Grief-stricken husband nearing point of suicide finds help, hope and healing at St. Vincent cemetery

Just days before turning 65 in March 2018, Doug Eidem decided to end his life before the birthday candles could be lit.

His wife of 40 years, Jean, had lost her 19-month battle with ovarian cancer two months earlier, and Eidem was torn apart with grief. He had visited her grave at St. Vincent de Paul Cemetery in Brooklyn Park every day since she died — often several times a day — and he just could not bear to go on.

On a Wednesday night, he formulated a suicide plan he would carry out in the next 24 hours.

That’s when a “miracle” happened. His phone pinged. It was a text from Father Paul Jarvis of St. Bridget in north Minneapolis. The priest had celebrated Jean’s funeral Mass at St. Bridget, where the husband and wife were attending Mass in recent years.

The late-night message was a simple gesture of friendship to a man both grieving and burned out from 20 months of caring for his dying wife, which included three major surgeries and 27 rounds of chemotherapy, Eidem recalled.

He never left her side during those painful months, and he remained loyal in the weeks after she died, visiting her grave daily to leave flowers and read a love poem he had found online.

“I wasn’t sleeping much for the first couple of months,” he said recently in an interview with The Catholic Spirit. “I had a recurring dream. I would actually hear somebody ringing the doorbell, and I’d open the door and then Jean would be standing there in the door(way). And, it would just startle me so much that I’d wake up instantly. My heart would just be racing, and I couldn’t fall back asleep. I’d sleep (only) an hour or two a night.”

In the midst of these episodes, he spontaneously decided to drive to Pennsylvania to visit a priest who once had served at St. Gerard in Brooklyn Park, where the Eidems were members. The visit was meaningful and supportive, but short. Eidem left on a Friday, drove 12 hours, visited the priest Saturday and returned Sunday.

The priest asked Eidem if he had thought about suicide, and Eidem said yes. But, he had backed off because he worried such a drastic move might put his soul in jeopardy and keep him from being reunited with Jean.

Not long after coming home, those hesitations vanished in a pit of despair.

“It didn’t matter what happened to me,” he said. “So, I decided I needed to take my life.”

That’s where Father Jarvis stepped in.

“I was laying there deciding how to do it,” Eidem said about his plan to commit suicide. “And, all of a sudden, my phone went off and it was a text from Father Paul at St. Bridget’s wanting to know if I wanted to meet him for breakfast in the morning. I thought, ‘Well, if that isn’t a sign from God, I don’t know what is.’”

He put his suicidal thoughts aside and accepted the invitation. Actually, it was a re-invitation. After Jean died, Eidem had started going to a weekly meeting of about 10 people at Emily’s F&M Café in north Minneapolis, not far from St. Bridget. The group would go to 8 a.m. Mass on Thursdays, then afterward head over to the restaurant, affectionately known as the “culinary chapel,” Father Jarvis noted.

Eidem, whom Father Jarvis described as “a little shy,” seemed to take a liking to the group, and soon became a regular. Then, after a few weeks, he stopped coming. Father Jarvis, noticing that Eidem was taking Jean’s death hard, decided to make what he thought at the time was “an innocuous call.”

The timing of that simple text seemed to be divinely inspired. “I think it was a beautiful miracle,” Father Jarvis said.

Eidem agreed, and called that moment a major shift in his journey through grief. Thoughts of suicide gradually subsided — with one more episode a week after his text from Father Jarvis — as he continued to frequent the “culinary chapel” of Emily’s, and also remained faithful to his graveside visits at St. Vincent cemetery.

He would buy flowers for Jean every day at a nearby Hy-Vee supermarket, and eventually became well-known to store employees. His was also a familiar face to cemetery caretakers and parish employees, among them Tess Eiden, whose family has worked at the parish cemetery for decades. As the cemetery coordinator, Eiden, whose father once was the caretaker, or sexton, of St. Vincent de Paul Cemetery, knows the value and comfort of being able to come to the place where a loved one is buried.

“It’s very important,” she said of visiting a grave. “It lets them move on (in life), but they can still come back and know that their loved one is in a safe space.”

Eidem established some traditions at the cemetery, like going out on Christmas Eve and spending Christmas Day there, too — from dawn to dusk. He even puts up Christmas lights to create a festive mood. The heart-shaped stone and picture of Jean — a “glamour shot” done years ago as a gift for her — placed on the front of the stone make for an intimate setting.

On nice summer days, he sits on the ground with his back against the stone and silently reads a book. Or, he may lie on the ground and look up at the clouds breezing by. If he feels particularly sad or reflective, he will stand on the back side of the stone, lean over and place his elbows on it. Deep thoughts will come, and tears often follow.

His long vigils have sometimes brought criticism from people who think he needs to “get over it and let go.” But, there is deeper meaning to visiting a cemetery and spending time at the grave of a loved one, according to one expert who has seen and helped many people through the burial process of their loved ones (see sidebar).

“It’s like carrying on that relationship,” said Sister Fran Donnelly, director of LifeTransition Ministries at Catholic Cemeteries in Mendota Heights. “We need, as human beings, that physical connection (to loved ones). So, when the person is no longer physically right there, we’ve got to find ways to make that real — their presence. What that does for us is it allows us to, step by step, let some things go, but not everything. We don’t want to let everything go. We want that person to remain in our lives. And so, for many of us, it’s helpful to see their name somewhere, to know that their remains are there — safe, sound, secure, forever. That’s really reassuring for people.”

Eidem has taken full advantage of the opportunity to maintain his connection to Jean at the cemetery, with his thoughts and actions gradually turning outward. It started when he met a woman whose husband is buried near Jean. The woman commented on what a neat freak her husband had been, then Eidem noticed that the grass was not well trimmed around his stone. He soon remedied that by bringing in trimming equipment and tidying up the gravesite. Her immediate gratitude warmed his heart.

This started a ministry. Eidem remained attentive to the grave of the woman’s husband, then started noticing others nearby that needed attention. Casual offers to loved ones coming to visit them were well received. The list grew, and Eidem became a reliable, volunteer caretaker.

Not to say the cemetery isn’t well kept. Its beauty is apparent to those walking or driving its narrow, intimate roads. The point of Eidem’s self-appointed ministry is not so much about tidiness as it is extending comfort to the grieving, pastoral care without being a pastoral minister.

“Absolutely,” said St. Vincent’s Eiden, who works on the accounting side of the parish and cemetery and worked with Eidem on the purchase of side-by-side plots for Jean and, eventually, himself. “Sometimes, you just need to talk about it (with another person). You need to grieve. People just need to cry. They need to be angry. There’s not always a good answer.”

Yet, Eidem’s grieving process — helped greatly by a grief support group at St. Vincent that he has attended and praises highly — has led him to an answer of sorts, one that creates ever-increasing connections at the cemetery as he spends countless hours tidying up graves and, maybe more importantly, listening to people who are hurting.

“Everybody’s different,” he said. “Some people that approach me out there are just like me. I know when they want to start talking about it, not to interrupt, and just let them keep going.”

A funny thing happens when he extends a listening ear: He walks away feeling better. Each conversation, each grave fussed over, becomes a dose of medicine that brings healing.

But, Eidem isn’t keen on getting recognition for his service. Nor does he try to pontificate great wisdom on grief and helping the bereaved.

He merely offers a simple explanation for why he attends to others’ graves.

“I enjoy helping people,” he said. “I just do it because it’s the right thing to do. … If it makes a person happy for just a few minutes, why not do it?”

Recently, Eidem has taken his ministry on the road. He temporarily is staying at a resort near Alexandria while he tries to close on a townhouse near McGregor, about two hours north of the Twin Cities. He began visiting a Catholic cemetery near Alexandria and has been tending graves there, too. Once in McGregor, he will keep doing the same.

Nevertheless, he won’t forget about Jean. Far from it. He will continue going back and forth from Alexandria to the Twin Cities, with a stop at St. Vincent cemetery always on the itinerary.

And, for the rest of his time on earth, he will anticipate the day when his grief will end.

“The happiest day of my life,” he said, “will be when I leave this world and I can be with my wife again.”

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A place for connection

For people like Sister Fran Donnelly, a cemetery is not so much a place to be sad as it is a place to be human.

It’s a place designed to foster the same kinds of connections that people have throughout their lives. Even though their loved one is no longer physically present, they nevertheless can maintain a meaningful relationship by taking regular time to visit the cemetery.

As director of LifeTransition Ministries at The Catholic Cemeteries in Mendota Heights, Sister Fran helps people understand the new reality and new relationship they are able to have with their loved ones whose remains are interred at a cemetery.

For her, it is grounded in Catholic teaching about death — and resurrection.

“I have a real thing about the communion of saints,” she said. “Whatever it is that connects us as human beings is very real and is not broken in death. It remains somehow. And, the more we have reminders of that, the more real it is to us.”

Cemeteries help grieving people by offering tangible reminders of a connection some fear may have been lost in death.

“We need those physical, those tangible, real things to help us because we don’t know what the heck heaven means, and we don’t know what it means to have someone die and not be here with us, but still be somewhere and be somehow connected,” she said. “The human brain, spirit needs something I can touch, something I can see. And, I think cemeteries provide that unlike anyplace else.”

An important tangible component, she said, is a permanent marker with the person’s name engraved on a stone. “That’s a real, real crucial part,” she said. “My name will be there forever. That kind of memorialization is not true anywhere else.”

It makes a difference even when the people who visit the cemetery have never met the person who died. Perhaps, it’s a relative they never met or an ancestor who died before they were born.

“To see names that are connected to me is about as real as it gets,” said Sister Fran, who once had a moving experience going to Ireland and visiting cemeteries where her ancestors are buried. “It says something about connection — I am somehow connected.”

Another tangible element of a cemetery is its sacredness, something visitors feel when they visit the graves of their loved ones.

“This is a big thing with me,” said Sister Fran, whose office is located at Resurrection Cemetery in Mendota Heights. “I really, really am passionate about this, that there’s something about the sacred space (of a cemetery). Ours is blessed, so it’s holy ground. And, where better would you want your loved one to be?”

In turn, that motivates people, like one man she has observed at Resurrection Cemetery who goes to his wife’s grave every day, even holidays. Some people might criticize such faithfulness, but she understands his motivation and affirms his — and anyone’s — choice to keep coming regularly.

“Why wouldn’t they be here every day?” she asked. “It makes perfect sense to me. … People go to where their loved ones are. My father and brother are buried in upstate New York. Do you think I’d ever go there and not go to the cemetery? I can’t imagine doing that.”