Two People

Last night I watched my husband hold another woman, and my heart broke.

I saw the look she gave him as we walked into her sparsely furnished bedroom, the way the tears heightened the despair, grief, and sadness in her eyes. The room was full of people, her family and her friends, but it was when she saw him that something in her changed.

I pushed him forward and he sat next to her on the bed, which was nothing more than a full-size mattress on the floor. He put his hand on hers, and she cried. After a minute or so, he looked up at me. This kind of situation is not his forte. I don't think it is anyone's forte. What do you say to someone who has just lost their entire world?

"Hold her," I mouthed more than whispered. I left the room to silence my cell phone. I watched from the doorway as he put his arm around her and pulled her close.

My husband doesn't have sisters and his mother is not prone to tears. When I am sad, I retreat or I get angry. I get quiet and I want to be left alone and there have only been a few times when I've sobbed in his arms.

He cries even less than I do. In our entire marriage, I've seen him cry three times (I'm not including the times where we watch sports movies, because his eyes always seem to leak during those. Pass the hat for Eddie! *I'm not crying, you're crying.) The last of those times were happy tears as he called Kevin early in the morning to tell her she had a long-awaited sister.

But yesterday morning, he cried again.

I knew something was wrong when I picked up my phone after leaving it on the counter for ten minutes and there were two missed calls, a text and an email. My stomach dropped because I thought he'd been in an accident. I figured if he was calling, he would be okay, but I was still worried. The voice on the other end of the phone was not the one I usually hear. "Hi, are you okay?" I said in one rushed breath. "I'm fine," he answered slowly. "I'm fine."

Then he was silent for a moment before he went on, "Do you remember hearing about that drowning accident at Deer Creek Reservoir?"

"Maybe?" I answered.

"The one where the husband drowned and the wife was barely saved?"

Suddenly my mind flashed back. I had seen the headline on facebook. It occurred to me as sad, but I didn't read the article and I kept scrolling.

"That was Anshul and her husband."

"No," I whispered. "No. No. No."

I've only met Anshul a handful of times, but I've heard my husband talk about her nearly every day for the last year when he comes home from work. She has been a helpful addition to his team and I'm grateful that she's been able to shoulder some of his workload. He'd tell me about conversations they'd had about religion, culture, finances, cars, everything. She loves our little ones, especially Sly, and is always excited to see them when we visit Dad at work.  Their relationship was more brother-sister than coworker, and I was grateful for that. I remember him commenting on Thursday of last week about how excited Anshul was that her husband was flying in for the weekend. "She's seemed sad and lonely lately. Today she was almost giddy because he's flying in tonight."

Anshul and I come from different worlds. She and her husband are from India and their marriage was arranged, although they had a courtship and very much agreed to the match. He was finishing up a research and advanced degree in Illinois and she was working in Utah. Their plan was for him to join her in a few months when he finished. In the meantime, they lived apart, flying back and forth to see each other once a month, staying in contact through emails and chats and video messaging. The very concept of a long-distance marriage absolutely threw Scott and I when we first met her. The two of us can barely survive an eight-hour workday away from each other. We came to realize, quickly, that their love wasn't any less real than ours.

Anuj would order her lunch. Sometimes he would add a cookie to the order for Scott. He would take care of his wife from a distance. We'd heard much about him and were planning on going on a double date one of these days when he was in Utah to visit. We were looking forward to meeting him at the company party last Friday, and were both impressed by his warmth, friendliness, and intelligence. He came over and struck up conversations with us more than once. And Anshul? She was practically glowing to have him finally by her side.

I knew all these things about her. And I'm sure she knew more things about me. And even though she is more my husband's friend than mine, my heart ached for her.

But my heart also ached for him.

"I'm sick about it," Scott told me. I could practically hear his mind trying to wrap itself around the tragedy. "She tried to contact me on Saturday. I got this email saying 'URGENT, emergency, call this number.' I thought she'd been hacked, so I didn't respond."

It felt like he was the last coworker to know, when he really should have been one of the first. A couple of people from work tried to call and text him, but nothing ever came through on his phone. And selfishly, I knew this was a tender mercy for me. Yesterday was Sly's birthday. Saturday and Sunday were spent cleaning up and getting ready for the party and then hosting a party. Had Scott known, we wouldn't have had his full attention, and I didn't know we needed it until I realized that there was a reason we didn't find out about the accident until yesterday morning.

Our minds spun in circles all day long. Scott met us after swimming lessons. We took the kids to McDonald's for Sly's birthday. He told me about the news article and how mean people were, commenting on how "they should have been wearing their life jackets."  "100% Avoidable." "Why would you not wear your life jacket if you don't know how to swim?' People think they know so much...but they don't know Anshul, and they didn't know Anuj. He told me how his coworker pointed out that there was one comment, longer than the others, from the girl who helped pull Anshul from the water. Tears slipped down his cheeks as he told me about this merciful woman, gently and kindly reminding people that these were two people, people with friends and families:

"My brother and I were the ones who saved the wife, and weren't able to find her husband. 
First of all let me remind everyone that these are two human beings, one who lost his life and one who had to go home without her husband. I spent over two hours with her yesterday, and I cannot even begin to fathom the hell she is living through. Please have some compassion. 
Second it is terrifying how fast this all happened. From the time we saw them in the water, to barely seconds later realizing they were in trouble, (We were less than 200 yards from the couple, our boat already idling, we sped there as fast as possible, and we dove in before the boat even stopped.) and still just before we got there the husband went under and didn't resurface. This all happened in a matter of seconds. The wife had taken what looked like her last breath and was under water when my brother got to her, he handed her to me and started diving for the husband. As others from our boat and nearby boats we waved down started diving as well. 
You always imagine someone who's drowning to be splashing, waving their arms, etc.. they don't have the energy for that, at first glance it looked like they were just swimming. If you ever see someone in the water, take a second look, and go check on them! Although we know we gave it our all, the regret and frustration we both feel in not being able to find him will be with us forever. If we had hesitated, they would both be gone. How would that feel, knowing we "could have"? A life is always worth it. 
Be prepared, wear a life jacket, wear your seat belt, don't hesitate to help, and be considerate. My heart goes out to this sweet woman, I pray that she can find peace. Sweetie if you see this, I love you. I truly do."

When Scott and I arrived at Anshul's apartment last night, her friends thought we were the rescuers. Granted, we were the only caucasians around, it was an easy mistake for them to make: a tall man with brown hair, a shorter woman with brown hair. "If she sees you, she'll have to relive it all over again," her friend said as she walked us to the other side of the apartment building. We could barely understand her, so we just went with it. Imagine our surprise at waiting in a random woman's apartment alone for a few minutes, only to be joined later by half a dozen of Anshul's Indian friends and four very white people. The older woman asked Scott how he knew Anshul, no doubt surprised to see us in the midst of Anshul's friends. It wasn't until Anshul's brother in law entered the apartment and started talking to them that we realized: these were Anshul's rescuers.

I felt like an imposter, witnessing that meeting, listening to them share their stories with one another. Anshul's brother-in-law had arrived that afternoon, the only member of her family with a valid visa because he visited the United States often for work. Emergency visas were unobtainable because of a weekend followed by a national holiday. He shared more details from Anshul's side of the story: how they had been wearing their life jackets, but when they went back to shore they found they still had 15 minutes on their kayak rental, so they decided to get back in and stay close to the shore and Anshul kept telling Anuj they needed to put the flotation devices back on, but he waved it off, thinking that they'd be fine since they weren't going to be in the water long and they were close to shore.

And then the Rescue Family started to speak, humbly and yet confidently sharing their side of the story. It was supposed to just be the parents on the boat that day, but due to irregular circumstances, they somehow convinced their two children, both grown and married, to join them on the lake. How the parents weren't strong enough swimmers to have gotten to Anshul and Anuj in time. How the dad had been watching the kayak, and when it tipped, he noticed that something was wrong. How minutes before, wave runners and boats had sped (too fast) past the no-wake zone, creating waves that may or may not have tipped the kayak. How the son, who got to her first, didn't know that there was another. "I never saw him," he said, "And if I had, my natural instinct would have been to go after him first and we would have lost both of them."

Detail after detail. Miracle after miracle.
People like this family---they are rare. They had such love, such compassion, such sorrow for not being able to rescue both. Their lives will forever be marked by their experience.

As I put my arms around the daughter, the one who served as Anshul's guardian and protector and comforter for hours on Saturday afternoon, I whispered, "You did a good job." It was all I could get out through my tears. I wish I could have found the words then, when I had the chance, to tell her how grateful I was that God placed her in Anshul's path that day. How much I admire her for compassion and love. And how extremely grateful we are for the way that she stepped up, once again, and shielded Anshul from an onslaught of people who think they know better than her just because they weren't the ones not wearing life jackets that day.

Anshul is not the same woman she was on Friday. All the wishes in the world won't take her back to that person, and yet that glowing, happy, woman-in-love is still inside her somewhere. More than one friend remarked to us, "she will have to move past this. We will help."

And though our options to help seem so very small and insignificant, sometimes simply being there to hold someone and cry and not talk and offer quiet prayers from the heart are the only things we can do.

Anshul's friends have set up a gofundme account to help with funeral costs (including the astronmical task of sending her husband's body back to India). If you can, donate a little.

If you can't, please say a prayer for my husband's friend.