Former WSU Linebacker’s Story of Loss and Fatherless Childhood Published in New Book
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News Story by Loren Negron
Thirteen minutes — that was all the time it took for the health of Dr. Serign Marong’s wife to whiplash from normal to life-threatening.
“Some of it is like exact memory down to the exact minute that everything was happening, and at the same time, other parts were just complete and just absolute blur,” Serign said.
At 9:14 a.m. on March 4, 2014, his wife, Visa, texted Serign and asked if he wanted coffee at work. Thirteen minutes later, she left a voicemail talking about her chest pain. An hour later, Serign said “I love you” to his wife as paramedics took her into the hospital.
Visa coded in the ambulance and went through multiple rounds of CPR in the hospital before the doctors “called it.” Serign said his wife died from a blood clot, which was a reaction to birth control pills, leaving him as a single father with two boys who were only 1 and 3 years old.
“We are not guaranteed tomorrow,” he said. “I think we can all understand that, but I think it’s a little bit different once you experience that sudden life-changing moment.”
Buckled Knees
After Visa’s passing, everything felt like a mess in Serign’s life. He couldn’t take care of his patients, and he struggled to take care of himself.
“In the beginning, it was just a mess until I really started to address my grief and kind of just learn to live with it,” Serign said. “You don’t get over [grief]. You just learn to live with it and incorporate it into your life.”
Jessica Carstens, one of Serign’s longtime friends, remembers talking to him the day after Visa’s death. She watched how grief turned his life into a whirlwind.
“With the devastating passing of V, the full weight of fatherhood, parenting and life in general came crashing down onto his shoulders and it buckled his knees for a period of time,” said Raonall Smith, Serign’s best friend who played as a linebacker with Serign at Washington State University.
Smith said Serign had fortitude and relief on his resourcefulness to receive support from family and friends. Because of his dedication, he was able to use his story to encourage others.
“After he touched rock bottom, he had a few crucial decisions he needed to make on whether he was going to let all of his hard work and sacrifice of years past fall to the wayside, or if he was going to grab the bull by the horns and jump back onto the saddle and take hold of his destiny,” he said.
Serign’s hard work to process his grief helped him encourage others with his story. As he healed, he met his second wife, Michelle, and married her in May 2018. They now have a blended family of five children.
In 2019, he became active on social media with his Dr. Serendipity accounts on Instagram and TikTok where he focused on health education. From there, Serign started sharing his experiences online, including his grief and upbringing without a father.
On March 4, 2022, he posted a video on TikTok talking about his grief and Visa’s death anniversary. It garnered more than 6.5 million views, which led to interviews and articles that allowed him to share his story.
“It’s kind of one of those things where I started to get healed by sitting and listening to people who had been through other similar experiences, and that was part of my healing process,” he said. “And the way I look at is like, OK, well, then you share your story and sort of pay it forward to help other people with their journey.”
‘A Fatherless Curiosity’
Shortly after Serign’s video got traction, Tyra James reached out to him about a book project she was doing. “A Fatherless Curiosity” is a collaborative effort where 21 men share their experiences growing up without a father, he said.
Writing his chapter titled “A journey through absence and loss” was a reflective and healing process for Serign.
Growing up in Pullman, Serign didn’t know much about his father. He only started thinking about his dad when he attended WSU. His father’s absence influenced how he thought about fatherhood. Serign knew he wanted to be a dad who was physically, emotionally and mentally present in his children’s lives.
Family has always been his number one priority. Michelle said Serign plans his work schedule so he can drop his children off at school in the morning and attends every single football and basketball game.
Serign said that losing Visa taught him to be more present in the moment and align his life with his priorities. Being a single dad helped him empathize with his mom’s experience as a single mom, motivating him to be the dad his father had never been to him.
“As we approach the 10-year mark of V’s passing, I like to think that she is looking down upon her boys with utmost satisfaction that her husband has raised her children with love and compassion and more importantly has formed a tight knit and life-long bond with them that he was ultimately denied the ability to have or develop with his own father,” Smith said.
Hope and Resilience
Serign’s story testifies to how resilient the human spirit can be, Michelle said. His honesty and relatability even help him connect with patients in Tucson, Arizona, where he is a family physician today. Some of them sought him out as a doctor after seeing his story online.
“My hope for people that do read the book is that they can realize that despite challenging or tragic events happening in life, that if you choose to find a purpose that inspires you, whatever that may, that you’ll be giving yourself an opportunity to continue living a fruitful and beneficial life for yourself and others both past, present and future,” Smith said.
