Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
—Romans 8:38–39
By now our son Josh had managed to catch a flight back from Louisiana, where he’d been working in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His friend Harry had picked him up from the airport, and Josh with his wife, Keturah, had immediately headed over to our home. We’d hugged and cried together. Now I could see them both outside stretched out on the grass. Hand in hand, they’d fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion and grief.
Our youngest son, Jon, and his wife, Megan, had arrived as well. They too looked spent and worn-out. Our sons had always been close. Jon especially had always looked up to Charlie, almost a decade older. Again I found my mind retreating back over the years, searching for any red flag that might offer further explanation for what had happened.
But I could find none. By the time Charlie reached the end of his teens, there was not a person I knew who had a negative word to say about him. While still in high school, he’d volunteered to paint houses for Habitat for Humanity. An accomplished handyman, Charlie spent several evenings fixing a garage door for one of my friends. If anyone needed help, Charlie was at the top of their call list.
Charlie found work as a dishwasher in a restaurant. A co-worker there, Gerald, became his closest friend throughout his teen years. But Charlie still struggled with speaking up, especially among strangers. I remember a trip to Disney World when Charlie was sixteen. One shop crafted personalized belt buckles. Charlie had a design in mind, and he asked me to explain it to the craftsman.
“If you want the buckle, you need to explain how you want it designed,” I told him. Charlie managed to lay out his idea for the craftsman and was very proud of how the belt turned out.
An even greater challenge for Charlie was speaking in front of a group. One class in his senior year required that he present a lengthy report in front of about a hundred people. Though it definitely took him out of his comfort zone, seeing the smile on his face as he finished and his clear sense of accomplishment brought joy to this mother’s heart. I was bursting with pride the day he was honored for graduation at our church service, our only son to graduate from our home education program, as his brothers chose to graduate from private and public high schools. What a long way Charlie had come from those early years when school had been such misery for him!
After graduation, Charlie began working full-time for a construction contractor. He had not given up his dream to become a truck driver one day. Our youngest son, Jon, recalls Charlie taking him four-wheeling in his first new pickup truck when Jon was about ten years old. It was one of his best “big brother” memories. But I will never forget the scare that truck gave us.
That Sunday morning was cold and the roads were icy. Charlie had participated in a Sunday school illustration using balloons. He’d taken one of the balloons home, and while he was driving, the balloon drifted into his line of vision. As he reached over to push away the balloon, his truck hit an ice patch.
We were driving our own vehicle a few minutes behind him. Suddenly we saw a truck flipped over on the road ahead. I could hardly breathe as I recognized it. Desperately I began praying. Then I saw Charlie walking around the truck. God had answered my prayer. He was unhurt, though the truck was totaled.
Memory of that answered prayer brings confusion. Why, God, did you answer my prayer? Why did you spare Charlie’s life then only to permit this to happen? If you could reach down to protect my son when that truck flipped, why did you not reach down this time to prevent his vehicle from ever reaching that schoolhouse?
If there is a divine answer, I cannot hear it.
Months after these events, I met Charlie’s best friend, Gerald, for lunch. He reminisced about the fun he and Charlie had working together at the restaurant, going to movies, heading to the beach, or just hanging out. He could not remember seeing or hearing anything in Charlie that would have led in the direction my son had ultimately taken. Not long after that, I ran into Charlie’s childhood friend Craig, with whom he’d dreamed of starting CR Trucking Company. Now married with a family of his own, he too shared fond memories of Boy Scout outings with Charlie, riding bikes, playing ball, and endless hours of conversation.
I found it reassuring that they too recalled the Charlie of my own memories. Quiet. Strong. Caring. Honest. Kind. Hardworking. Okay, so I am his mother. But I’ve found no one who remembers him differently. If there were troubled thoughts and bitterness with which my son was wrestling, they were buried deep. Even his younger brothers, who could evince sibling rivalry among themselves, saw nothing but good in Charlie.
The bottom line was that no one had anything bad to say about Charlie. He was simply a nice guy that everyone liked. As I think back now on how normal life seemed to be in those years, it still defies comprehension to imagine that Charlie could come to this.
Throughout the years of raising and homeschooling our sons, I’d occasionally taken on part-time work, especially when extra funds were needed. I’d worked at an ice cream store to earn money for my parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary celebration, at a bank to earn the funds for a car of my own. When our youngest, Jon, was still homeschooling but no longer needed constant supervision, I applied at Sight & Sound Theatre for a position in the concessions department.
I worked in concessions for several years before becoming the manager for that department. When Sight & Sound Theatre burned down in 1997, I opened my own personal catering business for funerals, weddings, and parties. But I closed that business to return to Sight & Sound when the theater reopened. I eventually worked my way to manager of the food and merchandise areas, the position I held when the Nickel Mines tragedy occurred. Each of my three younger sons, Josh, Zach, and Jon, worked for me part-time during their teen years. Zach and Jon worked in my department after the fire. Josh worked full-time on the deck where scenery sets were moved.
I’d loved staying home to raise my sons. But I also enjoyed this new challenge and the interaction with thousands of visitors who traveled from across North America and even overseas to attend the Sight & Sound productions.
Charlie was twenty-one when it became apparent he’d fallen in love. Marie Welk and her family attended our church. Close in age to our third son, Zach, Marie had grown up in the youth programs with our younger sons. When she was only fourteen, she’d been the youngest participant in a youth mission trip to New Mexico in which our second son, Josh, sixteen at the time, had also participated.
While we’d had little personal contact with Marie, we knew her as a sweet girl, highly intelligent, hardworking, and caring. Her father worked in the family business, Welk Milk Hauling, a business founded by Marie’s great-grandfather that collected milk from the region’s Amish farms and hauled it to several large corporate dairies for processing into pasteurized milk, butter, cheese, yogurt, and ice cream. Even in high school, Marie worked in her family’s business. A talented pianist, Marie also had a beautiful voice and sang in the choir. She taught Sunday school and helped with the little ones. She was altogether the kind of young lady of whom any mother with four sons would approve.
For several years leading up to this point, my mother had been working on a play she’d titled The Way of War, centered on the life she’d lived growing up in Columbia, Pennsylvania, during World War II. Her sister Clare had written songs to adapt the play into a musical. The play was eventually sponsored for production as a cultural event in Columbia. A number of my mother’s many grandchildren were in the cast. The play proved a great success, selling out several shows with an audience of more than two hundred each.
At this time Marie was seventeen years old and in her junior year of high school. Charlie was twenty-one. Marie had been asked to play the role of a war-time nurse in the play. Charlie was to have played the role of a soldier. Because of his shyness in front of crowds, he chose in the end to work the ticket stand. However, by that time, he’d already made the Lancaster Sunday News in full military uniform as part of a cast photo.
When the production ended, my mother threw a cast party at her home for everyone involved in the production. Though Marie and Charlie attended the same church, they had not really interacted, since Charlie was four years older and out of the youth program. If Charlie was shy, Marie was beautiful, confident, and serene. Charlie could not keep his eyes off of her. He found her easy to talk with, and she in turn seemed to enjoy his dry humor and sweet smile.
At the end of the evening, Marie announced that she needed to leave. Standing up, my mother said, “I’ll walk you to the door.”
Uncharacteristically, Charlie put his leg out, blocking his grandmother. Touching her arm, he said, “I’ll take care of that.”
Walking over to Marie, he asked with his quiet smile, “Do you mind if I walk you to your car?”
Marie consented. By the time she drove away, Charlie had asked her for a date. The two dated for the rest of Marie’s high school years. I remember the first time Charlie brought her home to dinner at our house. She brought a pretty blue heart ornament to hang on the wall. I remember Charlie taking Marie to the prom and how proud he looked to be with this beautiful girl in a gorgeous pink dress, the girl of his dreams.
Quiet though he was, he could not keep his joy to himself. I listened as he bubbled over about his happiness that Marie cared so much for him, about how easy she made it for him to talk. Marie’s older brother, Ken, was close in age to Charlie, the Welk home similar to ours in values and background and with a strong, loving family bond. He was soon spending as much time there as at home. When he wasn’t with Marie, he was spending hours on the phone talking to her. Never had I seen my firstborn so happy or open in communication.
At Christmas, during Marie’s senior year of high school, Charlie and Marie announced their engagement. Charlie had first asked her father’s permission to propose. The Welks had given their warm approval, welcoming Charlie as a second son. For our part, Marie was the kind of daughter we had always wanted.
That next fall, on November 9, 1996, Charlie and Marie exchanged their vows in a beautiful wedding at High View Church of God. Charlie’s face beamed with pride and joy as Marie’s unique voice rose in song to him during the ceremony.
The young couple had found a place to live in the small town of Lititz, about forty minutes’ drive from both the Welks and us, but near Marie’s Aunt Linda and Uncle Jim. The small house had needed lots of repairs to make it livable, but with Charlie’s handyman skills and Marie’s flair for interior design, they made it a beautiful home. Charlie continued working in house construction, and Marie found work with a health-care company. We saw less of them since they now lived beyond an easy drop-in, but when we did, their patent joy and contentment made all of us smile.
Two months before Charlie and Marie’s wedding, our second son, Josh, married his high school sweetheart, Laura, whom he too had met in the youth program at High View. Our third son, Zach, had finished film school in Florida and was working in New York. Our fourth son was enjoying his high school years. I in turn was delighting in my job. Life was good. I had succeeded in my greatest life goal—raising four sons to be good, loving, hardworking young men.
Neither Charlie nor Marie wanted to wait to start their own family. It was around Father’s Day when they shared the news that Marie was expecting a child, her due date sometime in February. Not long after, Josh and Laura shared that they too would be parents in March. How excited we were to find out we’d be grandparents. How much more happiness could life hold?
But the calm, sweet tenure of our life was interrupted in September when Marie began having difficulties with the pregnancy. After a frightening episode when it seemed she would lose the baby, Marie was confined to bed rest for the remainder of her pregnancy. But just after Charlie and Marie’s first anniversary, three months still before her due date, Marie went into labor. On November 14, 1997, baby Elise Victoria was born, perfectly formed and beautiful, but only 12¼ inches long and just over one pound in weight. Charlie and Marie had twenty sweet minutes with her before her life returned to the God who had formed her in her mother’s womb.
There was a quiet service for baby Elise Victoria’s funeral. Charlie and Marie wept together. All the joy of these last two years was gone from Charlie, his face pallid and somber as he carried the tiny white casket to the hearse for the drive to the cemetery.
But within a few days, Charlie was back hard at work. As was his pattern, he spoke little of his loss, at least not to parents and friends. We prayed that he and Marie would find healing together. Marie returned to work. A few months later in March, our granddaughter Maddi was born. Charlie and Marie expressed only joy for Josh and Laura, but we knew it had to be hard for them to see this healthy baby girl and Josh and Laura’s happiness.
It was about a year after Elise’s death when Marie learned that she was pregnant again. This time we saw little joy in Charlie, only worry that this baby too would be taken from them. And sure enough, within a few weeks baby Isabelle joined her sister Elise Victoria in heaven. To make matters worse, the doctors expressed concerns that the difficulties of this miscarriage might make it unlikely for Marie to get pregnant again.
Though Charlie was quieter than usual, that dry sense of humor and sweet, impish smile rarely showing itself, he insisted all was well. Should I have talked to my son more about his sorrow? Would it have made a difference? Again, there is no way now to know. And Charlie made it clear he found no benefit in discussing his grief over events that could not be changed. When we were together as a family, it was hardly unusual for Charlie to spend more time listening to his siblings’ joys and activities than speaking of his own.
Then in early 1999, Charlie and Marie shared with us that Marie was again pregnant. Despite the loss and grief Marie too had endured, we’d seen her faith in God grow. She shared how God had spoken to her heart that she would bear a healthy baby girl. She’d already been given the name for this yet unborn child.
Charlie was less convinced. He worried that this pregnancy would end like the others. But on September 2, 1999, Marie gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. Only twenty-two months later she had a baby brother.
By this time Charlie and Marie had moved back to our area, building a modular home on a lot next door to Marie’s grandparents and just a few minutes’ walk from her parents’ home in Georgetown. Charlie had also realized his own personal dream of becoming a trucker. Marie’s father, Ken, who had always treated Charlie as a second son, mentored him and trained him on one of his own eighteen-wheelers until Charlie passed the test to get his trucking license.
From that point on, Charlie started working for the Welk Milk Hauling Company. The schedule of milking meant that he worked a night shift, leaving home after his children were in bed and getting back in the early morning hours. His route each night from one dairy farm to another put him in contact with many of the farming families in southern Lancaster County’s Amish community.
To all appearances, Charlie had by now recovered from the grief of losing two daughters. Still quiet, he smiled more, especially when playing with his children. His deep love for his children, and for Marie, was evident. He spoke openly about how much he enjoyed his new job. Though he worked long hours, he always had time for family—not only for Marie and his children, but for family get-togethers at our home or with Marie’s parents, or going to the beach or hunting or just seeing a movie with his brothers. After Charlie’s death, I searched through my photo albums to find a good picture of him. But I couldn’t find a single snapshot of just Charlie. Every picture showed him surrounded by family.
If there was one lack I can see now from a rearview perspective, it was that Charlie did not appear to carry any deep friendships into his married life. His best friend from high school, Gerald, was not married and had other interests. By this time Chuck and I had begun to attend a daughter church that High View had planted a few years earlier—Living Faith Church of God. Since moving close by, Charlie and Marie had begun attending there as well. But we didn’t see Charlie forming any close relationships with other men in the church.
I didn’t see this as unusual, since having a wife and family takes a young man in a different direction than when his life centers around friends and the social activities of single life. When he was present, Charlie showed no difficulties interacting with family, friends, and co-workers, joining in their comradery, if rarely initiating his own. By now his two dogs Suzie and Shadow had died, but Charlie and Marie had purchased the yellow Lab puppy they named Dale, and Charlie enjoyed training the dog and spending time with him.
When he needed alone time, Charlie still found relaxation tinkering with anything that could be taken apart and put together. A major hobby was trying to restore an old jeep he’d acquired. He finally managed to get the engine running, but it never got out on the road due to other mechanical issues.
For my part, I was deeply thankful that my firstborn had found contentment in marriage, fatherhood, work, and hobbies. After a season of storms, he and his young family had found shelter at least for this season in a safe, calm harbor. I could stop worrying about Charlie.
What did I miss? I was—will always be—his mother! Surely if anyone could spot signs of trouble, it would be the woman who gave him birth. At what point did bitterness begin to seethe beneath the surface contentment? Or hate tug harder at the mind and heart than love?
I saw nothing. But my attention was elsewhere.
By this time I was clutching tightly to normalcy with clawing, desperate fingertips in the midst of a hurricane.