Learning to Breathe Again
After losing her husband in a tragic diving accident in 2001, Christian musician Tammy Trent knew that only God could help her pick up the pieces and move on.
by Tammy Trent | posted 7/26/2004
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Christian singer/songwriter Tammy Trent and her husband had a fairy-tale marriage, right up to their romantic vacation to Jamaica in September 2001. But on a routine diving excursion, her husband Trent never resurfaced and was later found dead, changing Tammy's life forever. She took a year off from music to grieve and begin healing, and is now using Trent's story as part of her testimony and ministry. Tammy tells her story in her brand-new book, Learning to Breathe Again, in which she tells of their wonderful romance, Trent's tragic death, and how she has been picking up the pieces since. In the following excerpt, we pick up the story two weeks after Trent's death and shortly after the funeral, when Tammy is returning to her Nashville home. She had asked a neighbor, Shannon, to pick her up at the airport and take her to the house.
We didn't say a lot on the ride from the airport. But when we pulled into our neighborhood, I began crying. Shannon reached over and took my hand, but neither of us said anything. She pulled into the driveway. "Are you sure you don't want me to go in with you, Tammy?" she asked.
"I'm sure. But thank you, Shannon."
"If you need anything, you know I'm here." She lived just a couple of doors away.
I nodded, thanked her, and gave her a hug.
Then I punched in the code to open the garage door. Hearing the familiar noise as it rumbled up, a morsel of memory flashed through my mind: Trent and me coming out through the garage, carrying our luggage to the car, big smiles on our faces and happy to be on our way to Jamaica.
My eyes fell on Trent's yard shoes, lined up next to the door leading into the house. He wore them when he was mowing the grass or working outside, and he always took them off before he came inside. I looked at those shoes and pictured Trent leaving them there, lifting out one foot, then the other.
I opened the door and stepped into the house. Everything was exactly as we had left it. There was the DVD lying out beside the TV: Patch Adams. We had watched it together the night before we left for Jamaica. Trent loved that movie, and we had both wiped away tears at the end, where Patch loses the love of his life.
I walked quietly through the house. I didn't weep uncontrollably, but the tears rolled down my cheeks, and occasionally I covered my mouth to keep from sobbing aloud. I sat down in the living room and looked around, then I got up and walked through every room on the first floor.
Finally I started up the sixteen stairs, clinging to the stair rail to pull myself up every step. I stepped into our bedroom and looked around at everything as though I'd never seen it before. And yet it was all so familiar: the pillows arranged just so on the bad, the picture on the dresser, Trent's underwear on the floor. I smiled, remembering how I'd said, "Honey, pick that up," but in the rush to leave that morning, he'd obviously forgotten it.
In our bathroom, I rubbed my hand along the big bathtub we'd shared so many times. I imagined Trent sliding under the surface, holding his breath. There were candles all around the edge of the tub, and I noticed a little matchbook leaning against one of them. Not knowing why, I opened it up, and there, in Trent's writing, was a message to me: "Hi, TT!" He'd drawn a big heart around the words.
It was as if he had left that little matchbook for me to find at exactly that difficult moment. My heart lurched, imagining him writing the words.
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