Joyful Sorrow

Every October, I dread the beginning of November. Today is November 5th, marking the three year anniversary of my brother Karoly's death. Tomorrow is his birthday. I will never forget the horrible feeling of unreality, the desperate desire to wake up and have it all have been a bad dream. It was an eerie day, the weather much like to day, and I'd gone for a walk through our back woods which took me through a cemetery. I had no idea that a week later I'd be in a cemetery again, this time to bury my brother. Damien was living with us at the time, and I remember how white his face was when he hung up his phone and told me we needed to go see Karoly. I said okay, and asked what was going on. "That was his neighbor; there was a gunshot." We were told there was an ambulance, and that if he was still alive he'd be taken to Valley Medical Center, the hospital where our brother Kevin had been born sixteen years earlier. It took forever to drive from Brier to Renton, and the dark and the rain didn't help either. I called our parents on the way down, and by the time we got to the hospital half the family was there. The ER was busy that night, so we paced outside near the ambulance bay waiting for our brother to arrive, hoping his aim had been off, hoping for a miracle. Each minute that ticked by was like a nail in his coffin. After a while, we realized too much time had passed. If he had been alive, the ambulance would have brought him by now. They don't bring dead people to the ER. That dark November night I felt so raw and so despairing I didn't think I could ever be whole again. Karoly was supposed to come up to my house for his birthday dinner that night, and instead he was ripped from my life forever. I still miss him every single day, but not with the kind of grief that consumed me in those first days and weeks. Slowly at first, Joy made its way back into my life. If felt disrespectful at first, to laugh or to enjoy anything, but life really does go on. What really made me sad is that Karoly always had such a hard time feeling joy; he felt like he didn't deserve it. The only time I ever really saw him express joy in a free, unreserved way was towards his children. Something inside Karoly was different; our parents loved him as much as they loved me, but somehow I grew up happy and he grew up sad. Since having children, I've come to believe that if you don't know joy, you don't know God. I believe Karoly knows true joy now, that he sees himself as God sees him and not through his own distorted vision, that he knows how much he is loved and how precious he is. Somehow that message never got through while he was on this side of eternity. I have learned, slowly, that I have an enormous capacity both for joy and for sorrow, and that the one doesn't necessarily cancel out the other. They'd better not, because they overlap an awful lot. I miss my brother, but I love my husband and our boys. I wish Karoly was still here, but he isn't and the only productive thing to do is embrace those who still are, and in spite of sorrow, to choose joy. I saw this video this morning, courtesy of Lecia. I gave myself permission to cry for my brother for a few minutes, then I put on the video, cranked up the volume and danced in the living room with my boys. I think Karoly would approve. Make me a channel of your peace Where there's despair in life, let me bring hope; Where there is darkness, only light And where there's sadness, ever joy. -St. Francis of Assisi