This past Sunday I found myself lying on the floor curled against my carry on at the Providence, R.I. airport. I was sleeping, though it was the middle of the day with people rushing past to catch their flights. Under normal circumstances, I would never snooze on the ground of a public place like a homeless person. Actually, I’m a light sleeper and I don’t nap unless I’m sick, not to mention the fact that a dirty carpet pressed against my cheek has never appealed to me as it did on Sunday, but that afternoon capped a completely unexpected and difficult week for us.

My husband and I were three hours early for our flight home, so when I lay down at the airport, just a few people waited at the gate. When I awoke with drool on my cheek and a draft on my backside an hour and a half later, I realized I was surrounded by people seated in chairs. The first thing I did was touch the rear waistband of my pants, realizing with a groan that, sure enough, my underwear showed. For a moment I wished I was twenty years old with a tattoo above my toosh. At least those around me could have viewed some artwork instead of my forty-two-year-old panty line. I wiped my damp cheek with the sleeve of my sweater as I pulled up my pants and slumped into a chair pushing the tangled hair from my face. An older lady looked at me sideways, but nobody gave me the stink eye. In fact, nearly everyone avoided eye contact with me, which I found interesting. I suppose I would avoid eye contact too if I’d seen a stranger’s underwear while they slept on the floor at my feet. You’d think my husband would have done something about his wife in shambles, but Scott was engrossed in a history book, trying to prepare for his Monday morning classes since he’d missed nearly a week of prep work already.

How fast one’s life can change. Six days earlier, I’d been drinking coffee, reading my Bible in our quiet living room as dawn lighted the windows. It was our last day of summer, a family day where we all hoped to enjoy each other’s company before the following morning took Scott back to work and the children and me out school shopping.

The phone rang that morning and a twinge of apprehension hit me. It wasn’t seven a.m. yet, rare to get a call this early. When I picked up the receiver, quiet sobbing filled my ear. After a moment, I recognized my sister-in-law’s voice. “I need my brother,” was all I could make out.

I moved quickly down the hall to our bedroom where I handed Scott the phone.

A short while later, Scott told me that his youngest brother had died. The details were few, but one thing was certain, Scott wanted to get on a plane in two days and fly to the east coast to be with his family.

“You have to go,” I agreed. “The kids and I will be fine without you.”

“I want you to go too. I need you at my side right now,” said Scott.

So I can throw up on you on the plane? I was thinking, but I didn’t voice that. Instead, I tried momentarily to talk him out of this idea of both of us traveling.

“I want you there for the wedding,” said Scott. “This is a bad situation and I need you with me.”

The bad situation was that Scott’s older brother Vic would be celebrating his wedding in six days and now this would take place in the shadow of their youngest brother’s death. Due to a lack of finances and the pregnancy, we had decided we couldn’t make the wedding. Now a funeral was planned for the weekend as well.

I spent the rest of the day making plane, rental car, and hotel reservations for the two of us while Scott took the kids out on a family day without me.

I hate flying and the last thing I wanted to do was spend two days on a plane in the midst of pregnancy sickness, but death had invaded our world, and everyone knows how rude and unthoughtful death is. When I awoke at the airport on Sunday with drool on my face, my first thought was of death, not, oh my gosh I feel a breeze on my backside and I really am lying on the floor at a busy airport…

Death at a wedding is the worst guest imaginable. Friday night before the Saturday marriage celebration, my sister-in-law arrived with Mike’s ashes having driven nine hours from Virginia to meet the family in Maine. She placed Scott’s little brother in a metal box on the coffee table and all I could hear was my brother-in-law saying to me, “Hey, P, how you doin’ girl?”

Mike was the Peter Pan sort. Forever a smiling boy with a Neverland attitude. Staring at that box containing his remains, memories soaked my mind. Mike had tried to teach me how to dance before my own wedding. “P, you gotta move like this, girl.”

“You and Michael Jackson move like that. This girl is white to the bone. I move like this.” I awkwardly bumped Mike’s bony hip draped in parachute pants. Two decades ago at our wedding, Mike, along with Scott and their older brother Vic did a dance off at our reception. I hid in the corner hoping that the offspring Scott and I would produce together could move like these brothers on the dance floor shocking my peach-farming grandparents.

There was no dancing at Vic’s wedding. The weather was perfect, Maine at her best with a meadow of lawn mowed to the edge of the woods. A big white tent shaded people and food. We all smiled with tears in our throat. My nieces and nephew ran around chasing my sister-in-law’s Wizard of Oz terrier and I missed our kiddos so much on Saturday I could hardly stand my pregnant self. I ate a piece of wedding cake, then spent the remainder of the afternoon on the edge of throwing up. Thoughts of Mike’s untimely death plagued me. Mostly, I mourned with family who had booked tickets to Maine to savor a marriage and found themselves dividing up a little brother’s ashes. In the midst of the sadness, we ate lobster four days in a row for the cost of deli sandwiches. Surprisingly, the shellfish sat well with me. I also collected sea glass from a rocky beach wishing our children raced around me searching for ocean treasures too, and Scott and I rode a ferry boat across a bay dotted with lobster boats.

I thought about all this as I looked around the airport after wiping drool from my carpet-imprinted face. Why were these people here today? Were they happy? Sad? Afraid? Worn out by grief and pregnancy the way I was? For a moment, I felt death laughing at me. This unwelcome guest had refused to leave my side all week and I was sick of him.

“Jesus has conquered you,” I said out loud. I’d already slept on the ground in this airport. Having a conversation with invisible spirits wasn’t a stretch.

“Whose laughing now?” I continued. Psalm 23 had been running through my head all week. In fact, it was printed in my devotion on the day of our departure for Maine. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” That was the scripture of my daily devotion for August 11th. I read it at five a.m. before leaving for the airport. Not comforting to a person afraid of flying.

Again on Sunday, Psalm 23 made its sobering appearance. I follow a reading plan in my Bible. Wouldn’t you know it, Psalm 23 was assigned to me on Sunday. Who wants to board a plane in the valley of the shadow of death?

“I don’t fear you, death, because the Shepherd is with me,” I continued my conversation with the invisible spirit at my side. My husband looked at me. He could see my lips moving, but his iPod earphones plugged his hearing. He disconnected and asked me if I was okay.

“I’m ready to be home,” I told him.

“Me too,” he answered.

We arrived in our driveway at midnight. I kissed all our sleeping children that night, more than grateful to see their precious faces again. The next morning was our five-year-old son’s first day of kindergarten.

What came to me as I drove into the sparkling sun taking three of our boys to school the following morning was not the valley of the shadow of death mocking at my side. The ending of Psalm 23 stirred my heart. “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”

Psalm 23 is often read for funerals, but King David lived a long, full life. The valley of the shadow couldn’t hold David because he lived in the light of God’s love.