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The black grass stuck under her fingernails as she grabbed fistfuls, stuffing them hastily into Walmart sacks. The stench was overwhelming. She silently hoped her children would not recognize it when she returned to the vehicle with the sacks. Twilight disguised the place along the highway, just as she had planned, so that her kids wouldn’t recognize the area. At this hour, she shouldn’t have been able to see the distinction between the normal grass and the patch of matted blades that looked as if it had been spray-painted black.

But she could see it. Of all images, this is one that she’d never be able to shake.

Any other day—any normal day—she might worry about waking or disturbing the senior citizens that owned the yard where she was kneeling, pulling up grass. But today was not a normal day and after all, she felt that the grass was her. More than hers, it was her.

Karen Simmons lived through the unthinkable each day for about two years: raising eight children on her own after her husband, Patrick died in a car accident at the age of 44.

She had looked forward to being a mother her entire life, but lost her motivation to continue providing care after the trauma of her husband’s death. “I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to carry on and raise these kids in this house that reminds me of him,” she told herself.

She met Patrick at the local pool during the summer after sixth grade and they were married five years later, the summer before Karen graduated from high school. Neither went to college, but began their careers in Searcy, Ark. and started their family a couple years later.

Simmons always wanted a big family, so she and Patrick always enjoyed discussing how many children they would have. Karen grew up with two sisters, so she looked forward to raising boys.

During their marriage, Karen and Patrick had Jordan, 24; Jade, 21 and Callahan, 16. Later, they adopted Cameron Grace, 11; Kayla, 10; Elijah, 6; Halle, 5; Rumor, 4 and Tuck, 3.

When Patrick died, Simmons lost more than a husband and her children lost more than a father.

“We lost our protector, our best friend, our comedian,” Simmons said. Patrick was her childhood friend, her cook, her teacher and her encourager.

Patrick loved teaching Sunday school, cooking for his family and bringing home injured animals to nurse them to back to health. The most memorable of the animals was a chicken with only one foot, which they promptly named No-Toe.

In the Simmons household most days began with Patrick getting dinner started before going to work at Jay’s Siding. This saved time for the large family and it was something he wanted to do.

Patrick insisted the entire family eat dinner together each night and made it into a ritual. He had to hear exactly how each child’s day went and each one looked forward to this moment in the day. “The idea of our family was perfect (to him), this is what he wanted,” Simmons said.

It was his personal game to save money. “Each day he would come home asking me to guess how little he spent on lunch that day,” Simmons said.

His friends had a different name for the game, though. “He would pay for a potato bar at Western Sizzlin’ and after finishing the potato, he would fill it up at the food bar,” said John Mullins, Patrick’s coworker. “One day when he came back to the table, there were chicken legs sticking out of the potato skin. He simply smiled and said, ‘Why yes, I do like chicken legs on my potato.’”

Patrick’s favorite season was autumn because the weather was so much easier for daily outdoor work on siding. “He was like a little kid on those days,” Simmons said. “He always came home with so much energy.”

On one of those crisp autumn days, Patrick rose early and began dinner, as always. This time it was chicken dumplings. Since it was Halloween, he and Karen talked about the kids’ costumes for the church event “Trunk or Treat” and although he had planned to leave early that day, his carpool group picked him up behind schedule. The carpool group was two of his coworkers, one of which was his closest friend.

Before arriving to the job site, the driver fell asleep at the wheel and the truck collided with a tree, injuring the passenger in the middle seat and sending Patrick under the vehicle, crushing him.

Nearly an hour after the collision, as the paramedics were still taking care of the other injured passenger, the driver finally mentioned for the first time that Patrick was under the truck.

Simmons was told Patrick would not have survived the crash either way, but she still couldn’t help wondering if he had any chance, that those 45 minutes could have changed the outcome.

This was the driver’s third time to have a wreck as a result of falling asleep at the wheel.

The funeral service was a closed-casket service and the family was not allowed to see Patrick’s face.

Even Karen was only allowed to see his hands.

This did nothing to help her deal with her grief. She could not feel that the situation was real if she didn’t have any proof. She didn’t even cry when officials delivered the news to her. “That’s not possible,” she said. “We’re the same person. It’s not possible. I would know it. I would feel it.”

In desperation, Simmons drove to the scene of the wreck a week after the accident happened to face the damage, to come to terms with the reality of the most unbelievable shock.

It was during daylight hours and she went to set a wreath near the telephone pole that the vehicle had hit when the homeowners stepped on to the lawn.

“Honey, why do you want to put it there,” the elderly lady asked. Simmons, confused, thought the wreck was in a certain area near the telephone pole, since it had been part of the accident and a new pole was already in place.

The homeowner pointed to a patch of black grass, “Here is where he bled out.”

The reality of death and loss overwhelmed Simmons as she rushed her kids back to the vehicle. She had to protect them from the harshness of what Patrick had faced that day. The blood had not been cleaned up, so she would come back later to remove it. When she returned that night, she tore every blood-stained blade of grass up, took the sacks home and burned them in her front yard.

This was Patrick.

This was finally a way to see him and say goodbye.

She knew Patrick, the boy who would yell every time he jumped off the diving board to catch her attention.

She knew Patrick, the teenager that would stand in her line every night as she worked at McDonald’s, who took months to ask for her phone number.

She knew Patrick, the faithful, loving husband.

She knew Patrick, the father who cried all the way home after dropping his oldest child off at college and cried that same week when one of the youngest children started kindergarten.

In a time where the previously spiritually oriented Karen was mad at God, she dealt with her grief by doing what Patrick wanted, no matter what.

The Simmons raised their children in church and though Karen felt she had her own spiritual relationship with God, Patrick was always the spiritual leader of the family. His passion was working with the youth at church and teaching Sunday school classes.

In the first year and a half of grieving, church became a different place for Simmons and her family. It was so intimately tied to Patrick that the two seemed impossible without the other. Simmons didn’t miss a single church service, even immediately after Patrick’s death. She felt that if she stopped taking the kids to church, it would be the most dishonorable action she could take towards him. This was her only hope during depression, “If I do enough right, he’ll come back and talk to me,” she thought.

Eventually, Simmons turned to her Sunday school teacher, Sherry Conley for insight on dealing with grief. Not long before Patrick’s death, Conley’s husband, Richard was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given six weeks to live.

Simmons had kept an eye on Conley after Richard’s death, wondering at her ability to continue all the church activities she was involved with: singing in the choir, teaching Sunday school and teaching a women’s Sunday school class.

Once faced with the loss of her husband, Simmons was even more baffled by Conley’s behavior.

“I would tell god I hated him, hoping he would kill me,” she said.

Simmons wrote letters to Conley, discussing these questions about grief and found encouragement in someone who truly understood her situation. Conley counters that the encouragement was mutual. “All I did was become an ear for her. We laughed and cried together; I just let her express her grief,” said Conley.

Through letters and conversations, Conley encouraged Simmons to be angry only at the situation, instead of God.

In their own times, his friends and coworkers visited her, sharing stories, giving her the experience of knowing a different side of Patrick.

Since Patrick’s death, Jordan has moved away and begun her career. Jade has married, Cameron wants to remember her dad by cooking and Callahan has become a source of strength and encouragement, a new spiritual leader for the family.

Karen's dimples press deeper into her cheeks while she sits on the couch, tying the strings of her girls’ Sunday dresses, shouts directions toward the kitchen for afternoon snacks, makes sure the little ones are being careful and speaks softly and patiently with the older children.

“Heaven is that much sweeter to me now, knowing he is waiting for me,” she said.