NASHVILLE — Chonda Pierce had no idea what was happening five years ago when her husband came home late slurring his words, stumbling, rambling on but making no sense.
He’s having a stroke, she thought. Or it’s a brain tumor.
Frantic, she called an ambulance to their Murfreesboro home.
“Ma’am, he’s not having a stroke,” the paramedic said. “He’s drunk.”
Chonda felt like a complete idiot. Then she got angry.
“I was mad as fire at him. And just so hurt.”
After admitting he had a problem, her husband went into rehab and counseling, but David never beat his addiction. He died three years later of a stroke.
Chonda, a beloved Christian comedian, always has shared intimate parts of her life with millions of fans at concerts and through recordings.
She takes that vulnerability to a new level in a documentary about losing her husband, Laughing in the Dark, out April 5 on DVD.
Chonda and David met when both were sophomores at Cheatham County High School.
He was good looking, with brown, wavy hair, smart, a guitarist and a state champ wrestler — in the 100-pound weight class. “So I could take him,” Chonda joked.
Chonda was pretty popular herself, and she and David formed a friendship that turned romantic. But it wasn’t easy.
Chonda, a preacher’s kid from Ashland City, grew up hearing that alcohol was evil, and if she drank, she was going to hell in a handbasket.
David struggled taking care of his divorced, alcoholic father known as the Ashland City drunk who sometimes slept on downtown benches. And Chonda lost two sisters in two years, one in a car crash, the other to leukemia.
“We were recovery partners after we found each other,” Chonda said. “I do believe it was a providential thing. We were each other’s soulmates through all that.”
The two dated on an off, and shortly after college, they got married.
After the wedding, the couple had a daughter and a son, and their careers took off, Chonda as a comedian popular on the church circuit, joking about services and fellowship, David as an English professor at Middle Tennessee State University and other colleges.
As the daughter grew into an adult, she started to harbor resentments against her parents, including how much time her mom spent on the road, Chonda said. Eventually, the daughter got married, had her own children and cut off all contact with her parents.
That proved to be painful for David and Chonda — and Chonda, who cried about it often, started to notice her husband having a drink or two here and there.
Then, there was that night David came home late slurring his words, and he ended up drunk in the hospital overnight while his wife wondered what was happening.
When Chonda got home from the hospital that night, she wandered into the garage and saw a tarp on the floor.
“I pulled at it, and under, it was full of cans and bottles, all empty. I just sat on that garage floor.”
David went to treatment at Cumberland Heights for 30 days in 2011, and Chonda sold their Murfreesboro home — to free herself of painful memories — and moved them both to a downtown Nashville condo.
A few months later, David started drinking again. This time, he went to Discovery Place, a men’s rehab in Burns, Tenn.
The night he got out, Chonda made him sausage, meatballs and spaghetti dinner, and they ate by candlelight. About 9 p.m., David, saying he had missed driving, went to pick up some food for their dog, Jack. He went to Kroger, bought a case of beer, and drank nine cans in the parking lot.
Chonda drove him back to Discovery Place that same night. The patients were standing on the porch.
A young guy said to another, “Man, if David can’t make it, I don’t stand a chance.”
Chonda turned around.
“You’ve got to make it,” she said, looking at the young guy, “because there are people out there who love you, and you’re killing us.”
During David’s last year alive, Chonda remembers good and bad weekends. She cheered his occasional sobriety, stayed away when he started drinking again.
In the middle of all that, Chonda’s mother died. And she continued to grieve the loss of her relationship with her daughter.
“I look back and sometimes say, ‘Why haven’t I given up?’” she said. “I don’t know if I’m incredibly optimistic, or I have such a strength in faith. Or am I just crazy?
“I am crazy in love with God. I think he really dwells with us. And I’m crazy enough to believe that.”
He had a stroke because of his drinking in 2013, and brain surgery couldn’t save him. In his last conversation, David looked at his wife: “I messed up, hun.”
“He said, ‘I love you,’ and he said he was sorry. I said, ‘You have nothing to be sorry about.’”
David lived for an hour after doctors took him off life support.
In the two years since, Chonda has found some healing. Some.
“I think I’m at that stage where I’m resolved and at peace, but grief is the gift that keeps on giving. A certain song comes on the radio, or I need help on the farm and he’s not there,” said Chonda, who lives with her son, Zachary, now 26.
“Isn’t it a shame the last few years of his life was dealing with [alcoholism] and grieving his daughter. Isn’t it a shame? I know I can’t go back and fix that or change that.
“Then what sets in is a great peace to know that he’s at peace. There’s a sweet resolve when you truly believe there’s a heaven.”
Follow Brad Schmitt on Twitter: @bradschmitt
Chonda Pierce documentary
What: Laughing in the Dark documentary on DVD
When: April 5
Where: Available at Walmart, Christian bookstores and on online outlets, including Amazon.com.
Website: http://chondamovie.com
