She made me anxious, so I told her I was going to take a bath to get rid of that plane feeling. It was May 3, three months after Buster had reappeared at a concert I did in Atlanta. I had been sick, and I talked about it with the audience, telling them I had prayed to God to help me. I asked them to help me, too. We all really connected, and afterward Buster said he would book more time in the studio to finish the album.
Now the album was about done, and we needed a cover. I filled the tub, absently singing to myself. I wish I could remember what it was, because this moment would always be the Before in our family.
The hotel phone rang, an angry buzz I had grown to hate from morning wakeup calls before going to the studio. I heard my mother answer, putting on the professional voice she always used at the hotel and studio. “Hello,” like she was just doing something important but was willing to give you her undivided attention.
There was a silence, then a loud, “What do you mean, died?”
I stepped out of the bathroom and saw my mother crumple. She screamed, holding the receiver to her chest, and it was as if that scream had just left her hollow. I stood there dumbly in the threshold, not even saying “What?” or “Who?” because I had never in my life seen her like this.
“Oh God, Connie,” she said. “Oh God.”
Aunt Connie, I thought. What was this about? When she hung up, she tried to gather herself, talking through her body seizing with this sudden grief, hitting like a heart attack.
“It’s Sarah,” she managed to say. “Baby, there was an accident.”
It felt like someone had passed me something hot, and my hands leaped up to drop it. My knees buckled, and I knelt. I curled my body as my mother covered me with hers, not saying anything. Now there were two worlds: One where Sarah was alive, and a completely insane one where God had taken her. And the only person I could think of who would help me understand that was Sarah.
I heard the pounding of the water filling the tub. I crawled away from my mother, unable to walk. I reached up to turn the faucet off just as the water was about to overflow. It felt like I had stopped something bad from happening. And yet the worst had already happened to us. I leaned against the tub, listening to the drip of the water. I looked out to see my mother still on the floor. Past her, my outfits now seemed strewn about the room, meaningless in this new world.
SARAH AND HER BOYFRIEND HAD BEEN DRIVING HOME FROM OUR NANA’S house. They were seniors on the edge of graduation, and each was getting ready to go to college. Sarah was accepted at Baylor and Howard Payne University, both in Texas. Sarah’s mom, Aunt Debbie, planned a big party at her house in conjunction with the Senior Party. Sarah wanted to get rid of kid stuff and make a little money for a trip to New York, so she had gathered things to sell at the annual Harris Creek garage sale in Nana’s neighborhood.
That Friday, Sarah and her parents went with her boyfriend to get it set up for the following morning. Then they headed back, and Sarah got in her boyfriend’s pickup for the fifteen-minute drive home. Aunt Debbie and Uncle Boyd were about five minutes behind them.
There was a rodeo going on in McGregor, and there was a horse named Gracious Will, likely getting its name from the eleventh chapter of Matthew. Jesus marvels to God that children like Sarah can see what matters in life better than the supposedly wise. “Yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.”
Gracious Will did not perform well that day, and the kid in charge of the horse was angry. So angry he hit the animal, and so hard the horse took off running.
The horse made it to the highway, narrowly missing two cars as it galloped against traffic. It stopped and stood in a ditch on the side of the road. As the pickup was about to pass, the horse suddenly leaped in front of it, going through the windshield and landing on top of Sarah.
My aunt and uncle drove up, and first saw the horse, dead on the road. Then the pickup in a ditch. Sarah’s boyfriend was outside of the truck, in shock. He had one small scratch on his face.
My uncle Boyd was a Texas highway patrolman, so he’d worked wrecks his whole life. He’d seen all kinds of stuff, shepherded so many people at the worst moments in their lives, and here was his Sarah. My Aunt Debbie, she had such a strong faith that she believed God would heal her daughter if she prayed enough. He would bring her back.
The ambulance came, and they all followed it to the hospital. Sarah was pronounced dead when she got there. She was gone. I know there are families who have had tragedies. But we were always somehow spared. There’s a comfort you slip into as good Christians. God’s got his angels over me, you think. I was taught—and generations before me believed—that we were protected. Without that blind faith, what did we have?
Mom and I got on the next flight home. I was in shock, I realize now, thinking if we did everything right, we would somehow undo the reality. Maybe like Aunt Debbie’s prayers. I thought we would go up in the air and then touch down on a world where this hadn’t happened. Going through the clouds, I put my head down on my mother’s lap.
I don’t know if I fell asleep, but I had a dream that I had fallen asleep, if that makes sense. Whether it was a dream or a vision, Sarah came to me. She had her long curly hair again. She had gotten her hair cut shorter a few weeks before and told me she hated it. But there it was. “I’m okay,” she said, giving me that smile she gave me every time she gently shook her head and told me to relax. “Please tell my mom I’m okay. Please give her a hug for me.”
Mom stroked my hair, and I sat up. “Sarah just came to me in a dream,” I told her, adding what she’d said about her mom.
“Well, you should let Aunt Debbie know,” she said. “She needs to hear that.”
Once we were home, my mom was my aunt’s lifeline and naturally set aside everything to focus solely on getting her big sister through this. Aunt Debbie summoned such grace to surrender all that pain and put it in His hands. I learned so much about strength and vulnerability walking hand in hand during those days. Our faith had not protected the very best of us, Sarah, the most precious and kindest member of our family, but there was also no way to get through this without faith.
When we arrived at Aunt Debbie’s house, she asked my dad if he would do the service.
“Of course,” he said.
She had been reading through Sarah’s journals and shared them with my parents. I didn’t even know Sarah kept diaries. They were so moving that my father asked permission to take them home to pull things from them for the service. He wove together passages of her writing, along with scripture and songs of praise that she highlighted. He told me how mature she was for her age, and how much she trusted God’s will. Her last entry was about her upcoming graduation, and she wrote that it was not nearly as important as her faith. “Since I know God and Jesus,” she wrote, “when I die, I will graduate.”
“Jess, there’s something else,” he said. “When Sarah prayed for people, she wrote their name down and what she asked God to give them.” He handed a journal to me, and I opened it to see the bubbles of her handwriting. Again and again, leafing through it, I saw my name. “Sarah prayed for you every day,” he said. “Every single day, she put your name down.”
Even now, I burst into tears. I had grown up so lonely. Not always alone, but always lonely. And that whole time, Sarah had thought of me with love every day, possibly at the very moments when I felt the most lost. That realization—that I was never truly alone all that time—changed how I thought about heaven, it wasn’t some place in the sky. It was with Sarah, and Sarah was with me. What had seemed like blind faith when we lost Sarah, the naive thought that we were protected, was real. I was never alone, and everything was going to be okay.