After a Blinding Loss, Trust Brings True Love
In May 2021, Michelle Hord wrote about her daughter’s death and the
far too many mothers like her grappling with the unjust loss of a child’s life. Now she continues her story to share how she has been surviving the crushing grief—and a surprising hopeful turn of events.
My Grandma Ritchie used to always say, “Go to the water, daughter.” And the water has consistently been my place for peace.
I am a writer who once romanticized the words and pictures of love and trust we find on greetings cards and in rom-coms. Until 2017, when, without warning, all those pretty ideas were burned to ash in the most insidious way.
After a decade in a marriage where the greeting card words never quite matched my real-life picture, I decided that I needed to get a divorce. That is when my husband and the father to our glorious little girl transformed into something unimaginable. After months of vicious bickering, he finally met me to peacefully sign our divorce papers.
Then he went home and murdered our only child, Gabrielle.
In the following years spent fighting my literal court battles and my figurative emotional ones, I ritually retreated to the ocean when I needed to breathe. I always returned to the Bahamas, where my daughter and I had laughed and frolicked in the waves. When news of my loss found its way to my friends in the Bahamas days after Gabrielle’s murder, I received a text that simply said, “We heard, we are waiting for you.” I arrived shell-shocked in those early weeks to be greeted with Bible verses of encouragement taped to the mirrors in my hotel bathroom and praying Bahamian sister-friends/mothers who surrounded me with love.
I often went back to those familiar faces and landmarks to heal from this new life I did not recognize. I ate alone at the Bahamian Club restaurant, where on our last visit, Gabrielle craftily managed to tell the waiter it was my birthday without my knowledge. It was a solitary grief, and I planned to journey alone. Sure, perhaps a romantic distraction at some point, but trust? The idea of dating felt impossible and terrifying. Still, somewhere deep, I hoped silently that I could perhaps experience love again. I had a defiant faith that there was a horizon just beyond my sight line that would someday bring love—even though it would take a miracle.
And then, miraculously, he showed up.
I met him on the very beach where I traced my daughter’s footprints in the sand. We talked and laughed easily, but given how much younger he was than me, anything more did not fit my story. I still was holding on to preconceived notions of what love should look like.
In subsequent trips of refuge to the soothing balm of the sea, I would serendipitously bump into my new friend, Axel. Axel, which in its Hebrew origin, Absalom, means “Father of Peace.” Slowly we began to linger over our conversations. Pieces of our past, pain, and promise moved through these exchanges like the ebb and flow of the tide.
We went on an official first date on Halloween 2019, two years after we’d first met. Halloween was a loaded day as I pondered the actualized and missed moments with my little girl. So an innocuous date seemed like a good distraction. After hours of talking and laughing, we made our way to the beach in the moonlight. I was a nervous wreck. I felt like a teenager. Was I crazy? How could this be real? He kissed me and then said, “You are a horrible kisser.” We both erupted in laughter. Suddenly and unexpectedly, I found a way to begin again.
With Axel, it has not been an easy road. I have former memories and former trauma and former skins that I have had to shed or somehow retrofit into this new existence. But you can’t underestimate the power of hope and trust.
Trust reminds me of my beloved ocean: vast and beautiful, mysterious, and sometimes deeper than you anticipate. But standing at the shore of trust, shuddering at the temperature of the water, will never get you there. At some point, you must wander away from the shore. The only way to acclimate your body temperature to this new space is to just dive deep. This isn’t only true for me and my trauma, it is true for you, too.
After a courtship filled with Covid and a world that literally turned upside down (again), the only thing that felt true, the only thing I knew for sure, was that I loved this man and he loved me. Sure, there was baggage that never would just fit in the overhead compartment, but we decided to carry it together. And somehow it made the load lighter.
Every day we choose to keep loving. We choose to keep trusting. Two months ago, we got married on the beach where we met and where Gabriele and I spent precious moments. So many pieces of my “before” story sat there to bear witness…girlfriends who were bridesmaids in my first wedding…family and friends who had attended the wedding and also the criminal murder trial of my ex-husband. And in VIP seating in the front row was Gabrielle’s favorite dolly, Barbara. She sat next to empty chairs of remembrance until she was cradled in Axel’s arms as we headed up the aisle as husband and wife.
A trusting love is one of the miracles of the universe. A miracle that requires sweat equity and hard work, but that can bring light into places of your heart you never imagined could be illuminated again or perhaps were never illuminated at all.
I still love a good syrupy greeting card, yet what I have now has so much more depth. I appreciate companionship and peace because I intimately know evil and unrest. I cannot guarantee Axel or myself that we will be together for the rest of our lives, although it is my most sincere desire, but I can promise him today. Each morning, I can wake up with a heart open to love and the courage to trust today. Our love story may not fit on the front of a greeting card, but the pictures and the words are perfectly and wondrously aligned. I can ask for nothing more.
Michelle D. Hord is a creative storyteller and media executive. Her heart belongs to Gabrielle’s Wings, a nonprofit fund in her daughter’s memory to empower children to soar.
Her book, The Other Side of Yet: Finding Light in the Midst of Darkness, is available for pre-order and will be published on March 16.
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