How could it have been a year that we lived without Kari? We were so used to her contributions to our lives in the day to day. That feels like it's been absent for such a long time. And yet her life has felt close. She's in our memories and those constant things that don't go away. The things that we did with her haven't necessarily gone away. Now we stop and say, "It feels like Kari should be here." And then there is a silence that is bittersweet. Usually someone remembers something very good about her. And then your stomach drops a little again, like you're on a roller coaster, and there is a double meaning to everything.
Bittersweet has lots of double meanings.
Speaking of the word bittersweet, there is a very good book with that title as well. It has helped me in the last year. Last week I read the chapter about being 25 before I became 26. How symbolic. It gave lots of good advice about being in the middle of your 20s. And that is where I am in life now. I'm in the middle of the 20s, but in the middle, I discovered that you shift the weight and importance you give to certain things, and life becomes a different kind of an adventure. I've actually found it very enjoyable to grow in this part of life in the last few years. For this reason, life on May 20 felt very right and good and true. It's a nice place to be and it's nice to settle into the person you are always becoming a little more. The very last paragraph of this chapter was the most helpful for me. It follows below...
"Walk closely with the people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure. Don't spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are. Don't get stuck in the past, and don't try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven't yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life's path."
Thanks, Shauna Niequist. That sounds great.
Another chapter that is truly great in this book is called 'Say Something'. It talks about what you must remember when your world falls apart. And I feel relieved with the equilibrium that her words have brought to my own life in the last year because I needed some reminders to be courageous in grief. And I need reminders to accept words from other people. And to say something to others.
"When something bad happens, people say the wrong things so often. They say weird, hurtful things when they're trying to be nice. They say things that don't hurt until later, and when they do begin to hurt, you can't get the words out of your mind. It's like a horror movie: everywhere you turn, those awful words are scrawled on every wall.
But there's something worse than the things people say. It's much worse, I think, when people say nothing.
When you're in mourning, ,when something terrible has happened, it's on your mind and right at the top of your heart all the time. It's genuinely shocking to you that the sun is still shining and that people are still chattering away on Good Morning America. Your world has changed, utterly, and it feels so incomprehensible that the bus still comes and the people in the cars next to you on the highway just drive along as if nothing has happened. When you're in that place, it's a gift to be asked how you're doing, and most of the time the answer comes tumbling out, like water over a broken dam, because someone finally asked, finally offered to carry what feels like an unbearable load with you.
Some people don't know what to say, and they say just that: 'I heard what happened, and I don't know what to say.' That is, I'm finding, a very good response."
Isn't that good advice? It's hard to figure out because it requires that you forget yourself and maybe too the uncomfortable feeling that squeezes your breath away, and it makes you remember how human everything feels all of the time. Humanity to me felt loud and unavoidable and up close for most of 2010. In world history and in my own life.
Kari died on May 24 in a car accident on 35W in Lakeville. She was driving home from her first ultrasound appointment. The accident involved semi-trucks and a load of bees that were released when the cars crashed. It was a muggy day and she was airlifted to the hospital. This happened at 11:30 in the morning, but I didn't hear about it until 8 at night. One of my friends heard about the crash and prayed for the people involved, but didn't know it was someone she knew until later.
Learning that Kari had died rocked my entire world. Molly called me on the phone and gave me the news, and then we called other Bethel friends and lingered on the phone and cried because there was nothing else to do. I kept looking for some sort of insight that would tell me what to do, and then I realized that these things don't consult you before they happen. So you walk through it.
The visitation was on Ariane's 25th birthday. I held a little baby in my arms at the visitation when we were waiting in line to see John and Kari's family. Janelle and Matt let me hold their baby. This is God's grace in horrible moments. Things like actually breathing with your friends and getting to hold your friends' new baby and knowing that John Reynen could handle it...going first in the line and meeting with John Rasmussen before anyone else. It's amazing to me what stands out in those horrible moments. A year later, I am still emboldened by the hope I felt when I held this warm little baby and waited, literally in a long and winding line, for things I didn't feel prepared to understand.
After the visitation, we changed out of formal clothes, and met back in Northfield at Ariane's house. We invited John to stay with us there, as a location away from everything else he had to deal with, and he came. I will always be grateful for that night because we prayed (again) and lived by each other and the right people for that job helped John piece together the things he would say at the funeral. People fell asleep in random rooms at Ariane's house, and in the morning we went back for the funeral. At the funeral, I felt that I was the person who couldn't keep it together at all. Sometimes people just crack apart inside and they don't show it until later, but I discovered I am not that person. I was the person sobbing in the pew, and there were moments when I hated that I couldn't be like other people near me, but eventually I realized that this is just how I am.
In those moments, I realized that it was nearly impossible to not remember her with constant tears because she really was my dear friend. I was trying to keep my connection distant so I could keep up the facade of whatever was normal, but then I realized that wouldn't honor her. I knew Kari. And I knew her well. When you pray with people and they share their lives with you, the connections are deep. She was an open book about so much too. A few weeks before she died, we sat on my couch and talked for a few hours about how excited she was to be pregnant and what was coming. I was in that with her because she shared her excitement so well.
That is the lovely thing about Kari. She was so generous with her life, and that is why I cried the way that I did.
The accident happened on a road I've traveled frequently my entire life. On the way to Kari's funeral I had a panic attack. That had never happened before. A bee flew into my car when I drove past the accident site. My vision blurred, I prayed constantly out loud for 10 minutes, I pulled the car over to breathe (hello, hyperventilation), and could barely stand up when I got out of the car.
Whenever I pass the crosses in the ditch I feel stunned, like the world slows down and everything becomes very systematic and slow, and no one told me I would freeze inside. I think about the baby and who it is in Heaven and the happy shock I will feel in being able to recognize that person when I die and the unimaginable becomes my joy. Heaven this year has been something I've really wrestled with. I've often said, "Help my unbelief" to God in pure confusion, marveling that in this year, when you'd think I'd bank on that really confidently I've struggled to trust it. Count that as part of the topsy turvy side of everything, I suppose.
But God is near and He is faithful. The dreams that I've had about Kari in the last year have been sheer comfort because when we talk, when a conversation is fabricated in my dreams, she's so good. I'm not looking at those kinds of dreams as if Kari herself is talking to me. Instead it reminds me of remembering how good Heaven really is. I wake up sick with the side of me that misses her, but I also recognize how much right now is me seeing through a glass darkly. There is so much mystery to such a good God. Tragedy included.
I don't claim to know much about this past year. What I can say is that I still miss a good friend desperately. I've wanted to meet her baby countless times in this year. I've struggled to know how to understand beginnings and endings. I've been stopped in my tracks when rereading C.S. Lewis quotes that remind me of time and being made for other places. I grieved with people who loved her who still have to make sense of it. When I thought about Kari and John's baby, time made no sense. One parent didn't even have to wait the established 9 months to meet that little person. The other will wait and wonder for the rest of his lifetime. What a mystery.
This year I learned about celebrating life too. It's important to remember Kari outside of the accident as well. That is no brand on her identity and doesn't represent the things she meant to us when we were together. Often this year we have remembered her laugh and that she was very much alive in our times together. Sometimes she'd be laughing about something before I even opened the door to welcome her into my house. Usually, as before stated, this was because of John. Because I saw this, the thing that struck me most about John's words at her funeral went something like this.
"Out of all of the people in the world, you were one I always wanted to make laugh the most."
Kari was real and alive and honest about herself. She bloomed when she talked. She thought about pain and how to manage herself. She corrected her attitude when she was struggling with the rheumatoid arthritis. She was thrilled to her core at the thought of being a mother. She told me about these dreams for a year. Then, when she was pregnant, she shared even more of these good dreams. She was intentional. And before she died she was very inspired about her life and how to live pain-free. Our friends got to see her a few days before she died. We met at Janelle's house and ate pizza and talked about traffic and reveled in the mundane. We took a picture, very out of the blue, before leaving to go our separate ways. We talked about change. There was nothing grandiose about the last time I saw her. It was our common friendship finding its way into our everyday lives. I find this to be very beautiful because it reminds me of how much we enjoyed each other.
It's nice to have friends like that.
The thing I will say about this year, in this busy spring season when I am suddenly 26 instead of 25 is that I did celebrate life. I had four birthday parties this year with all of my favorite people. Four birthday parties! Maybe 5. I ate cake for breakfast, and I managed the stress of an overload at work by caring about it at the right times and then disregarding it when I needed to focus on having a sleepover. Yes, I had a sleepover for one of these birthday parties. I felt like I was 13 again. I had quality conversations with my friends from school at a little pub in downtown Stillwater and at another party stayed up late around a bonfire in the city. It rained before the bonfire and poured after, but while we were out there, the skies cleared and I settled back and drank in being alive and taking time to celebrate new things. I am glad to report that I didn't do this in fear. I did these things in confidence and the feeling of being comfortable with people and throwing some cares to the wind. My friends still battle feelings of apprehension about bad news when the phone rings, but I anticipated remembering Kari's life on May 24 by truly celebrating something and taking the time to remember the bittersweet undercurrent that has lived nearby for the past year.
I think the best way to end this late night blog is to share some pictures of Kari. Notice how alive and steady she looks in these pictures? Today I still miss her, but I depend on the promises of Jesus about prepared places and how much more you live when you are there.
Heart-breakingly beautiful. Kari was a classmate of my son.
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