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

Thank You, Karoly

Today would have been Karoly's 33rd birthday, but instead it is the day after the one-year anniversary of his death. I've dreaded this day for a while because now I can no longer say "This time last year, he was alive," and that makes it a little more real. I also hate that all of the "firsts without Karoly" have come and gone, and every Thanksgiving and Christmas from now on will be the second, third, fourth...On the one hand, the pain is a little less acute, or at least no longer a surprise; on the other hand, now the passage of time will be marked by the accumulation of occasions without him. Anyone who knew Karoly was familiar with his characteristic, no-holds-barred honesty. Sometimes he was a little less than diplomatic, but it was also one of his endearing qualities, especially since it potentially saved my life. If not my actual pulse, then certainly at least the content of the life I have now. When I was 18 and finished with high school, I didn't know what to do next. I didn't own a car and had to borrow my Mom's for my babysitting jobs, which was my only source of income. I decided I wanted to go to college and didn't want to run up a lot of debt in the process, so I called up the local Army recruiting office and told them I wanted to enlist. I filled out all the paperwork, took all the aptitude tests, and was guaranteed a contract to enlist as an Army medic with a pretty generous GI bill for college when I was done. I asked my family for their opinion, feeling pretty confident in my course but wanting feedback. No one, not even my Dad, voiced any objections. All I had to do was take my physical, at the end of which I would sign my enlistment papers. A week before this was supposed to happen we had a family barbecue, which was the first time Karoly had heard about my plans to join the Army. He was livid. "Mom, Dad, I can't believe you haven't told her this is retarded! You can't let Tirzah join the Army!" As it turned out, my family was waiting for Fr. Joseph to talk me out of it and were content to let him be the one to rock the boat. Karoly beat him to it. After hearing my reasons for wanting to enlist, he asked me to wait a while before I made a final decision. Karoly and I weren't close at that point, but I respected his opinion and valued his input, plus he was the only person who told me what he really thought. A few days later he called me. "Will you agree not to join the Army if I give you my car so you can go to school here?" "Um, heck yes." "You have to agree not to enlist for at least two years; after that if you still want to be retarded you can." So I enrolled at Shoreline and felt extremely cool when I pulled into the parking lot in my zippy Nissan Maxima complete with CD player and power everything. And it was mine. I love being from a big family, but when there are nine kids personal ownership is a little hard to come by. Plus I had just been given a car that I never would have been able to afford; talk about putting a spring in my step. I think it was good for me as a teenager to drive my parents' cars, but when you want to look cool it's a little hard to pull off in a giant station wagon with wood paneling. Oh, the punchline: the day I told the Army I wasn't enlisting was a week before 9/11.

Peer Pressure

So after spending way too much time reading Irina's blog, I finally decided to start my own. It's been so much fun to read her blog on days when adult conversation is in short supply, although today was not one of those days. Anna and Briana both came over today, and Sean brough over my nephews Tristan, Celsus and Tavis, so for a while we nine kids running around my house. It was a little crazy, but with a strong sense of humor and even stronger coffee we had a good time. The boys locked Sean out of the house when he came to pick them up, so I guess they had a good time. I've been staying up way too late for the past month; Christmas parties and present wrapping were to blame for a few of those nights, then Jack got sick and took marathon naps during the day only to party at night. Our schedule is absolutely ridiculous right now, which is how at a quarter to midnight I've come to start a blog instead of sleeping like normal people. I've also been anxious lately; maybe anxious isn't the right word. Homesick is maybe more like it. My oldest brother Karoly killed himself on November 5th, and I keep waiting for life to go back to normal, or at least as normal as possible. It feels like there's something missing from everything, like eating food without any salt to bring out the flavor. It makes everything feel incomplete; my coffee doesn't taste right, my book isn't gripping enough, my painting looks off somehow. What's strange to me is how losing someone affects the smallest aspects of my life, even the ones I didn't previously connect to Karoly. Like socks. I bought a pair of socks and later realized that I bought them because they have Iron Crosses on them and looked very German, which I know Karoly would have liked.