 His legacy |
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Reflections Of My Family
Reflections of Mine:
WHY
One of the smallest words in the English language. Three letters, one syllable. It perplexes and challenges. It haunts. You can spend a second asking it and try a lifetime to answer it. At times, it seems the whole of the English language is not enough to satisfy its hunger and provide an answer.
I have manically replayed every moment in my mind. Going over and over as if doing so could render a different outcome. But the why remains, lingering.
How is it possible to start on one end and to finish behind where you began? Maybe it only happens when you start with perfection. Or the illusion of perfection within life's context. To me it felt real. There were fragments of unity and love so powerful they remain vivid in my mind. Images so capitavatiing, I could never forget, not even with the passage of time.
The further away these moments became, the more intent I was to reclaim them. A futile journey at best. But the worst would be to forget. To let them fade away as if they were not seared into my soul. They should be at my fingertips, the should be my present, instead they were pushed into the past and deep within me, branding my incompleteness.
ROCKS
We used to take a souvenir from everywhere we went.
It started when he was just a young boy, maybe four years old, and we went to the beach. We moved carefully along the wet ground to collect shells. The beach was volcanic in appearance; wet, sandy and crag-like. The Sound beating against the rocky Pacific Northwest inland reeked hazard on shells. Still, we kept trying to find a shell in its entirety that had escaped destruction and retained its shape. He would be hiking across the rocks of low tide, shrieking with joy when he found one, then an even bigger one. He collected many types, finding beauty in their differences. The beauty of differences fascinated him.
Our collecting began with shells, then turned into rocks. That was easy because they were everywhere we traveled to. The rocks were my idea. I explained that they were our physical photographs. Land from where we’d stood. Very “Gone with the Wind” of me I thought. He thought they were “just rocks.” “Yes” I said, “But rocks from this place and time, right here with us.”
I obviously didn’t think of cataloging our finds so that I could refer back to the when’s and where’s. I just kept our collection in a large low basket not thinking too much about it, but always keeping it my room. Whenever we would return from a trip and would be unpacking, he’d smile and say, “Look Mom, here’s your rocks” as he handed them to me. Later, I would overhear him showing the basket to special friends and explaining what was in it. He understood my need to preserve things. Maybe better than I did. Still, during vacation, that didn’t stop him from teasing me, grinning and saying, “Mom, you’re so weird” when he’d see me picking up a rock. Funny how on our return I’d often find a couple of rocks in his pockets too.
Nine months after he was murdered it was Christmas time. It was a nearly impossible season for my brother Matt and I. Perhaps the biggest challenge for Matt was trying to find a gift for me that didn’t remind me of Taelor. I saw my son in everything, and Matt knew it.
He was elated when he happened upon the “perfect” gift for me. Something both beautiful and healing which he said could not possibly remind me of Taelor.
When the day came, Matt and I ceremoniously opened our gifts while on the phone to eachother, as we live different states. I unwrapped Matt’s “perfect” gift, a box that had in it healing stones, complete with explanations of their powers. I then told Matt about my and Taelor’s collection.
Even rocks reminded me of that precious being.
GENTLE
It was the last Sunday that I would have with her. I wrangled her into coming to a birthday party with me that she was admittedly too tired to attend. But I kept at her, prodding her, knowing that she would do it for me. She would do anything for me. Anything for anyone. Her selflessness was unlimited. I had begun to realize how much she did for me at her own expense and was trying to curb my need for her. But, she was my human security blanket. She accepted me unconditionally. I knew she was the one person who I could count on.
She ended up enjoying the party. I can still see her laughing with amazement at me as I illegally drove down into the park to get her so that she wouldn’t have to hike up the hill. I think my way of rationalizing my own behavior amused her.
She paid for my daughter and I to take our pictures in a booth. It shows the last genuine smile that I would have. She thought my excitement at picture booths was silly. I thought they were fun. She loved the picture, but she said she wished it were bigger, she wanted to hang it in her home.
TELEPHONES
I remember watching a scene from “The Accidental Tourist” where the telephone would ring and ring in the background and no one would even acknowledge it. I thought it was odd, but then, so were the characters. I didn’t understand it at the time, but later as it applied to my life, I understood it perfectly. It was one of the first and most difficult hurdles to overcome.
They used to call me every day. My Mom, at least three to five times, my Dad, to check up on what everyone was doing or to give me one of his weather reports. Taelor called (as I mercilessly teased him) when he wanted something or just to mess with me because he didn’t. At times it seemed like I spent all day answering the phone and talking to them! I couldn’t get anything done!
Then abruptly their calls stopped. But the phone still rang. The knowledge that it wasn’t going to be one of them hurt so badly that I stopped answering the phone altogether. Every ring there was the initial anticipation and excitement of it being one of them, then the bam-hit-the-wall realization that it wouldn’t be. Every ring was a reminder of what had happened to them, and that they would never call again.
It took a while for a ringing phone to stop hurting. Well over a year. Maybe that’s how long it took for the pain to sink deeper. I don’t know if time truly heals all wounds. Maybe it softens the surface so that the wound isn’t so raw. And it is buried deep within your soul for God to heal when you and He meet.
REDEMPTION?
My life is a memory only unto me. There are very few who can share it with me. It is as if others have snippets, yet I have the wholeness of the last twenty years. The entire catalogue of my adult life. And it is the validation of that which is missing. Mom, Dad and Taelor have gone. My past, my future. I am the one who was left behind. I am the present. The soulless breath and the walking dead. It occurred to me early on that every day I lived was a day further away from them. And then came the cruelty of the conflict. Could I leave my young daughter Kirah behind? How would she ever know how much they loved her, the plans we had, the life she was meant to live…How would she ever know who I was? What kind of Mother I was? And if I mercifully took my own life, who would make sure that their killer was unable to kill again. Who had higher stakes than I did? Who more than me wanted justice? I have discussed my death with my friends; they understand my sorrow but want me to stay alive. They must see value there where I do not. I understand their need for me in their lives, the old me I think, not the “now” me. Yet it is like asking me to stay on fire to keep others warm. And the slow burn is painful. Then I get feisty; I was not raised to give up. I did not raise my son that way. I will fulfill God's purpose for me being here in the face of evil. I pray in time the burn will lessen.
BEAUTIFUL
When he was a baby he looked like Uncle Fester from the Addam’s Family, minus the dark under eye circles. Within a year he looked just like every other toe headed toddler in our family had. Bright, like sunshine.
The first thing that hit me when I was watching a video of him after his murder was that I when I had him here, I was not fully aware of just how physically beautiful he was.
I viewed him from the inside out. I saw his heart and soul. That’s where I saw his beauty. Now I look for him everywhere, but I cannot find him. I cannot find even his physical beauty. The uniqueness of each individual has sunken into my bones. I will never look at a person in quite the same way again.
As for him, he to me is the searing beauty of a sunset that can never be replicated. A sun that set far too soon and too quickly, slipping beyond the horizon before I could even catch my breath.
MILESTONES
I went to the highschool commencement ceremony for Veronica (Josie’s sister) the June after he died. The June that he would have turned 18. The June that he was supposed to have graduated, had he stayed in school. We used to say, “Wow, 2001, a space oddity…” It seemed so impossibly far away.
Looking at all of those young people, faces beaming, filled me with a kind of poignancy. Happiness for their jubilation, yet sadness for my own emptiness. It was strange as I sat there too, because no matter whose name they were calling to come get their diploma, all that I heard was “Taelor Joseph Marks.” I guess he graduated several hundred times that day!
NEW YEARS DAY
I did not realize how many traditions we had as a family. It’s just the way that it “was” so they seemed normal rather than anything else. It is a hard promise to realize that life will never be normal again. All of the things we did seemed simple but were steeped in love like a well-brewed tea.
She used to make snacks in advance, choosing each person’s favorite. She knew that there would be drop in guests and well wishers, parades and football on television and with those, her special onion dip and cheese balls. Each New Year, even the crispness of the air itself seemed fresh and full of promise. Flavored by her love of family.
MIRAGES
All of my life it seemed as if I were searching. As if one day I would step around the corner and find something wonderful waiting for me. Magical, like a fairy tale come true.
In my teens I felt as if my spirit was restless for the anticipated moment to arrive. In my twenties I felt as if I could be on the brink…
By the time I entered my thirties I wasn’t so much searching anymore as wanting a knowledge of belonging. Of believing that I was pleasing God and that my life was exactly where it should be. I used to sing “Home on the Range” a lot. That was my ideal. That kind of peace of mind.
Finally, at 36 I was remarried, with a baby on the way. Although it didn’t happen in the romantic way I had envisioned, it was as if things were falling into place.
By 39 I felt I had that peace. A family of origin with whom I was extremely close. A nearly grown teenager who had found the love of his life and who knew his destination. Step children I adored. And a toddler who tied us all together. It was the first Christmas letter I wrote with no angst.
I felt like I had lived my life as “Dorothy” from the “Wizard of Oz”. I finally had figured out that all that I ever longed for was in my own back yard, and I was so grateful.
Three months later that serenity was ripped out from under me. How could this ever have happened?
INSIGNIFICANSE
I think that when your life is struck by violence there should be a disaster relief program. I was speaking with a collection agent the other day. She wanted to make “payment” arrangements. She could trace my inconsistent payments right back to the spring that my family was murdered. What a surprise. I am sitting here right now with a pile of bills in front of me. I don’t know if there is the money to cover them. There usually is. It’s simply that I don’t have the will to inquire or the concentration necessary to pay them. Couple that with my new lack of irreverence for anything that is close to a “rule” or “law” and any desire to pick up my checkbook and a pen dissolves.
I just don’t understand how someone can murder four people in cold blood and play legal tennis for five years (thus far). If one isn’t punished swiftly and surely for a crime so severe how is breaking the speed limit by six miles an hour a big deal? My whole frame of reference shifted into extremes.
DAD
My Dad's spirit lives so strongly in my heart. While he was living , I did not realize how many endearing things he did in the most casual way. He would often change words to be silly, like calling a hamburger a "hang-a-burger". I think back now to how unique he was. Strong of mind, joyful of spirit...he had a philosophical nature and would bask in the beauty of a sunrise. He was steady...always there when I needed him. I can see now how he took care of us and gave so much of himself to us. He was supportive without being controlling. When I would went on dates he would just happen to be up until I returned safely home. When he would drive on road trips he would often check the rearview mirror to check on my brother and myself. He could tell a great story, fix virtually anything, was a defender for those wronged and was enamored by life. He said that he was going to live to be 110. And he probably would have. Lord knows, he should have.
JOSIE
Josie blew into our lives like a fast fresh rain; exciting, nuturing, bringing life and lovliness to everything she touched. She was open and honest, spunky and focused. She was happy just to "be" in a space with whomever she loved. Even though she was incredibly dynamic, she could be quiet and present, comfortable in her own skin. I had never met a girl like her. Once she and Taelor met, there was no seperating them. She challenged Taelor while enveloping him in love. And he not only loved her, he adored her. We all did. Josie was killed in her junior year in highschool, yet in what would have been her senior year, she was voted by her school "most inspirational". That was Josie.
MORE LATER...
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