| Sources |
- [S4] Knoxville News-Sentinel (Tennessee), 29 Aug 2000.
Grace Lamon Ownby obituary
- [S23] Atchley Funeral Home, (http://www.atchleyfuneralhome.com/), 24 Nov 2003.
Tommy Lee Wilhelm obituary
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 14 Nov 2010.
A courageous journey: Widow shares story of grief as way to help others
A courageous journey: Widow shares story of grief as way to help others
by GAIL CRUTCHFIELD
Cathy Wilhelm said she’s felt like a weight has been lifted after completing a book based on her journey through grief after her husband’s death in 2003. She said she hopes the book will help people be honest about their feelings of grief, and not hold those feelings inside.
“Inside the Darkness: A Walk Through Grief” is the book written by Cathy Wilhelm. On the cover is a picture of her late husband, Tom.
As the holidays approach, not all thoughts are of the cheerful sort for Cathy Wilhelm. There’s also some grief, even seven years after her husband Tom died the Monday before Thanksgiving.
The weight of that grief has been tempered somewhat, after a long journey which led Wilhelm to write a book about her experience in hope of helping others. “Inside the Darkness: A Walk Through Grief” is a self-published book Wilhelm wrote using excerpts from a journal she kept after her husband’s death.
The Wilhelms had been married for 25 years when Tom passed away unexpectedly. It was the second marriage for each, sharing three children from those previous unions.
“We worked together at Latham’s,” Wilhelm said of how she met her husband at a local grocery store. They married two years later.
Within a year, Cathy became a Christian, with Tom following a few months later.
“We went to church together and we had a Christian home, and it made all the difference,” Wilhelm said.
That all changed when Tom died.
“He went in for a routine examination,” Wilhelm said. The doctor thought he detected some irregularities in Tom’s EKG and ordered more tests before they found a blockage and had stints placed just before Halloween.
“He had to stay home 10 days and he’d gone back for his follow-up visit and his doctor said everything sounded normal and everything was fine, and told him to go ahead and start walking,” Wilhelm said.
“Tom had a German background, and they only know one speed and that’s wide open,” she said. “I think he pushed too hard that night. He walked on the treadmill and then he sat down with a cup of coffee to watch ‘Jeopardy.’ Then, about 15 minutes later probably, he gasped and died.”
Wilhelm said there was no chance for responders to help.
“I was really taken aback, the night of visitation,” she said. He worked for A-Plus Office in Sevierville and delivered to places all over. People he knew through work came and told stories about him.
Still, she was angry about his death. an anger directed mostly at God.
“I thought we were supposed to serve Him together,” Wilhelm said.
Wilhelm dropped out of church after attending faithfully for 25 years. A couple of incidents led her back into the fold a year later. One was the song “To Where You Are” by Josh Groban.
“It was on a Sunday and I was at home and I still wasn’t going to church,” she said. “One of my widow friends had made a copy of Josh Groban’s ‘To Where You Are’ and we used to ride around in the car, sobbing, listening to it. It sounds like it was written for somebody’s that’s lost their husband. I was playing it and sobbing. I was crying so hard I could hardly breathe.”
Before then, Wilhelm’s anger was so strong she couldn’t accept God’s help.
“That day I almost physically felt Him reaching for me and trying to love me. So I couldn’t resist that any more because I needed help so bad.”
Another turning point came when she witnessed the church baptism of a friend’s grandson. Her pastor, Arne Walker, saw her as they left.
“He said, ‘I felt like I failed you because I couldn’t help you.’ And that helped me,” Wilhelm said. “That’s when I started going back.”
When she realized she grief counseling, Wilhelm contacted one of Tom’s friends, Jerry Hyder, who helps lead the Grief Share group at First Baptist Sevierville.
“And so through that I became actually a stronger Christian,” she said.
From the day Tom died, Wilhelm kept a journal.
“That seemed to be the only thing that really helped,” she said. “Writing was the only way I could release it.”
That journal, written on the computer, became the basis of her book. Family and friends who knew her story would call when they had another friend who was grieving.
“So I would start searching through my journal,” she said. “I would find out how long it had been for that person and look back at the months that corresponded with my grief and where I was at and the things that helped me.”
She would copy pages and send them to those seeking help. She put it all in chronological order and made it a story.
Wilhelm used C.S. Lewis’ “A Grief Observed” as a sort of guideline for her own book.
“That was his journal of grief when he lost his wife,” she said. “And his experience mirrored mine. I mean, he was mad at God. He called him a sadist. Here was this great Christian man who had written all these books, and I thought if he can be that (angry), you know, I’m not crazy. He literally walked me through it and helped me through it, so I was trying to do that for somebody else,” she said.
Wilhelm said she’s given away about 150 copies of the book. Hard and electronic copies are also available through Amazon and at Cedar Springs Christian Book Store in Knoxville.
- [S106] The Mountain Press, 28 Feb 2011.
Pigeon Forge author explains how writing helped her deal with grief
Pigeon Forge native Cathy Wilhelm talks about her book, “Inside the Darkness: A Walk Through Grief,” at Saturday’s Rose Glen Literary Festival at Walters State Community College. (Ellen Brown/The Mountain Press)
BY ELLEN BROWN
SEVIERVILLE — Pigeon Forge native Cathy Wilhelm hadn’t planned on writing a book about coping with grief — after all, it’s a subject we all hope to sidestep, regardless of that impossibility.
But when her husband suddenly died of a heart attack on Nov. 24, 2003, she turned to writing as part of her therapy. Four years later, she edited her nearly 1,000-page journal into the book “Inside the Darkness: A Walk Through Grief.”
Wilhelm was one of the writers who appeared at Saturday’s Rose Glen Literary Festival at Walters State Community College.
“I compare it to a tsunami — the survivors watch helplessly as everything they know slips away,” she said. “I lost my handyman, my landscaper, my partner in life.”
When editing her journal, Wilhelm chose to keep everything in present tense.
“I wanted it to read as if it were happening right then, right there,” she said. “Grief is personal, unique as a fingerprint. It’s different for everyone.”
She experienced a great deal of anger in her journey.
“Anger is love disappointed — I was disappointed in the God I loved,” Wilhelm said. “During my first year of grief, I stayed away from church, but I felt the Lord closer than ever. I kept trying to push him away, but he kept pulling me closer, trying to love me.”
Wilhelm also turned to the writings of Christian author C.S. Lewis, who once described God as a “cosmic sadist” and us as “rats in a laboratory.”
“I was comforted in knowing that a great Christian like Lewis had felt this way and made it through his anger and doubts,” she said. “It’s part of the soul’s growth.”
Wilhelm wants readers to remember two words when dealing with grief: “It’s OK.”
“You may lose your way driving home after 25 years, but it’s OK,” she said. “You may break down and cry in the grocery store, and it’s OK.”
She also said she often found herself in the “right place at the right time,” in meetings she knew were arranged by God.
“Every person (I had contact with) was a stone in my foundation for building a new life,” Wilhelm said. “Now I’m able to view death as a doorway to heaven for Tom to have walked through. I choose to cherish the happy memories.”
ebrown@themountainpress.com
- [S58] Marriage Certificate.
41389 LARRY GENE HUSKEY CATHY JEAN OWNBY
- [S58] Marriage Certificate.
HUSKEY, LARRY GENE OWNBY, CATHY JEAN 1971-09-25
- [S126] The Official Marriage Records of Sevier County Tennessee 1945-1971, Volume III, Smoky Mountain Historical Society, (Copyright 2008), ISBN 1-890150-00-5.
- [S58] Marriage Certificate.
50258 TOMMY LEE WILHELM CATHY JEAN HUSKEY
- [S149] The Official Marriage Records of Sevier County Tennessee 1972 - 1981, Volume IV, Smoky Mountain Historical Society, (Copyright 2008), ISBN 1-890150-00-6.
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