c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Christine Yowell put her foot on the balcony ledge. Below, the Mediterranean shimmered in the light of a full moon.

“I could jump off,” she thought. “Five minutes, 10 minutes tops, and I would be in heaven with her.’ “

Only minutes had passed since the phone call telling her that 28-year-old Sarah _ her only child _ had been killed by a huge wave while walking the Cinque Terre in northern Italy.

Yowell looked at the water, turned and went back inside.

In the morning she wrote in her journal: “September 28, 2007: How will I live now?”

How do you go on when life hits you with a sucker punch?

Yowell, who was to be ordained as a pastor when she returned to Mentor, Ohio, from her Mediterranean cruise, knew it would be a battle.

She had her Christian faith. But she didn’t have her best friend, the miracle baby she’d had when no one else thought she could become pregnant after being treated for cancer early in life.

They were always doing things together, just the two of them left after Yowell was divorced twice. They were always talking on the phone, at least 10 times a day.

Sarah and her husband of three years, Christopher Scherer, were backpacking through Europe on their last big adventure before they started a family. They were to meet up with Yowell on Sept. 25 in Venice.

The couple missed their train in Paris by one minute. No matter, Sarah wrote in an e-mail to her mother. They would catch up with each other Oct. 4 in Rome.

But seven days before they were to meet, Sarah and Christopher were walking the coastal path in Manarola, one of five towns that make up the Cinque Terre area. They descended a staircase down to a rocky ledge for a better view. Sarah took Christopher’s picture. They changed places.

Sarah smiled as she pointed at something in the distance. Within seconds of snapping the photo, a 30-foot wall of water shot up behind her and knocked her off balance.

It happened so fast. She was there, and then she was gone.

Christopher ran to find her, but a second monster wave hit, catapulting him into the sea. A third wave lifted him out of the water and smashed him against the rocks, breaking a rib and grinding slivers of granite into his knee, hands and wrists.

Christopher struggled up the staircase, screaming. It took 90 minutes for a Coast Guard helicopter crew to pull Sarah’s body from the churning sea. Even if they had been able to retrieve her earlier, the coroner later determined that Sarah died within five minutes from head injuries.

It took two days for her mother to get from Ephesus in Turkey to La Spezia, where Sarah and Christopher had been staying.

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The town does not embalm its dead. Instead, bodies are taken to a “cold room” in the mortuary until cremation or burial.

Sarah lay on a stainless-steel table, clad in the black shirt and olive pants she wore the day of the accident. Yowell smoothed her daughter’s wild, tangled hair. She pressed her broken nose into place. She fingered the ugly gash on her forehead and felt the deeper wound on the back of her head.

She pushed back her daughter’s lips to see the teeth that she had spent so much money making straight. They were chipped and broken.

She tried to kiss her daughter, but the attendant intervened. “No touch! No touch!” he said, concerned about the potential for disease.

She kissed her anyway.

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Coraggio.

That’s what the Italian mothers told Yowell. During the two days of viewing at the mortuary, they shuffled up to her as she sat on a metal chair in front of the window separating her from Sarah. They pressed their fingertips to her chest and whispered in her ear, Coraggio.

Yowell didn’t know if she had courage within her.

On Oct. 4, she and Christopher returned home with Sarah’s cremated remains. They held a memorial service in mid-October and attended candlelight vigils. Yowell took walks around her cottage. She read books. And she became depressed.

“All the books on grief said it was a minimum of four to seven years of recovery when you lose a child. I thought, `I can’t do this. God wouldn’t want this.”’

She and Christopher, whom she considers a son, clung to each other. Their family, friends and church wrapped them in a tight embrace of prayer.

Still, many nights Yowell would cry into a pillow, the soft muzzle of her chocolate Labrador, Harry, pressed against her cheek.

In November, Yowell resigned her job as a nurse; she had nothing left to give. That same month, she went through with her ordination. Her pastor suggested she wait, but she was determined. Sarah would have wanted it.

It was a glimpse of her inner strength. There would be more revelations.

The holidays arrived. Yowell wondered if she could survive them. She told her sister and her aunt that she might have to leave the Christmas celebrations to go upstairs to a bedroom to cry.

She made it through.

Yowell eased into a part-time position as assistant pastor at her church. She officiated at two weddings, both for girlfriends of Sarah. It was hard to smile when she was thinking her daughter should have been in the bridal parties.

She made it through. Journaling and blogging helped.

By summer, Yowell knew why she had selected “courage” as her word to live by in 2008.

“(In the Bible) Joshua said, `Be strong and courageous,”’ she says. “The word has a lot of different facets. In the beginning, courage for me was taking another breath. But now it’s learning to live in a way that’s different.”

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Recently, there was another full moon. Yowell knows. She counts them. It was No. 12 since Sarah died.

She has learned to love the bright circle in the sky. She and Harry sit on her deck and watch, the way they used to with Sarah. Only now Yowell has another companion, a new best friend.

Rick Provard called her for a date on Sarah’s birthday, Nov. 19, 2007. They had known each other for several years, having met at church retreats. They started dating, but Yowell, 56, had been divorced for 14 years and told him she wasn’t prepared to move. Provard, 62, whose wife died two years ago from cancer, said he was open to relocating.

They married in June.

Rick was by her side in Italy for a memorial service, in July, and with her for the family’s anniversary service for Sarah by Lake Erie.

Now some of Christine Provard’s tears are for joy.

“When Sarah died, I had no grandchildren, no dreams, no life. Everything was gone,” she says. “I identified with Job. He lost it all. He gained it back, but we never know: Did he miss his first family? Was he happy about the new family?

“Now I have a whole new family because Rick has four children and 10 grandchildren. Now I have a reason to live.”

(Janet Fillmore writes for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland.)

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