When Ryan and I left for Florida on Friday to attend a couple of meetings for Lovewell, we had no idea that the world would turn upside down by the time we arrived. Less than an hour after we got to Fort Lauderdale, we got a call that the father of two of our long-time Lovewell kids had died. Just dropped dead of a heart attack at work Friday morning. Jeff Groten was only 51 years old.
How you describe how things like this make you feel? Scared? Sad? Dumbfounded? Shocked? All of these and more. After we got the news, I felt panicked at the thought of actually seeing the kids and their mother. What do you say to people who have just lost their world? How do you deal with seeing people in their most raw emotional state? How do you hold these kids in your arms and tell them everything will be okay when you’re really not sure if that’s true? How do you manage to be a strong adult when you really just feel like lost kid yourself?
You just do it. You cry until your neck is soaked with hot tears, you hug until you feel the other person relax in your embrace, you say nothing but “I love you” because there’s nothing else to say that makes sense. You face your own fears. You are just physically present.
Jeff and his family have been a part of our lives for the last seven years. From the kids doing Lovewell, to sharing hot-wing dinners and Jeff’s favorite (mind-bendingly strong) margaritas, to their whole family coming to Salina for the holidays one December; where (at Jeff’s request) we filmed a movie in and around their hotel room involving a confused desk clerk and the famous Officer Turtle. Jeff loved to laugh, loved to make funny faces, loved to call you and use a crazy voice, trying to fool you into thinking he was someone else. But you always knew it was him. There was only one Jeff.
This was one of the hardest weekends in recent memory. The two kids, Jacob and Gabby (they are 19 and 17 now, but to me, they are still 13 and 11, just like when we first met them) are just shell shocked. Ryan and Jacob have an especially close relationship, and watching Ryan just physically hold Jacob up at the funeral was one of the most simultaneously gut wrenching and beautiful moments of my life. Ryan was also a pallbearer; honestly, I don’t know how he managed it. Seeing so many Lovewell kids at the service was really amazing. Even parents of Lovewell kids who knew Jacob and Gabby (kids who are now away at college) showed up to pay their respects.
No one should lose a parent that young. No child should have to look up at an adult and say “I don’t want to bury my dad.” No 19 year-old should have to be the man of the house.
I don’t know why this happened. I can’t see a reason for it now. (Does a death ever seem reasonable?) But I do know that right now, in times like these, faith is the only thing that keeps you together, even a little bit. Yesterday, as I looked at the cloud spotted sky, as we all said our final goodbyes to Jeff I was never more grateful for my faith. In something bigger than this. Than us. Than our physical being. I don’t know exactly what that means, I don’t know what the answers are, but I do know that as I caught eyes with the many, many people who loved Jeff at the funeral, I knew that in the comfort we provide for each other, God is there. In the spaces between words and tears, God is there. In the life that carries on, God is there.
Our hearts are broken, but I suppose, by definition, a broken heart is an open heart. And now that our hearts are open, we can let them fill with love and healing. He is always in our hearts, always on our minds and always alive in our memories.
Shalom, Jeff.
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
Emily Dickinson
