotten to visit so many places. He would tell them about how her pictures were even in magazines. Dad was so proud of his sweet pea.
As we began talking about what would happen to Shea, I can remember dad kept on saying, "If God wants her, he will take her." He had said it a few times throughout the day, and then there was a point where dad broke down. I think saying those words finally got to him- it was becoming too real for him too. He said those same words, and then began to cry. The kind where you try to hold it in but it bursts out. Then he shook his head and said, "well of course He wants her, who wouldn't?" I began crying too- because it was so true. Shea was such an amazing person, she was loved by so many- she had been so faithful. She was so thankful for the good days, but she also had so much hope on the bad days. On February 1, 2016 Shea wrote a post, Life is Terminal, on her personal blog. A post about the love she was feeling from friends through cards and special notes, but also a love she felt from our God...
“I’m absolutely blown away by how PRESENT God is in all of this, in my story… placing me on the hearts of others to write and share with me, such personal pains and praises… weaving all of the stories and connections and relationships together… He is so creative. He is so much bigger than any of our pain or tragedy. You just have to look for it. We can count our misfortunes and failures with blinders on, or we can open our eyes and look for the good. ”
Lindsey
Throughout that day we all knew the question was coming. When exactly is it time to take her off the life support? The doctor was so kind to us. He could tell how hard this was on all of us and he tried to make it as easy as possible to decide when it was the right moment. I think he could still feel that there was a part of us that was unsure about whether or not Shea had enough time yet. He said he wanted to do one more test on Shea to check for brain activity. But we knew it was basically just to give us all assurance that there was no way she could possibly come out of this. I could see dad's mind constantly thinking about this, he would tell us "once we say to take her off of it, it's really not us deciding, it's just us putting it in God's hands." I knew he kept saying that out loud over and over so that he would believe it for himself too. So that he could put his trust in God and not in man.
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.”
Dad walked out of Shea's room and down the hall. To this day he still doesn't know it, but I followed him. You could just see the heaviness on his face. As our father, he was our protector and he felt the weight of all of this for his baby girl. I wanted to check on him, I was worried about him. As he went around a corner I stood back behind him and listened to him make a phone call. He called one of our cousins, Chip, who is a retired veterinarian. He is a smart, kindhearted, good man who my dad trusted, but more importantly he is also a loving father. He listened as my dad asked him for advice. He explained every detail to him that the doctor said and asked him what he would do if it was his daughter. Chip has two daughters of his own. I believe dad knew that Chip would think about this from a father's point of view. Dad wanted someone to tell him that we were doing the right thing, that we should trust the doctors. My dads father papal passed away over twenty years ago so dad couldn't go to him for advice. He needed someone to rely on at this crucial moment and dad knew he would be honest, Chip knew how much this meant to all of us. To most people this may seem completely normal to call someone and ask for help but to me this stood out, in my entire life I can't think of many moments where my dad asked someone for help. He has always been the type to just do things on his own no matter how hard.
The results came back from the test as expected, there wasn't any chance she could make it out of this. Even now mom still struggles with that, she wonders if we should have waited longer, but it just wasn't possible. Shea would have had no life at all. Mom even asked the doctor what Shea would be like if we kept her on the machine. I know she just desperately tried to think of anyway possible to keep her child on this Earth. And with his face saddened the doctor would point to Shea and say "she would be just like this". Just a body, no spirit, no life ... definitely not what Shea would want us to do. We knew it was time to say our last goodbyes and take her off the life support. I was nervous about how it would go, would she struggle taking her very last breath? I had no idea what to expect. We prayed over her and kissed her and cried. I can remember my mother sobbing and repeating "My three girls! My three girls!" I knew in her mind she was trying to wrap her head around having only two daughters here on Earth. I felt like I was going through the motions of everything you think your suppose to do in the last minutes of someone's life, but I didn't truly feel present. It's such an out of body experience. I knew that I should pray and say things to her that I wouldnt get to say again and hug and kiss her, but I don't think I really felt what was actually happening to her and all of us. I think we were all in absolute shock.
“So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
After giving us some time the doctor came back in, you could tell he wanted to hear that we were ready. We asked how all this would work and how long she might last afterwards. He said sometimes minutes to seconds. My mother requested for everything to be taken off of Shea. All the wires and tubes that were attached to her. She said she just wanted to hold her without all of that on her body. There were so many nurses helping that we had to step out of the room and watch from the doorway while they took everything off of her. My mother stayed in the room, she refused to leave Shea's side. We watched while they unhooked the machine that was keeping my sister alive, the only thing that was making her chest pump in air, they tried to work quickly because they knew we wanted to be in the room with her for her last seconds of life. While standing at the door I asked someone to please send the chaplain up to Shea's room. The nurses got done quickly and let us back in.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Sara
I can remember watching the nurses turn off Shea's monitor. Silencing the alarms that would ring when her heart stopped beating. I didn't want to hear that- the sound of her heart flat lining and watching that screen go dark made it so real. We wouldn't need to monitor her blood pressure or oxygen anymore. I couldn't believe this was happening. I was so scared about what it would be like to see Shea take her final breathe, or would she even take one? I quietly prayed, asking God to please let Shea go easily, not to struggle. I had no idea what to expect. Hearing the sound of the life support machine pumping up and down, up and down, had become a sound in her room that I didn't really hear anymore. We had gotten so used to hearing it. But as soon as they walked around to the other side of Shea and turned it off, it was noticed. It was so quiet, too quiet. The nurses worked so quickly as we were all crowded around her door, letting them squeeze through us as they needed to go in and out, but we just couldn't move away from her any further. We didn't want to miss anything- we didn't know how fast this all would happen. I felt like the whole ICU was silent. Chad held me as we walked back into her room, circled around her, and laid our hands on her body. I can remember hearing the doctor whisper the words, "time of death." It's something you hear in movies, but when it happens in real life- the sounds of those words are so final. It was done. All of the nurses and doctors left the room, they pulled the curtain over to cover the doorway and left us alone with her. Our family's beautiful sister, daughter, wife, aunt, and mother, she laid there as we all sobbed over her, just in complete devastation and disbelief.
“Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress.”
Lindsey
We all crowded around her hospital bed. My mother placed her hands on Shea's chest, checking for her heartbeat or a breath, shouting "Is that it!! Is she gone!?" It happened so fast. She didn't take one single breath on her own. The life support was the only thing keeping her alive. I believe Shea was already in Heaven the day before. I think God was just giving us time to say goodbye with her body. The chaplain came in and we prayed around her one last time.
