His death was sudden and unexpected.
"I never knew I could cry so often—or so much. But I am also aware that I am walking without pain. For the first time, I am grateful for each breath in and out—grateful for the gift of life itself." — Sheryl Sandberg
To the world, Sandberg is known as the powerful woman who holds a top position as Facebook's COO (Chief Operating Officer). But beyond her world achievements, she's someone who found growth after a painful phase in her life—losing her beloved husband.
It's been a long and difficult journey for Sandberg ever since her husband, Dave Goldberg, unexpectedly lost his life to cardiac arrhythmia at the age of 47 in May 2015. It was Sandberg who found him lying on his back with a pool of blood surrounding his head, as reported by The Guardian.
"His death was sudden and unexpected. We were at a friend’s fiftieth birthday party in Mexico. I took a nap. Dave went to work out," Sandberg recalled at the 2016 Commencement Address she gave at University of California, Berkeley. "What followed was the unthinkable—walking into a gym to find him lying on the floor. Flying home to tell my children that their father was gone. Watching his casket being lowered into the ground."
In the months that followed, she was overwhelmed with grief. "I was swallowed up in the deep fog of grief—what I think of as the void—an emptiness that fills your heart, your lungs, constricts your ability to think or even to breathe," the mother-of-two shared, as quoted by Los Angeles Times. "Dave’s death changed me in very profound ways. I learned about the depths of sadness and the brutality of loss."
She tried to put herself back on track by getting back to work, but when she returned to the office, things were very different. "Everyone looked at me like I was a ghost. No one would talk to me," she recalled. And she told her boss, Mark Zuckerberg, "All my relationships are gone, and no one will talk to me," to which he responded, "They want to. They just don’t know what to say."
As time passed, Sandberg found herself coping in ways that she didn't imagine. The now 50-year-old COO learned to be resilient after overcoming three things, which she wrote about in a Facebook post 30 days after her husband's death. "Personalization—realizing it is not my fault. He told me to ban the word 'sorry.' To tell myself over and over, This is not my fault. Permanence—remembering that I won’t feel like this forever. This will get better. Pervasiveness—this does not have to affect every area of my life; the ability to compartmentalize is healthy," she wrote.
Sandberg decided not to give in to the void she felt and it led her to "post-traumatic growth." She said, "I would definitely choose to be before, so I could get Dave back. I’d give up all the growth. But the deeper sense of meaning, gratitude, purpose—those things are wonderful things."
She did her best to help her children cope with the loss of their father as well. And to honor his memory, they wrote letters to him and let them go in balloons on the day that would have been his 48th birthday.
Nobody can take the place of Goldberg and she admitted that there will be a "huge reservoir of sadness" within her. Yet, she did learn something important in this difficult time and feels a lot more grateful for all the precious people she still has around her. "I used to celebrate my birthday every five years and friends’ birthdays sometimes," she said in her commencement address. "Now I celebrate always. I used to go to sleep worrying about all the things I messed up that day—and trust me that list was often quite long. Now I try really hard to focus on each day’s moments of joy."
With a new perspective, Sandberg takes on each day with strength and grace that is characteristic of her. She declared that her love for her husband will never die, and wrote, "I will always miss you, Dave. There is no end to love."
References:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/16/sheryl-sandberg-facebook-everyone-looked-at-me-like-a-ghost
https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-sheryl-sandberg-commencement-address-transcript-20160514-story.html
