Traveling Mercies

Tragic loss, creative love, and the small powers that carry us through

When I woke up on Monday, August 11, I had no idea that date would be engraved in my family’s history from then forward.

Around lunch time, I received an urgent text from my mom, who was on a boat in the waters of Grand Cayman. My dad had shown signs of distress while snorkeling. She called out to the crew again and again, but by the time they took her seriously and swam out to him, he was unresponsive.

She watched helplessly as the coast guard pulled him from the water and rushed him to land. Almost two hours later, as my mom waited with a nerve racking blend of hope and dread in the hospital lobby, they finally told her the devastating news…he was gone.

Hearing the finality of those words, my heart argued in my chest. My vision blurred with aura and tears. As much as my imagination tried to circle back through the events and edit-undo, I could not make the terrible thing come untrue and get my dad back.

A sudden, shocking loss like this strips away any illusion of control we may pretend we have. Tragedies happen and they don’t ask our permission before they change the shape of our life stories.

That week was already momentous. Two days after my dad’s passing, my husband and I moved our college-bound firstborn into the freshman dorm lugging heavy boxes and complex emotions. Early the next morning, I boarded a plane to Grand Cayman where my three siblings had already arrived to be with my mom.

Flying down over the turquoise waters of the islands, I thought of how one friend, when feeling sick over my loss, wondered if I might be triggered by the sight of a beach or ocean for years to come. I had wondered the same.

But as my siblings and I made choices about where to go and what to do, we found we didn’t have to endure the bad news as passive victims. We could move together toward the scene of our loss with courage and shape our experience of grief. Bereaved ones may lack control over the inciting incident, but we don’t lack agency altogether.

My dad loved exploring new places, flavors, and ideas. He would research destinations to visit, local restaurants to try, and items to buy that would make an experience unforgettable. When we were young, he prioritized family vacations and day trips even when money was tight. Those adventures, and even the funny mishaps that came with them, have become some of our favorite family stories and inside jokes.

So, when we gathered to grieve together in Grand Cayman, it felt right to carry on with the plans he had made. Along with navigating paperwork and embassy logistics, my siblings and I came alongside our mom to finish the vacation that was cut short for our dad. Rather than avoiding the site of his death, we traveled toward it, embracing sunshine, good meals, and unique experiences in his honor.

At al fresco dinners by the shore, we passed bites of seafood and jerk chicken back and forth like our foodie dad had always modeled for us with his fork darting across the table for a taste. When we explained the tearful expressions on our faces to one server, we discovered she had already heard our story from the local news. She put her hand over her heart and cried with us, hugged us, and shared about a similar loss she was grieving. Then, she lovingly set a sixth place at the table with a napkin, plate, silverware, and water glass in front of an empty chair.

The kindness we received from strangers didn’t end at that restaurant table. At my parents’ resort, the staff circled around, took my mom’s hands in theirs, prayed over her, and whispered words of comfort while handing her a handwritten card quoting Isaiah 41:10: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be afraid, for I am your God.”

My sister, Mandy, and I took turns sleeping beside our mom, talking or praying ourselves to sleep. In the mornings, our Mom would slip out, find a chair on the beach, and listen to Rich Mullins while her tears fell to the sand: “When you love you walk on the water, just don’t stumble on the waves. We all want to go there something awful, but to stand there takes some grace. We are not as strong as we think we are.”

My dad’s white gold wedding ring rested on the nightstand. On the ottoman, his luggage waited to be zipped for the trip home.

Our final evening in Grand Cayman, we all boarded a boat for the bioluminescence excursion my dad had booked. It was heavenly. For days, the shock of losing him had kept my body tight, but the night breeze and rocking waves began to loosen the grief in my rib cage.

Jellyfish tentacles swayed like sea plants in the shallows. We tilted our heads back and named the constellations framed by puffy clouds. Murmurations of blue fire pixie dust lit up as we kicked our legs and made figure-eights with our fingers like sparklers in the bay. Touched by the waters where my dad entered eternity, a wistful awe buoyed me. The world holds danger and sorrow, but also such mind-blowing wonder.

Back home, for more than two hours before the memorial service, the visitation line stretched from the front of the auditorium to the foyer, out the church doors and onto the sidewalk. In another effort to reclaim what could’ve unsettled us, we invited family and friends to come to the memorial in vacation clothes: a tropical shirt, a beachy dress, sandals, anything with an easy breezy feeling.

We didn’t want the fact that our dad died in the islands to overshadow how much he loved them. Most everyone got the memo and wore fun floral print dresses, big, bright jewelry, Hawaiian shirts, or a colorful golf polo. Some friends came with sunglasses perched on their heads. Rusty, our longtime pastor friend, preached in flip flops, a first for him. Our unconventional dress code was a simple but powerful way to change the atmosphere and highlight our dad’s fun-seeking personality.

Since his recent retirement, my dad had started to buy increasingly wild shirts (a la Dan Flashes). Maybe he was embracing his new carefree era or maybe he was starting to wear his humor on his actual sleeve. Like those “complicated shirts,” his colorful wit always raised eyebrows. Even in those first days of shock and sadness, one of his jokes would come to mind and make us laugh whether we wanted to or not. A strait-laced memorial service wouldn’t do for remembering a man like this.

“I want you to know it’s okay to laugh,” my mom assured everyone as she and my brothers took the platform, “Bob was a funny guy. Sarcasm was his love language.”

My brother Jeff created AI reenactments of his stories that had the whole room erupting while the three of them spoke. They brought my dad’s humor and mischief to life with stories of factory-floor shenanigans with shop rags and messing around with a flying paper airplane and a box cutter, which ended with a visit to the company nurse. They told about the California Raisin doll he snatched back from the Goodwill pile just to freak my brother Bobby out, and the laughing clown doll he tossed at us girls while we were sleeping (after pranking our mom first).

They shared about him booking an airboat tour that motored about on the water during a lightning storm and the Canada casino trip when his lead foot got him speeding tickets there AND back and ate up most of his winnings. Then there was the story of my parents’ red convertible on a steep mountain road in Saint Martin where they noticed the front passenger wheel hanging over the edge of the drop off. My dad told my mom to jump into the driver’s seat while he threw his weight over the back bumper, equal parts courage and comedy. He had a way with turning fear into laughter.

When the room finally quieted, Rusty stepped up to the podium to tell the other side of my dad’s story. With authenticity and tenderness, he shared about my dad’s broken home beginnings, the intelligence and sharp wit that helped him cope, his years of wrestling with how to be a husband and father and figuring things out as he went, and the softening we witnessed over the last decade as he asked the Spirit to remake him. His eulogy told the truth about the hard parts of love and how healing happens in belonging.

Those themes carried straight into the songs we shared. Longtime friends and I led in music that traced my dad’s transformation story: “Abide,” “In Christ Alone,” “I Will Rise,” and “Reckless Love,” his anthem in his years of counseling and spiritual surrender. As we sang “Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God / Oh, it chases me down, fights ‘til I’m found, leaves the 99,” I thought of him not just as my dad but as a human being who needed to feel found by God.

We followed that with “It Is Well,” the hymn that heartbroken Horatio Spafford wrote when he sailed over the very waters where a shipwreck had drowned his four daughters. Traveling toward the site of his loss and writing his sorrow became his way through, and by expressing his deep grief, he offered the world one of the most steadying, comforting hymns ever written.

Our final tribute, a secret we’d kept from my mom, steadied us, too. It brought us full circle to our family’s beginnings and gave us a way to demonstrate our shared grief. First, we leaned my parents’ wedding photo against the podium. Beside it, we placed a vase waiting with ferns, baby’s breath, and daisies, the same greenery and filler from their wedding corsages and bouquets. Then, my friend with the gravelly voice began to sing “You Are So Beautiful,” my parents’ love song since 1975. As he sang, all eleven grandchildren, ages twenty down to three, walked forward with yellow roses in hand.

The tradition of those roses stretched through my parents’ entire love story, beginning with the bouquet my dad delivered on my mom’s high school graduation night all the way to their 25th anniversary trip to The Yellow Rose Bed and Breakfast in San Antonio, and countless occasions beyond.

One by one, the grandkids placed their roses in the vase, rebuilding my parents’ wedding bouquet. When the vase was full, my siblings placed the final roses and together we carried it to our mom, wrapping our arms around her in an impromptu family hug. Everyone in the room wept with us. Afterward, one of my beloved pastors took my hands and said softly, “You all drained my tear tank completely dry.”

It took a lot of creativity and teamwork to fit our dad’s unique humor, quirks, and interests all into one service. But looking back, we couldn’t be more grateful for how it all came together. At the end of the day, my brother Bobby summed it up best, “Love stole the show.”

Yesterday marked my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary. Their trip to Grand Cayman was meant to be an early celebration.

In the wake of our tragedy, we made the best of a loss we never expected and couldn’t control. Joining my mom on the island, we finished out the vacation my dad had planned while also tending to coroner and embassy details, writing the obituary, curating playlists and photo montages, and preparing for the memorial service.

Sifting through the many facets of our dad’s life reminded us that tragedy wasn’t the whole story. We couldn’t undo what had happened, but in the aftermath we could take the raw materials in front of us and shape them into something honest and healing.

Through music, flowers, and a shared tribute involving all the generations, we found ways to transform our grief and carry forward our family’s throughline of creative love.

By swapping stories and remembering our dad’s irreverent humor, we refused to let despair have the last word.

By tracing his testimony of struggle, grace, and growth, we embraced him as he truly was and gave others space to reflect on their own faith and relationships.

And by sharing our grief with friends who’d traveled from near and far in tropical outfits, we softened the blow and created a bittersweet sense of bon voyage.

These have been our traveling mercies.

As we care for our dad’s memory and for one another, every expression of love, levity, and creativity helps us metabolize our grief rather than be immobilized by it. Each intentional choice helps us feel like ourselves again and remember that we’re not powerless, even in the wake of something as unchangeably heartbreaking as losing our dad. Loss will always humble us and reveal our human limits, but life keeps inviting us to participate and create with the power we still have.

“On that beautiful shore” lyrics from “The Sweet By and By.”

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Tell me about your own traveling mercies in the aftermath of loss. What helped you keep going? What small choices or acts of love, creativity, or courage reminded you that you still had power in a situation you couldn’t control?