Surviving the Storm Through the Wind of the Spirit: My Journey Through Grief

By Roma Holley

Surviving the Storm Through the Wind of the Spirit is the story of one woman’s journey through grief. The loss of her 21 year old son threw her into a storm from which she could see no hope of survival. Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, her journey shows her the truth in God’s word that we can experience joy again through the promise of eternity. Roma Johnson Holley lost her 21 year old son, Zachary, to a horrific vehicle accident. The journey that ensues is one that is more like a roller-coaster ride than an actual journey. A roller-coaster will take you up and down, with twists and turns and then eventually return to where it began. And so has been this journey. Unspeakable joy at the birth of grandchildren and then the remembrance that this child will never know their Uncle Zachary. Unspeakable grief at the loss of a beloved cousin and aunt and then the remembrance that they are now in the presence of God. This journey is one that no one wants to take but that almost everyone will have to endure at some point in their life. The destination of each person will depend upon how we deal with the trials and difficulties along the way. Join Roma as she travels a rough and tumble road until she realizes the power of the Holy Spirit. The comfort, guidance and strength that comes from this one realization changes her entire perspective.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Jun 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9781400305209

Roma Holley

Roma Holley was born and raised in west Texas and grew up loving animals and all things country. Brought up to love the Lord and seek His guidance in all things, her life was enriched as she traveled to and lived in several countries and states.  Through the course of her life she encountered many people who helped influence and refine her love of God.  As a mother of 4 and grandmother of 6 she tries to set an example for them to follow that will lead to eternal life with God the Father. 

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YEAR 1

Thursday, June 28, 2012

The day began just like any other normal day at around 6:45 a.m. I slept as long as possible, hitting the alarm clock’s snooze function several times. Then my feet finally hit the floor and I began to get ready for work. I worked for the local police department. I had been there many years. Barry, my husband, was already at work. He worked at our local grocery store as a butcher and had managed the meat market for many years. My sister-in-law Susie came over because the electricians were going to come and see if they could figure out why we had some outlets that weren’t working. (At Easter, we had plugged in the vacuum and several of our outlets and even our lights quit working.) Susie was going to stay at our house to let them in.

I drove the short distance to work by 8:00. We only live four blocks from my work and six blocks from Barry’s work. I made coffee and began my workday. At around 8:20, Susie called and said the electricians were there. I went to find the chief to tell him that I would be right back. We had already discussed that I was going to run home to talk to the electricians. (The chief was out in the garage.) As I went back into the office, I heard the phone ringing. The caller ID showed my ex-husband Mark. I answered and said, Hey, what’s up?

He said, I tried to call your cell phone but there was no answer.

I said, I stepped into the garage and the reception there is very poor. What’s wrong?

Zach’s boss just called and said that Zach has been involved in a horrible accident in Andrews County, and that we need to head that way as soon as possible.

Zach was my youngest son. My stomach hit the floor. Literally, I had gone absolutely numb. What kind of accident? Is he in the hospital? Where is he? Give me the number of his boss. What is his name? All of these questions just fell out of my mouth as I was trying to comprehend what he had said.

Mark replied, That’s all I know for now. The boss’s name is Matt and here is his number. I’m headed to get Beth, (his wife) then we’ll head that way. Call me when you know more details.

I ran to my boss and told him, I’ve got to go. My son has been involved in a horrible accident in Andrews County.

He said, Go, go. Call when you can.

I grabbed my purse and headed out the door. I called Barry and said, "Get to the house—now. It’s an emergency!" I sped home. Susie was shocked at my frantic rushing into the house. I told the electricians to leave; that we had an emergency. Barry came home and I told him what was going on.

He said, I’ll go put gas in the car. You better call Raena.

Raena is my daughter and Zachary’s sister.

I told Barry I was going to throw together an overnight bag just in case we needed to stay at the hospital overnight. I finally got in contact with Matt, Zach’s boss. He was on his way to the accident site and said he would call when he had more information. I called Mark and told him. Then I called Raena. She was a nurse for hospice and she was in a small town about ten miles away. I told her what was going on and that if she wanted to go with us, she would have to hurry. Luckily, another nurse was with her and could take over her patients. Susie said she would take care of Kylia, Raena’s daughter who was a week shy of four years old. As I was gathering up our daily medicines, I noticed that I had taken the last of my blood pressure medicine. This is something that I must take daily, so I called Walmart and told them what was going on, and they refilled it quickly. Barry came home, we ran to Walmart, then picked up Raena and headed to Cisco. We drove our Suzuki SUV just as fast as we dared. We also had to stop by the pharmacy in Cisco to pick up one of Barry’s medicines.

Finally, we got on the road. Then my phone rang. It was Matt. Barry immediately pulled over. He was actually in the middle of a Y intersection in Cisco. Matt said, I’m so sorry. Zach didn’t make it.

I said, What are you saying? He didn’t make what?

I’m so sorry—he’s gone.

Where is he gone to? Which hospital?

Ma’am, you don’t understand—

I handed the phone to Barry and stumbled out of the car.

Noooooooo! Noooooooo! Nooooooo! I was hysterical. Crying out, bending over as if in pain, blinded by it all. Raena got out of the car and came crying to me. We clung to each other as hysteria swept over us. Then Barry got out of the car and embraced us both. We were all just flailing about, not knowing what to do. I started making phone calls—to my boss, my preacher, my family, my friends. Raena and Barry were doing the same thing, although Barry had already called Mark while he was in the car. We were still on the side of the road. What a sight we must have been. A vehicle pulled over and a lady got out. I didn’t know her. She was wearing scrubs like she might be a nurse or something. She asked if something was wrong. Barry told her what was going on. She immediately embraced us all. Then she asked if there was something she could do. We couldn’t even think. She said, Let’s pray. So we gathered in a circle and she prayed. I guess she prayed. I say that because I was slowly going into shock. We started to get in the car and I saw her hand Barry something. I didn’t think much about it. Barry got in the car and we sat trying to decide what to do next. Barry called Brandi, Zachary’s fiancée. He cried all through telling her what had happened. We decided to drive on out to Big Spring to pick up Brandi and then on to Andrews, where they had taken Zach to a funeral home. Big Spring is about 165 miles west of Eastland, where we live, and Andrews is about another sixty-five miles northwest of Big Spring. At one point, I looked down at the console and noticed what I thought was a $20 bill. I asked Barry where it came from. He said the lady who stopped on the side of the road gave it to us. I picked it up and my jaw dropped. It wasn’t $20. It was $200. An unknown stranger had given us $200. We had no idea who she was or what to even think. What a blessing.

I’ve always had a mind for phone numbers. While we were driving, I called the funeral home in Eastland. The owner, Phyllis, had known us for many years, and several of our relatives had passed through their funeral home. Our kids had grown up together. I asked Phyllis if she knew if there was room in our cemetery plot to bury our son. She couldn’t believe it. She said that she would have to look, but if not, we could work something out and talk to someone with the city of Eastland to buy another plot if necessary. She said she would await word from the funeral home in Andrews.

Our phones were ringing. I finally talked to Matt again, trying to get more information about what happened. He said that Zach was a passenger in the pickup being driven by his coworker. The coworker was critically injured and had been flown via helicopter to Lubbock.

Word was getting out via Facebook and the grapevine. Bad news travels fast.

We made it to Big Spring sometime around noon, I think. It seems like there was a time warp happening. Time had slowed down and sped up all at the same time. We found where Brandi and Zach had been living. Oh, how very hard it was to see Brandi. Her face was red and her eyes swollen from crying. She was so young. Only twenty-one. She said that her mom was on her way from Abilene but was having car trouble. It was overheating and she had to keep stopping to add water. She eventually made it to Big Spring. It seems like we tried to eat a sandwich, but I was just sick. I couldn’t eat. In fact, when we finally did leave, heading for Andrews, we had to pull over twice so I could be sick on the side of the road. I guess the adrenaline had finally worn off.

As we were heading to Andrews, with Brandi and her mom in Brandi’s car following behind us, my phone rang. It was the chief deputy sheriff from Eastland County. He extended his sympathy and then said, The chief of police in Andrews is a good friend of mine. I called and told him that you were coming. I told him that you were part of our law enforcement family. He asked if you would stop and see him before you go to the funeral home. This was very unexpected and I didn’t even know what to say.

Now, let me tell you about Andrews: I had never been there and wasn’t impressed when we got there. It appeared very crowded and dirty. I’m sure this was due to the big oil boom that was happening. The town was overrun with oil field workers and they were having a hard time keeping up with everything. We went to a convenience store and stopped to ask directions to the police department and the funeral home. Luckily, they were both just down the street. We went to the police department. Myself, Barry, Raena, Brandi, and her mom went in and told the receptionist who we were. The chief came from around the corner, introduced himself, and asked us to come into his office. He said, I’m very sorry that we have to meet under these circumstances. My lieutenant and I are both medics and we went to the accident scene, which is a few miles outside of Andrews. There have been so many accidents on all of the surrounding highways that everyone has to pitch in to help at accident scenes. He paused, then added, I want to assure each of you that your son Zachary did not suffer. He was killed instantly. I know that is really hard to hear and may not bring much relief right now, but in the days to come, I hope it will help some. I am assigning the lieutenant to you while you are here and he will help you with anything that you need.

We were really speechless, sitting like bumps on a log. We thanked him for his time and then followed the lieutenant to the funeral home.

I don’t even know what time we got there—maybe around 2:00 or 3:00 p.m. We had to wait just a while. Mark and Beth were driving up from Georgetown, about 400 miles away. They had driven to the Midland International Airport to pick up his youngest son Cortland, who was flying in from Austin, and then came on up to Andrews. Landen and Tyler, Barry’s sons, were already there at the funeral home, looking so lost. Raena’s best friend Elizabeth had been in Denver City (about fifty miles away), visiting relatives, and had come to the funeral home. Mark finally got there and we went in to see the funeral-home people. They took us into a room and began to talk to us. The funeral director was very nice. We made arrangements to have Zach transferred to Eastland. They gave us his personal effects, just what he had on his person at the time of the accident. His phone was mangled into several pieces. Unsalvageable. They gave it to me in a brown paper bag. He wasn’t carrying a wallet. Only a money clip with a $20 bill and his driver’s license. I kept asking to see him. They kept saying, No, ma’am, you won’t be able to see him. I can remember thinking that surely I could slip around and find him somewhere in the back room. I kept thinking maybe it wasn’t him. Someone else could have had his money clip. I know it was illogical, but I was grasping at anything. We finally finished at the funeral home.

Because they had not found Zach’s keys, it was decided that Landen and Tyler would go to Midland to try to get a spare key for Zach’s Toyota, which was locked, sitting at the workplace. We had already called the Toyota dealership and arranged it. We asked the lieutenant for the exact location of the accident. We wanted to see if we could find the keys there. We had unknowingly driven right over the accident scene on our way to Andrews.

Then the lieutenant took us to a restaurant. We really didn’t know what to do. I guess some of us were hungry. I still couldn’t eat. It was a buffet and nothing appealed to me. I guess by this time it was around 4:30–5:00 p.m. I drank a little tea and just walked around in a daze. It was pretty much a waste of money. Although eating is a normal thing to do, no one seemed to eat much. There was just nothing normal about the situation. I remember there was a table with three guys sitting and eating. I could overhear them talking about all of the accidents that had been happening around them. I could tell they were probably oil field workers. I so badly wanted to tell them about Zach, but I just could not bring myself to say the words.

We finally left. Brandi had already gone back to Big Spring. I think she packed up all of her and Zachary’s stuff and took it to Abilene with her mom. She didn’t want to sleep in that bed without him. Mark, Beth, and Cortland were headed back to Eastland with us. They were going to get a hotel room. We marked the miles and found the accident scene. It was on FM 176, between Big Spring and Andrews. In the middle of nowhere next to a tank battery sitting in the middle of a field surrounded by dirt, cactus, and tumbleweeds. (A tank battery is just a group of oil storage tanks.) It was just a place in the road that had many tire marks and some debris still on the side and in the ditches. You could tell that many vehicles had been on both sides of the road. We got out and walked all up and down the ditches. Nothing but sand and trash. Zach’s keys had been on a long lanyard that said, I love boobies. Zach had gotten it in support of breast cancer (wink; if you knew him, you also knew that he enjoyed the double entendre). We figured that the keys had been thrown out of the pickup during the accident and they had to be there somewhere. We walked both sides of the road because we just didn’t know exactly how it all happened. Since we couldn’t find the keys, we just headed towards home. It was probably 7:00 p.m. and still light outside. We met Landen and Tyler in Big Spring. They had gotten a spare key and it opened the doors, but it would not start the car because it needed the security chip. So we just left the car there. I had been driving, but Raena was very concerned about me driving. I guess she thought my mind wasn’t on driving. She was right. Anyway, she drove a little and then Elizabeth took over driving. Barry was riding with the boys. I got the idea of Mark staying at the Residence Inn Hotel in Abilene. Abilene is sixty miles to the west of Eastland. One of my cousins was the manager and she got them a room. We drove on another hour to Eastland. It was 11:30 p.m. before we got home. We fell into bed. It had been the longest day of my life.

Friday, June 29, 2012

Even though I had gone to bed so late, I tossed and turned until about 3:00 a.m. I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep. I finally got up, went to my computer, and started looking for every picture of Zachary that I could find. I had a lot of pictures. I sat there with silent tears running down my face, still trying to comprehend that this was all of the pictures that I would ever take of him. I thought back to eighteen days ago, when I took their engagement photos. Oh my goodness, how is it possible that I would never look on that handsome face again?

One of the things that I did when I was gathering up pictures of Zachary that very first day was take my camera and put it on video mode. Then I called Zachary’s cell phone and I recorded his voice mail. That would be the last time I would ever hear my son’s voice. Then I got the bright idea of putting Zach’s picture on my computer monitor and I played his voice mail again, recording his picture and his voice at the same time. (That voicemail is a treasure to me. It is something that I listen to sometimes when I just need to feel him close to me.)

Barry finally got up at around 5:30 a.m. and asked what I was doing. I said, I’m getting dressed so I can go to Walmart. I want coffee and I gave my coffee maker away. So I went to Walmart and got a heavy dose of reality. How was the world still functioning when my world had been blown to bits? How was it that people were going about their business when I could barely function? How was it that everything appeared so normal? Didn’t they know that Zachary was gone? Didn’t they know that my life would never be the same again? My normal was in pieces. My normal was actually nonexistent.

I remember one time, several months before, being in line at the Walmart pharmacy. I struck up a conversation with the lady in front of me. She was just a little older than me. Her face told me that she had been through some kind of traumatic experience in the past few months. She kind of had that shell-shocked look. As we were talking, she told me that her daughter had been involved in an accident a few months before. She had been stopped on a highway, waiting to turn left when her vehicle was struck from the rear. Her four-year-old child was in a car seat in the back seat. The impact of the collision snapped the child’s neck and it died instantly. This lady’s daughter was not injured but her only grandchild died. And here she was, months later, and her normal had still not returned. As I stood in the checkout line, buying my coffee maker, I wondered if my normal would ever return.

Later on that morning, Mark, Beth, and Cortland arrived from Abilene. We had arranged to go to the funeral home at around eleven to make arrangements. Before we had gone to the funeral home in Andrews, Raena had picked out some clothes for Zach there in Big Spring. We weren’t really thinking about when they would be dressing him, so we wound up bringing the clothes back to Eastland with us. I took these clothes for Zach. I had no idea what to take. I’d never even thought about what kind of clothes you take to the funeral home. I mean, do you take underwear and socks? I just had no idea. Anyway, I took a pair of jeans and a nice button-up shirt. Phyllis, who I spoke with the day before, met us at the door. We embraced and she introduced us to another gentleman who would be the one showing us around. We all sat at a table and discussed when and where the visitation and funeral would be, and who would be in charge of it. Then he told us that now we need to look at the caskets to decide which one to use. I asked several times, When are we going to get to see Zachary? He pretty much evaded the question every time. We went into the room that houses all of the caskets. He was showing them and telling about the different qualities, prices, and attributes of one over the other. I looked at Barry and said, I just can’t do this. I left the room.

It wasn’t long before Mark joined me. We left the decisions to Barry, Beth, Raena, and Cortland. Finally, the decisions made, we went back to the table and sat around it again. The guy from the funeral home had his calculator there and was adding up everything. He hit the total button and said, Okay, with everything that you decided on, that will be $9,785. Will that be cash, check, or charge?

Say what?

Then he said, Oh, I forgot to add the cost of the vault. The city requires that the casket be placed into a cement vault. That is another $795. So now, your total is $10,580. How would you like to take care of that today?

I don’t know about the others, but I sat there thinking, Are you kidding me? Are you out of your mind? Who do you think we are? I might have a couple of hundred bucks in the bank—maybe! And I sure don’t have a credit card with that kind of limit. There is no way we can come up with that kind of money.

Beth looked at Mark and said, We can put it on my credit card.

Oh my gosh, seriously?

So Beth and Mark took care of it with the understanding that Barry and I would repay half of it when we could. We started to leave and I asked to see Phyllis again. I asked her when I could see Zachary. She said, I’m sorry, Roma, he was really messed up in the accident. I don’t think you will be able to see him.

I began to cry. I told her, "You don’t understand—I have to see him. How do I know that it’s even him? There was only a money clip with money and a driver’s license. It might not be him."

Phyllis said, I’ll see what we can do, but I can’t promise you anything.

I thanked her and we left.

Later on, I called her and asked if someone I trusted to tell me the truth could go to the funeral home to see if it was Zachary for sure. She said of course. So I called my ex-boss Cecil. He had been my boss for ten years and I trusted him. He is a very good friend. Plus, I knew that he could handle the situation because he had been