An Early Good-bye

Be life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.

Amish Proverb

After saving for years, David and Annie Schwartz bought their first farm in June. David had hoped they could have moved in earlier in spring, but the former owners wouldn’t be hurried. He rushed to plant corn, wheat, and beans before the heat of summer arrived, working late into the evening. Annie worried about how hard he was driving himself, but she knew how much this farm meant to him. He was providing for his family—his wife, and his four-year-old son, Junior, and one-year-old daughter, Maggie.

Annie said it was the happiest summer of their lives. “As hard as David worked, he still made time for some fun family moments. One hot afternoon, he scooped up Junior and the two spent the rest of the day fishing. They caught no fish, but that’s not the point of fishing anyhow, is it?” She smiled. “Happy, happy memories.”

In August, David was loading hay into the haymow in the barn. Annie isn’t quite sure what happened next, but she heard Junior screaming for her to come. She grabbed Maggie and rushed out to the field. She found her husband sprawled on the barn floor, unconscious.

David was taken by ambulance to the hospital in Wichita. Annie could tell, from the look on the faces of the paramedics, that David was in serious condition. At the hospital, she was told that he must have slipped and fallen from the haymow down to the concrete barn floor, landing on his head. His neck was broken. When she walked into David’s room in the ICU, she felt as if she might pass out. “David was on a ventilator, with a machine doing the breathing for him.” Only time would tell, the doctors told her, the extent of his paralysis.

One week passed. Then another. With a great deal of effort, David was able to communicate short words at a time. His mind was clear, of that Annie and the doctors had no doubt. She stayed at the hospital with him around the clock, and their family swept in and cared for Junior and Maggie. An aunt or uncle or grandparents brought the children to the hospital each day, stopping at a nearby Burger King for lunch. “The manager at Burger King heard about David’s accident,” Annie said, “and he wouldn’t accept money anymore.” She inhaled a deep breath. “So kind!”

They were just hanging on, one day at a time. “We were unsure of what the future held, but we knew who held our future,” Annie said. “But at the end of the second week, David realized that the doctors didn’t think he could live without the ventilator.” She spoke slowly, out of the beautiful calm she seemed to wear like a coat. “He looked right at me for the longest time—I’ll never forget that look. It was as if he was trying to tell me everything in that look—that he loved us, loved us so much, but that he couldn’t live like this—and then he asked the doctors to take him off the ventilator.”

Imagine trying to make such a heart-wrenching decision! Annie clasped her hands and leaned forward. “I didn’t want to let him go. But I knew he was right. David was always busy, always bursting with energy. His mother used to say he was only completely still when he was sound asleep. I had to respect his wishes. It would have been selfish of me to hang on to him. He was ready to go.”

The next morning, after David said his good-byes to his family, wife, and children, he was taken off the ventilator. His lung muscles were too paralyzed to work to breathe, so he labored hard to get air. His heart, though, was strong. The morning turned to afternoon, then to evening, then to another day. His entire extended family stayed by his bedside. Twenty-four hours and forty-five minutes after he was taken off the ventilator, David took his last breath. He was twenty-four years old. “It was David’s time,” Annie said confidently. Tears trickled from the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t wipe them away. Instead, she let them fall. “His life was complete.”

Road Map: Getting There from Here

Many Amish people say, after losing a loved one in an accident, not that the person was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that they were in the right place at the right time. God is in control, they say, and it must have been that person’s time to go to heaven. Do you believe that? Why or why not?

When a tragedy occurs, the first response of the Amish community is to always reach out, to show concern for how a person is coping, to come alongside and do everything they can to ease the person’s grief. What has been helpful to you during a crisis? Make a point to share that same kind of help with someone else when they are in need.

We are not guaranteed a life free of pain or sorrow. Even amid hardship, trials, and things that don’t go the way we want them to, we can find something to be joyful about. Annie said it best: “We were unsure of what the future held, but we knew who held our future.” How does this perspective encourage you?

Yesterday was the funeral of my uncle John G. Late last Wednesday evening, John, age eighty-five, was taken home to be with his Lord. On my last visit with him about three weeks ago, he bravely stated his fearlessness of dying by saying, “I have cancer, but cancer doesn’t have me.” The prevailing mood of the funeral was one of joy and victory.

—Scribe from Uniontown, Ohio