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Photo by Lisa Slotsve

I know that we never doubted one another’s love. It was strong and committed and faithful. I loved living without doubts. How many people have that type of reassurance in their lives? Even within my most insecure moments, one glance from you and I could easily be reassured. That is all it took.

Please glance at me tonight and tell me everything will be ok. I need my confidence restored.

~Jennifer Silvera, November 19, 2005

When three uniformed officers showed up on Jennifer Silvera’s front door, she knew something terrible had happened. After the loss of her husband Officer Shawn Silvera, Jennifer began a journey through devastating grief and heartbreaking loss that lead her to discover peace, no matter the circumstances.

Starting Out

A resounding theme in Shawn and Jennifer Silvera’s marriage was the desire to always work on their relationship. They fell in love as high school sweethearts and were married in May 2000. After college, the couple joined the Peace Corps in Honduras where they served side-by-side. “It wasn’t a perfect relationship by any means, there were things we had to work on,” Jennifer says, “but we were learning how to listen and understand and work through things. That was really important to us.”

When Shawn and Jennifer returned from the Peace Corps, they settled into life in the Twin Cities. Jennifer worked as a human resources director at a hotel chain while Shawn served Lino Lakes, Minnesota as a police officer. With the birth of their first child, they decided Jennifer would leave her high-paced job to be a stay-at-home mom. Jordan was born in December 2003 and Madelynn in April 2005.

Unexpected News

September 6, 2005 was an ordinary day for Shawn and Jennifer and their two young children. Shawn was home enjoying lunch with his family before leaving for his afternoon shift. Although she was devoted to being a stay-at-home mom, Jennifer remembers feeling overwhelmed and sharing these feelings with her husband. “After my job as a human resources director, the pace at home was so different. It was still busy but in a different way,” she says. “Shawn had about five minutes before he left for work and he said, ‘we are going to figure this out. Don’t worry.’ I felt such a sense of being in this thing called ‘parenthood’ together. I didn’t feel like it was my problem. There was comfort in hearing him say ‘we.’”

Shawn was leaving for the last shift of his rotation and the family was looking forward to four days that he’d have off. “I felt refreshed when he left –that feeling of being heard and knowing someone is not only listening but cares.”

Jennifer worked on a proof book of photos Shawn had taken and looked forward to showing her husband what she accomplished. “I was excited to show him and say, ‘I did something today! I changed 10 diapers and I did a proof book.’” The afternoon was spent much like every other day, Jennifer remembers. “The kids got up from their naps and we were playing on the floor, reading books. It was a warm September afternoon so I thought about taking the kids for a walk before starting supper early.”

“It was a little after five o’clock when the doorbell rang. Jordan looked at me and said, ‘Ringing.’ We were both excited for visitors—something out of our daily routine.” Jennifer ran down the steps and, through the side window, saw three silhouettes. “I remember seeing uniforms and thinking how strange it was to have men on my doorstep. So many things raced through my mind like, are they selling something? Are they here to check the water meter? The thoughts were going so fast.”

“As I opened the door and realized they were in police uniforms, I immediately knew what had happened. I knew something was very wrong. They didn’t even have to speak. I knew there was no other reason they’d be at my door.”

Ultimate Sacrifice

The chief of police was the first to say something. He told Jennifer that Shawn was killed in the line of duty. He had been assisting in a high speed chase, deploying stop-sticks, when the suspect’s car aimed and struck him. Officer Silvera made the supreme sacrifice. “At that instant, I became numb.”

“I remember shaking my head and saying I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it; this can’t happen.” One of the sergeants called Jennifer’s family members and they joined her at the house and then accompanied her to the accident scene to say goodbye to her husband. “Inside the ambulance, his arm was warm and I could smell his scent. I didn’t want to say goodbye. I wanted to kiss him. But, I remember thinking, ‘Is it appropriate to kiss death?’ So, I kissed my fingers and placed them on his lips. I felt like I was betraying Shawn as I was escorted home…like I was leaving my entire life behind. How could I walk away from my very own life?”

“A police officer’s death is very honorable. Shawn’s funeral was designed to be the same funeral a president would receive if they’re killed so his was modeled after JFK’s funeral. There was a lot of media attention and we were getting calls from the governor and state senators. We even received a letter from the White House. It was extraordinary and very honoring and very overwhelming.”

After Shock

Following Shawn’s death, the Silvera house was flooded with people. “I was still numb but, all of a sudden, there was constant movement and action in our house. There were police squads stationed outside our home for safety and I literally had people at my house around the clock for a couple of weeks. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced.”

While people were rallying around the family, Jennifer faced the reality of explaining Shawn’s death to Jordan and Madelynn who were 20 and 5 months, respectively, at the time. “With Jordan, I had to explain that daddy didn’t come home. It’s still surprising to me, to this day, the memories he has from that time period. He just recently asked me, ‘Why did we have to put daddy in a box?’ There was a point of transition when daddy was no longer there that is very etched in his mind.”

Madelynn was still a baby but she too responded to the loss. Before Shawn’s death, Madelynn was sleeping through the night, “but after this happened, people would rock her and hold her any time she called and once people weren’t there all the time, she started to wake up quite a bit during the night,” Jennifer remembers. After months of trying to figure out what was wrong, a pediatrician finally explained that it was Madelynn’s way to grieve. “She noticed something different, she sensed the sadness in me and waking up in the night was her way of responding.”

I am trying to capture each memory I have of Shawn as a father and make this connection clear and strong for my children.  Whether they will have any memories or not, I desire for them to cling onto the sense they have of their dad.  As my friend, Lexi, shared with me last night, my children will not have their father in the physical sense, but they will have pieces of Shawn through me and although not the same, this can still be very powerful.

~Jennifer Silvera, October 25, 2005

As things calmed down after the funeral, Jennifer’s mom, sister and good friends would still come and stay with them at the house. “Some of the things I found overwhelming before were still present but now if felt almost impossible to change a diaper or to take a shower,” Jennifer says. “I never signed up to be a single mom. This is not what I expected. When Shawn and I married, I thought it was for life. And I thought life would last until 80 or 90 like our grandparents. It never occurred to me that someone could be killed at the age of 32.”

Healing Words

In the weeks that followed, Jennifer began to notice herself settling into a new routine of taking care of her children during the day and grieving at night. “I wasn’t afraid to cry in front of them but I didn’t want them to have a mother who was crying 24 hours a day.” Instead, Jennifer would stay up late at night, journaling and writing in notebooks as a way of relief. “Writing became a way to get it out of my system. I would stay up until two or three in the morning, crash a couple hours and then start all over again. It was rare for me to sleep.”

About a month after Shawn died, Jennifer confided in her friend, Andrea, “I’m doing the same thing every day– changing diapers, emptying the dishwasher, remembering to take out the trash – but the only thing that helps is if I write and the only thing I’m not doing is writing.”

Andrea asked her to consider making it another assignment on her daily “to-do” list. “That is how my blog started. It was really like reverse psychology my friend played on me – her husband set me up with a blog and all of a sudden I placed importance on it,” Jennifer says. “She told me to blog even if I could only put one sentence out there. If you think someone else is reading what you’re writing than you’ll see the value in doing it.”

Jennifer began writing but instead of one sentence at a time, she was able to write paragraphs. “They’d just flow out of me,” she says. “And as I continued to write, more and more people would email me back and became this shared experience. It helped me to release the grief but it also helped to read the feedback from others that my writing made a connection.”

Something Positive

In December 2005, many Twin Cities media outlets contacted Jennifer to follow up on their story and she was interviewed by newspapers and TV stations. A New Prague, Minnesota couple had heard about Jennifer and found her story inspiring. They had been planning a marriage banquet at their church and needed a speaker and were moved to contact Jennifer. “They emailed me through the blog. I remember reading this email on Christmas Eve with my dad and I was just so amazed that they were asking me to speak at their event. I looked at my dad and said, ‘I can’t. How can I go speak at a marriage event? I’m not even married anymore.’ He said, ‘Who better? You can tell them about the value in marriage and about what really matters in marriage.’ I am so grateful for how much my dad believed in me when I was at my worst.”

With her dad’s encouragement, Jennifer emailed the couple back and let them know she was interested. “Again, it was one of those projects like writing that gave me something to pour my heart into. I noticed after Shawn died, or when someone dies, that love doesn’t disappear. So you still have all this love for a person and where do you put it? What do you do with it? You can write them notes but they don’t physically get them. I still had all this love from our relationship and I felt like now I could pour that into something positive.”

Although Jennifer remembers staring at her notes and feeling nervous during her talk at the marriage banquet, the message she shared earned her a standing ovation. “It’s really neat to connect with couples in that way. I just wanted to let them know this moment is what you have. To ‘be here now’ – our only guarantee is today – how often we waste our days on things that don’t matter,” she says.

The event opened a world of speaking engagements for Jennifer and, since then, she’s been invited to share at several different events. “I think it’s really important to find words you can hold on to. For me, words like hope and trust and believe are strong words. Even on the most dismal days, I’d repeat those words to myself.” Inspired by the healing power of words, Jennifer also wrote a book entitled Believe that reflects on her journey through brokenness and back. “I don’t believe my husband died so that I could write a book, I believe I wrote a book so I could survive his dying. Tools that help us survive look different to everyone whether it’s having coffee with a friend or volunteering or making a quilt or changing oil in your car. We need a place to put our passions. That’s where people will find healing – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still hurting.”

Five years after Shawn’s tragic death, Jennifer is raising Jordan and Madelynn and finds motherhood to be her daily joy. She has a heart for helping others and works on a variety of charity projects through the year including the Shawn Silvera Memorial Run and the Honduras Water Project bringing clean water to a third-world village. Jennifer is also working on her second book. “It’s about comfort and how to help people through a difficult time. One of the questions I get asked the most when speaking is ‘how do I help my friend who is hurting?’ The pain can look different for different people but the commonality is that loss hurts deeply. People on the outside of that pain want to know what they can do,” she says. “Many grief books are written for the person grieving but the last thing I wanted to do was read. The concentration level is just not there. I love to read but I couldn’t get through the books I was given.” Her second book is for family and friends helping from the inner or outer circles of grief.

Something New

Jennifer also believes the word new is a positive word in the healing process. “Those new things that are brought into your life help remind you there still is good in life,” she says. Over a year and a half ago, Jennifer started dating Steven, a strong-hearted man who is compassionate, loving and brings new smiles to her family. “That’s been a whole new transition for me too – to meet this wonderful person and experience this new road in life has been very good and very joy-filled. It’s comforting to have someone to spend time with or make a dinner for or call and ask to bring over a gallon of milk. Life was meant to share together. Steven is a positive role model to my kids. We love being with him.”

“One of the things I thought about when starting to date again is that a lot of times in life we wait for our circumstances to be happy in order to say we are happy. If this happens…then I’ll be happy. I really tried to use these last five years of my life to find peace and contentment with God and with myself and not rely on the future for happiness since we don’t know what that future holds,” Jennifer says. “I’m sensitive to those people who are still single and without a partner in their life. It’s been nice to find contentment in both places.” Jennifer is especially sensitive to the new widow who reads her blog. “If you’re in the middle of raw pain, you want to connect with someone you can relate to. You don’t want to be alone in your grieving.”

On January 1, 2011 Steven and Jennifer exchanged vows. “The idea to marry on New Year’s Day was short and sweet,” Jennifer says. “One of my dearest friends suggested the date to me when I explained we wanted our marriage to represent a new beginning.” As the couple joins hearts and lives in marriage, they also join their families. Steven has two daughters Cajsa, 10, and Onie, 8, who have developed a “Brady-Bunch” sort of dynamic with Jordan and Madelynn. “What Steven and I note most about our kids is that they have been through great struggle in their young lives and yet live with such resilience and love. They crave a family. And it is our immense privilege to make and be a family with them.”

Looking Forward

When Shawn died, it forced Jennifer down a road she never thought she’d have to travel. “It takes a lot of reworking in your mind to get used to a new normal.” The loss of a loved one is a huge adjustment that doesn’t happen quickly Jennifer says. “I think that’s the number one thing I tell people: take your time. For me, God has been instrumental in my healing process and I think time works differently for everybody.” Although Jennifer has weathered the storms of grief and found her way back, the love she has for Shawn will never go away.

What peace I have tonight, knowing we had a big adventure. I consider the past five years another type of adventure, one I didn’t apply for or write an essay for or pack a backpack for, but nonetheless a journey that continues to shape and influence and change me. Thank you, Shawn, for opening my life to give and receive all the adventures along the way.

~Jennifer Silvera, September 6, 2010 – 5 years after Shawn died

“I try to make the most of every day,” Jennifer says. “Again I’m not perfect at that. Sometimes I get frustrated with myself and I’ll call my sister and say, ‘I’m not very good at this. I tell others to ‘be here now’ and I’m not able to do it myself.’ She’s so wise and will tell me, ‘Try again. You may have to try 90 times today to ‘be here now’…but just try again.’ She reminds me to not lose sight of what really matters. Today is our only guarantee.” Living intentionally is very important yet very challenging, Jennifer says. But, that’s exactly what she tries to do. Every day she tries to be purposeful in the way she lives and she inspires others to do so as well.

For more information about Jennifer’s blog or book or BELIEVE jewelry benefitting charity, visit www.believenow.com. To learn more about the Shawn Silvera Memorial Run or Honduras Water Project go to www.shawnsilvera.org.