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As Heather Carlson-Jaquez composed a sermon for her church’s Laity Sunday, she thought at first of typical occasions that fit the theme of joy – the births of her children, for example, and when she had met her husband.
But the sermon that she eventually gave at Willis United Methodist Church centered around an entirely different definition of joy – one that had members of the congregation squirming a bit in their seats and exchanging puzzled glances.
What does this have to do with joy?, their glances seemed to say as Carlson-Jaquez began to describe the sudden death of her husband when she was 28. How can there be any joy in losing your husband to a ruptured aneurysm, leaving you a widow with two young children?
But as Carlson-Jaquez went on to describe the aftermath of her husband Matt’s death, and of discovering “joy in a bowl of cereal,” it all became clear to her fellow church-goers.
What’s more, the sermon went on to become the basis of a submission to Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miracles and More – and struck a chord with the editors, who included her chapter, “Joy in a Bowl of Cereal” in the book.
Miracle match
As Carlson-Jaquez explains in her book, the events of January 2010 started out as anything but joyful.
After her husband’s collapse and hospitalization, his condition deteriorated for eight days, and the doctors concluded that there was irreversible brain damage.
Matt Carlson would never come out of his coma, and it was time to consider ending life support.
Driving home from the hospital, dreading the decision, Carlson-Jaquez knew nevertheless what her decision would be. She and her husband had discussed the Terri Schiavo case, and he believed that it was against their faith to sustain life artificially.
After a mostly sleepless night, Carlson-Jaquez writes, she finally dropped off to sleep at 4 a.m. Two hours later, she woke and sat bolt upright in bed, with one thought echoing through her brain:
“Eddie needs a kidney.”
Over the holidays, she and Matt had visited one of her sister’s childhood friends whose kidneys were failing. At 19, Eddie had had to drop out of college, and his life revolved around dialysis. Without a transplant, he might only live a matter of months.
Carlson-Jaquez instantly called the ICU to ask if her husband could donate his organs. Somewhat taken aback, the nurses said yes. The chances that Matt and Eddie were a perfect match, however, were one in 700.
Miraculously, the two were a match, and Matt’s kidney was shipped to Pittsburgh for transplant into Eddie. When Carlson-Jaquez visited him soon afterwards, with her two children along, he had just eaten cereal for the first time in years. Tearfully, he presented Evan and Chloe with a kidney-shaped pillow bearing the words,
“Your dad is my hero.”
‘If I ever die’
Several months later, Carlson-Jaquez was lying on the couch, lethargic and depressed, watching her children as they played. She had been barely able to function in the time since Matt’s death, and she felt terrible about the fact that her children – who had been three and two when their father died – were suffering the loss of their mother as well.
“They deserve better from me,” she thought to herself, as she resolved to get out of the house and start dating.
But when she began taking people up on their offers to arrange dates, she found that in their community near Fredericksburg, her story was too well known. Matt had been a popular high school teacher and his tragic, high-profile death had touched thousands; it seemed impossible to meet anyone who hadn’t heard the news.
So Carlson-Jaquez turned to online dating sites – “because I didn’t have to tell the story,” she recalls. “I was just looking for dinner out, and talk.”
Almost immediately, she clicked with a man from the Richmond area. The encounter was sheer happenstance, because he lived outside of her search parameters.
“I really, genuinely think God put us together,” Carlson-Jaquez says, noting that their first phone conversation went on for eight hours. “We talked about God’s grace.”
Ironically, Matt Carlson had brought up the subject of remarriage to his wife the very night before his collapse.
“Y’know, Heather,” he teased, “if I ever die, you need to get remarried. Because you can’t take care of yourself.”
“He was ribbing me,” Carlson-Jaquez recalls with a smile, admitting that she frequently botched cooking tasks, in particular.
Now, eight years after Matt’s death, Carlson-Jaquez has remarried and lives in Henrico. She is delighted that her story, which she says was therapeutic to write, has been published in the Chicken Soup book.
“It’s a great way to keep Matt’s memory alive,” she says – for both his own children and Matt’s high school community. “He was so adored; he touched thousands of students.”
Carlson-Jaquez has five children now. Her new husband came to the marriage with two of his own, and they have had a fifth child together.
Her name is Grace.
