DM From Heaven
By: Steven Andrew Schultz
It was the phone call I had been longing for ever since my aunt Audrey died when I was just an eleven-year-old boy. My uncle Mark (her husband) commented on my Facebook post inviting me to come visit him that summer and I enthusiastically accepted. His final comment was saying he was going to call me to go over dates for our reunion later in the week. I immediately started looking at flights and even went to the garage and got my suitcase cleaned out and ready.
My aunt Audrey was my angel, and my uncle Mark was my idol. They lived in Estes Park, Colorado with my two cousins Rebekah and Brooke and we lived in Fountain Valley, California. Every summer we drove to Colorado and every Thanksgiving or Christmas they came to stay with us in California. It was a beautiful family dynamic until my aunt died after battling Lupus for several years. My uncle would remarry, and the yearly visits ceased once my aunt was deceased. I would see my uncle one more time a few years later when we brought his new wife to California when I was fifteen, but from that point on I would never see him again until this Facebook invitation sparked the hope of another one of his infamous bear hugs.
We would exchange a few handwritten letters over the decades, but mostly sporadic Facebook comments were the extent of our relationship. Losing my aunt became like a double death because I lost my uncle, too. But now, the crushed little boy hidden inside my thirty-six-year-old frame was blossoming back to life like one of those squeeze toys that expand back out to its original shape. After all these years I would see my boyhood hero in just a few weeks and hear his voice in the next day or so. We hadn’t even spoken on the phone all these years, so him telling me he was going to call me was a delight as well.
I slept in that next morning, maybe because a broken piece of my heart was finally at peace. I grabbed my phone and saw the icon for a DM (Direct Message) on Facebook. Still not fully awake, I noticed it was a message from Brooke, my uncle’s daughter. I thought maybe she was reaching out so she could fly home too when I came to visit. I clicked open Facebook to see a message of a totally different kind of homecoming. My cousin informed me that while riding his bicycle last night, my uncle had a brain aneurism and died.
All I could do was stare at my empty suitcase I had brought up from the garage the day earlier. Its emptiness and uselessness were a perfect metaphor for how I felt. I carried it downstairs to the garage. Unbeknownst to me, my roommate was following me down. In the garage I dropped the suitcase and noticed my roommate’s presence. From the paleness of my face, he knew something was wrong. I said, “My uncle is dead!” I collapsed to the cold floor and my roommate Jake picked me up and held me as I cried on his warm, still beating chest.
Because of Covid restrictions, I could not attend my uncle’s funeral. I watched it on Facebook livestream. I went and got a turkey meal like we used to eat together on Thanksgiving and a piece of his favorite pie: Rhubarb. As I sat there eating, crying, and watching, I clicked back to my DM’s to read our old correspondence. Shockingly, there was a new Facebook message from my uncle. How could a dead guy be sending me a DM? He had sent it a week earlier, but I never noticed the blue circle notification. He was responding to a message I had sent him a couple weeks prior expressing how I was considering running for School Board but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to run an election campaign. I was watching my uncle’s funeral while reading a message from my uncle. Here is part of what he wrote in the DM:
“Buddy. You are loved and treasured. GO FOR THE SCHOOL BOARD!”
It was the only sentence he put in all caps. He went on to tell me about the work he was doing as a minister with the homeless and how proud he was of his daughters Rebekah and Brooke and how him and I were a lot alike in how we served our communities and invested in peoples lives by leading with love. His finals words were, “I am very proud of you. I love You, Steve! -Mark”
The way I grieved and honored him was to get over my fear and signed the papers to run for school board. Our campaign began a few weeks after his death. There were two spots open with both incumbents running for reelection. Neither had ever lost and always won by high margins. Those next few months as I walked to over ten thousand homes dropping of fliers with my message and vision for a better way to do school, I carried my uncle’s confidence in me to every door.
Even though I had an all-caps DM from Heaven saying, “GO FOR THE SCHOOL BOARD!” I was doubtful on election night and thought maybe at best I could squeak in and get the second-place spot. Instead, I got one of my uncle’s famous bear hugs with the news that not only did I win first place, we swept every single precinct in the two different cities the school district represents and set three records for highest numbers of votes ever, largest margin of victory ever, and the youngest person to ever win.
Nobody knew of my uncle’s death or his encouragement to me to run, and on the day I was sworn in and took the oath of office, in my suit pocket was one of his handwritten letters and tiny pocket knife he gave me when I was a boy.
On the year anniversary of my uncle’s death, I got another DM, this time from a former student of mine named Charlie with a photo of a dozen handwritten letters he was sending to his coworkers. Charlie was letting me know he was now giving out handwritten letters like I gave to him and all my students and how the lessons I taught him live on. What Charlie didn’t know is the lesson of handwritten letters I got from my uncle, who would write them to all his employees.
Our words create our world. While I didn’t get my reunion, the words Mark Roskam gave me created a union that can’t break. We should add an ellipsis after our death date on tombstones. An ellipsis signifies a long pause and then a continuation. Death is just a pause. Our love continues when our life can’t. My impact on students like Charlie and every child my leadership on the school board will elevate, is also my uncle’s impact. You never only elevate one. You also elevate everyone that each one also impacts. Our impact grants immortality…through love you live forever…my uncle and my aunt, continue…
