Sherry Meyer - death in the middle of life

Death is a normal part of life, right? We all know that generally speaking, we get old and then we die. But sometimes death comes much sooner. It steals life away when a marriage is vibrant. It robs young children of a parent. It cheats friends and family of a beloved companion.

Jeff and Sherry Pearce July 4, 2007

Sherry Meyer, who is our Director of Resource Management and Development, can tell you about how death can come all too soon. She knows the story well. Life was totally normal in early 2007. She and her husband, Jeff Pearce, lived active, busy lives. They were parents of two children, Alexis, 8, and Zachary, 4. Sherry and Jeff would celebrate their 12^th wedding anniversary in July. There was no question, in early 2007, that birthdays and anniversaries would continue to occur.

Sherry and Jeff met in 1993 through mutual friends. She was almost 27; he was almost 30. They started dating, and eventually married in 1995. Jeff had always been athletic, and had played a variety of sports when he was young. That year, in 2007, he started having unexplained headaches. No big deal really. But eventually the headaches bothered him enough that he went to a neurologist, who prescribed a stronger pain medication to help.

That spring, Jeff was playing a basketball game with friends, when he collided with someone and went down. He landed a little funny, Sherry said, and started limping. Again, no big deal. But the limping continued longer than it should have, so he went to a doctor, got X-rays which showed nothing, and started physical therapy. “It was kind of helping,” Sherry said. “But then, he was going for a bike ride and couldn’t get his leg up over the bike bar. That was kind of strange.”

Soon, Jeff’s foot started dropping as he walked. That, combined with the weakness in his leg, pointed to the possibility of nerve damage. So Jeff visited a neurosurgeon, and had a series of MRIs, all of which showed nothing unusual going on. The neurosurgeon performed a minor procedure on Jeff’s leg to see if there was something pressing on the nerves, but again, all looked fine.

Jeff with children Zachary and Alexis

By this time, Jeff was wearing a foot brace to help him walk better. “But it was becoming very noticeable that something was wrong,” Sherry said. “His balance was off.” Sherry said that one doctor had mentioned MS (multiple sclerosis) but said that probably wasn’t what it was. Other than that, they hadn’t considered that Jeff had anything other than some type of nerve damage that just wasn’t showing up on tests.

“In the beginning of November, at the follow up appointment with the neurosurgeon, he noticed there were muscles twitching in Jeff’s arm and he suggested we make a follow up appointment with Jeff’s neurologist,” Sherry said.  “At this point, I decided to go to the doctor with him. I wanted to know what was going on.”

They went to the appointment with the neurologist who had helped Jeff with the headaches. This was the first time they heard words that they weren’t familiar with, but that would ultimately change their lives. “She (the doctor) said I’d like to test for ALS first. I didn’t have a clue what that was,” Sherry said, meaning she knew nothing about the disease itself. “When we were leaving, Jeff turned to me and said, ‘Do you know what that is?’ I said yes, it’s Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Jeff said, ‘There’s no treatment. No cure.’”

The Pearce Family, about a week before diagnosis

Jeff was scheduled to return in a week. In the meantime, the neurologist warned them, don’t get on the Internet and start reading about ALS. “Of course, that’s the first thing I did,” Sherry said. “And we prayed don’t let it be anything like that.”

But sadly, ALS is the diagnosis Jeff received. “It was like a bomb,” Sherry said. “I felt like the world ended on that day. And it did, because nothing was ever the same.” This was in mid-November, 2007.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. The affected nerve cells are motor neurons, which send signals to muscles throughout the body, controlling voluntary movement and muscle power. Without these signals, the muscles atrophy and the body dies. There is no cure, and it’s a fatal disease.

When Jeff was diagnosed, Sherry said, she heard things she had never imagined for their life together. Walkers and wheelchairs, breathing tubes, feeding tubes. “They were just suffocating me,” she said. The information was meant to be helpful, and eventually it would be, but at that time, Sherry needed to shut down and try to process this.

Trying to be normal, after diagnosis

Anger was foremost. “People would say they were praying for us,” she said, “but I’m thinking, exactly what are these prayers doing, because he’s getting worse. His progression was so fast it was hard to keep up with.”

She and Jeff tried desperate measures – dietary, detoxing, supplements, sweating it out, even a hair analysis that could give them a reading on minerals that he might need. They read everything they could find about the disease. “I think when you have no hope, you’re willing to try anything,” Sherry said.

Jeff began walking with a cane in December that year, and by January he was using a walker. He continued to work, but his job involved a lot of travel, and he finally had to stop working in February. Jeff had also been involved at Holy Cross through Community Ministries, and gave a lot of time and effort to Metro Lutheran Ministries. He continued to serve as an usher on Sundays, even while using a cane. In March and April of 2008, Sherry noticed that Jeff’s voice was starting to go. “He was getting harder to understand,” she said. By June, he was using a wheelchair.

As Jeff’s health continued to deteriorate, Sherry’s concern was trying to keep up with her kids while protecting them from a reality too harsh for them to grasp. As their classmates starting asking them if their dad was going to die, they asked Sherry that question. “I couldn’t lie to them,” Sherry said. “So I said we don’t know. We’re doing everything we can.”

But there was no escaping seeing Jeff grow thinner, be unable to move or talk, be confined to sitting in a wheelchair day after day, be fed through a tube. Looking back, Sherry said it was pure torture for Jeff, because he was completely cognizant of what was happening. He even found a way to express to her that he didn’t expect to be alive through the holidays that year, almost as though it were his wish.

In early April, 2009, Jeff made the decision to stop eating. He took only a little bit of water, and was administered morphine to keep him as comfortable as possible. Jeff grew up Lutheran, and his faith allowed him to accept that he wasn’t going to beat this. During this time, Sherry’s prayer was that he would die while the children were out of the house, and in such a way that she could handle. “And that’s exactly how it happened,” she said. 

The morning of April 15, Sherry said, she looked at Jeff, and saw the changes in breathing, and knew this would be the day. Alexis and Zachary were at school. Sherry had been Jeff’s primary caregiver throughout the past year and a half, and had used hospice care only minimally along with a few hours a week of paid help. That morning, she called for a hospice nurse to come over, but learned no one would be available until later that day. “I thought, I probably don’t want to do this myself,” Sherry said, “so I called the church and talked to (Pastor) Mike, and he came over.” The two kept watch over Jeff as he breathed his last. Pastor Mike said he was there for about two hours, praying and talking with Sherry, checking on Jeff's breathing, and remaining with her until the funeral home came to pick up his body.

The sixth anniversary of Jeff’s death was this past week, April 15, 2015. It fell on a Wednesday, which is also the same day of the week that Jeff passed away. Coincidentally, that is the day Sherry sat down to share this story. As she recounted the above, she described how she can see God’s hand all through it. Her initial anger was replaced with gratitude, as people called, came to visit, sat with Jeff so she could take a break, helped with her kids, and brought meals. “I didn’t think anyone was helping,” Sherry said, “but when I look back, they were all doing stuff. Those meals were wonderful. It became an adventure for my kids – what are we having for dinner tonight?” She continued, “It was easy at first to say where was God. Jeff got cheated out of raising two kids. I got cheated and it’s not fair. But it was God who brought those people into our lives. We were surrounded by so many people that cared for me and the kids. He was always there, providing for us.”

The year following Jeff’s death was one of transition. There was the initial relief from the intense burden of caregiving that was forced upon Sherry, followed with deep grief and the sense of great loss. There was worry about the future and finances and trying to be a single parent to two active children. Jeff died about a week before his 46^th birthday. So on April 23, his birthday, daughter Alexis said, “Daddy won’t be able to celebrate here with us but he can celebrate in heaven.”

Eventually, Sherry realized that life continues and so she started to let herself be more open to getting back out in its midst. The way she had met Jeff through mutual friends would repeat itself again in her life, as a friend introduced her to a man named Allen Meyer. “He brought me back to life,” Sherry said of Allen. “He knew my situation. He was open and genuine from the very beginning.”

Sherry and Allen Meyer

Sherry and Jeff had a good marriage, so she was okay with the thought of another relationship. Allen and Sherry connected right away, and their friendship grew as they got to know each other. They married in May, 2011.

“I don’t think there’s a day that goes by that I don’t think of Jeff,” Sherry said. “It was a lot of transition. What would have been, what could have been. You can either wallow in that or move on. I had to grow and learn.”

Sherry is happily married to Allen, but that doesn’t diminish the grief that still overtakes her occasionally. But Allen has come to understand how to be her friend during those times. For example, on April 15 a week ago, as Sherry shared this story, she got a text from Allen, who was out of town, letting her know he realized this was a difficult day for her, and that he was thinking of her.

We Christians celebrated Easter a couple of weeks ago. Easter is God’s story of death and resurrection, and it is why we can have hope through tragedy. Sherry’s story illustrates that hope.