.

1030am

May 1st

1947

350 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

Her necklace still clutched in her hand

Looking like she’d just fallen asleep on a quiet summer day

A note left with terrible hopeless words written on it, some of them crossed out:

“I beg of you – don’t have any service for me”

“I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody”

“He is much better off without me”

“Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies”

Words that ripped her in pieces, leaving no hope

Words that tore howling through her simple beauty like wolves through a flower garden

Words relentless with untruth and despair, dark shapes tracing terrifying circles in her mind, until she could hold on no longer

Words that she heard echoing inside her psyche, until she was ready to do anything to make them stop

And you want to say:

Stop.

Your name is Evelyn McHale

Your fiancé loves you

Your father loves you

You are beautiful

Those words do not define you

They are not true

Don’t write them, don’t cross them out, don’t jump. Look beyond them, Evelyn. Don’t look down

That black car a thousand feet down on Fifth Avenue is not what God made you for

There is another way, a softer landing

There is One who cried out to His Father, once from a tall cross high on a hill:

“Why have You forsaken Me?“

It did not stop. And He died there

It did not stop. And He rose again

It did not stop. He is coming back for us

It did not stop. He ever lives to intercede for us

He is coming all the way back from the dead, back from that same unyielding deadly cradle you found on top of the black Cadillac, where the reporter’s camera captured your first taste of peace in your whole life, your first restful sleep, your first quiet moment. It did not have to be that way

It did not have to be that way

Stop. Look beyond the dripping fangs of the empty words, the dark call of the silent grave, the terrified aching sentinel that your wounded heart is

The Sun is rising, with healing in His wings

Stop. Live. Breathe. Love. Be born again. Morning is coming.

Please-

Stop.

.

September 14, 2025

Jeremy Vogan