Millstadt woman found peace after deaths of husband and two sons

It wasn’t easy for Sarah Hartrum-Decareaux to relive the day her husband and two of her five children died in a hiking accident or to admit that she lost all hope and contemplated suicide in the months that followed.

But she felt her story could help others dealing with grief, so she wrote a book called “From Here to Heaven.” She paid to have it professionally edited and printed by a Christian publishing company.

“I’m back,” said Sarah, 38, of Millstadt, who works part time as a substitute teacher. “I’m alive. I laugh. I have joy. I know where Dave and the boys are. I know I will literally see them again. I will literally hug them again. I know I will.”

Sarah was sitting in a booth at Happy Days Ice Cream Shop on a recent afternoon. She had treated her three surviving children, Elise, 5, Finn, 7, and Kate, 14, to milkshakes and cones.

Like Sarah, the kids are learning to live without their father, Dave Decareaux, and brothers Grant, 8, and Dominic, 10, who died of hypothermia while hiking in the Missouri Ozarks on Jan. 12, 2013.

“The kids are beautiful and funny, and they have that same wonderful spirit that their mother has,” said Sarah’s friend, Heather Baxmeyer, 39, of Waterloo. “They’re just a neat family, and they really have shown that you can come back from tragedy.

“They are rooted and grounded in faith more than anyone I know. I find inspiration just by being around them.”

Adventurous family

Sarah grew up in Waterloo and earned a special-education degree at Greenville College. She met Dave, a Louisiana native preparing for Air Force duty in Portugal, on Laclede’s Landing in 2000. They married five weeks later.

The couple lived in Idaho, England, Italy and Germany before returning to Illinois in 2012 to be closer to Sarah’s ailing parents. Dave got a job with the U.S. Department of Defense.

“Someone once called us the United Nations,” said Sarah, who home-schooled the children. “We had a kid born in every country.”

The nature-loving family decided to celebrate Dave and Sarah’s 12th anniversary with a weekend getaway at Brushy Creek Lodge & Resort, near Johnson Shut-ins State Park and Taum Sauk Mountain in Missouri.

On Jan. 12, Dave planned to go hiking with the three older children and their Labrador retriever puppy, Bear, on the Ozark Trail while Sarah stayed at the cabin with Finn and Elise.

“Kate brought the wrong shoes, and we know now that it was God’s hand,” Sarah said. “It just wasn’t her time.”

Unexpected storm

Dave was an experienced hiker, but he didn’t count on torrential rain all afternoon or temperatures dropping from the 60s to the 20s within hours.

People have speculated that the father and sons may have found shelter, perhaps under a rock overhang or in a hunting shack, to wait out the storm, but that Dave decided to push on after recognizing signs of hypothermia.

“We do know that Dave carried our boys across a raging creek in the pitch-black night,” Sarah wrote in the book. “... It is likely that this crossing was the last big chill their bodies could take.”

The local sheriff’s department searched until just after midnight, hampered by weather, darkness and trail washouts.

Dave was found dead the next morning about a mile from the resort, having crawled the last few feet. The boys were lying unconscious nearby and died later that day in the hospital. The dog survived.

“It didn’t seem real,” said Sarah’s sister, Elizabeth Hartrum, 36, of New Athens, who was notified by their parents. “I thought, ‘This can’t happen in our family.’”

“People were just sickened by it,” added Heather, a nurse. “It took my breath away. I couldn’t imagine the pain and the hurt. How do you process all of that and learn to live again?”

Dark descent

One of the book’s most heartbreaking sections recounts Dominic and Grant’s hours in the emergency room, where doctors performed CPR, wrapped them in blankets and pumped warm fluid into their veins.

Sarah was allowed to spend time at their bedsides. She pried open one of Grant’s eyelids, just to see his eye color one last time, a mother’s act of desperation.

“I knew these forms lying before me were only their shells,” she writes in the book. “Talking to them, kissing them, touching them and lying on the beds with them — all that was for me. This was my goodbye.”

Sarah felt lost in the coming weeks and months and, despite needing to care for Kate, Finn and Elise, she behaved in self-destructive ways. One day, her brother found her sitting outside soaking wet in freezing temperatures.

Sarah describes the grief as “brutal” and “physical” and recalls a distinctive “taste of sorrow” in her mouth. She wanted to die.

“Even Christians can go there,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how you were raised. It doesn’t matter your convictions. When you’re going through that deep, dark grief, everything is possible.”

Newfound hope

Sarah gives God most of the credit for pulling her through, but she also relied on the love and kindness of family and friends.

Fellow home-schoolers cooked, cleaned and did her laundry for months. Air Force sergeants bought her a dishwasher. Church members mowed her yard, and Cub Scouts raised money for a memorial fund that helped pay her mortgage.

“In the summer of 2014, I came back to life,” Sarah said. “It was like a light switch flipped. I just decided to start reigning in my grief.

“I missed normal problems. I missed cooking. I missed laughing. I missed going out with my girlfriends. I missed watching movies with my kids. I missed life.”

Sarah also stopped blocking her painful memories and started putting them down on paper. She found writing to be therapeutic, especially after people suggested the story might help others overcome tragedy.

Sarah and the kids have worked on issues with help from a counselor, and they keep lines of communication open.

“We talk about (Dave and the boys) almost every day, but in a good way,” she said. “I want them to stay part of the family and not become a distant memory.”

Christian author

Sarah wrote most of “From Here to Heaven” sitting on her bed. She published it through WestBow Press, a faith-based company that advertises on the website where she reads daily devotionals.

Sarah’s sister is a hair stylist who has sold copies of the book to clients. Many have given her positive feedback.

“Some feel a closer relationship to God or a closer relationship to their husbands or families,” Elizabeth said. “It’s changed their view on life. You see that you can get through something like that and prosper, not just survive.”

In recent weeks, Sarah has been sharing her story in person with community groups, such as Heather’s preschool moms club.

Sarah will appear at Valmeyer Public Library from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, speaking at 6. She will sign books from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 7 at Morrison-Talbot Library in Waterloo.

“It’s such an inspiring book,” Heather said. “It’s really sad, so you want to have a box of Kleenex on hand. But there’s also redemption and inspiration. It’s awesome.”

This story was originally published April 9, 2016 at 5:27 AM with the headline "Millstadt woman found peace after deaths of husband and two sons."