Kari's Birthday

“The death of a beloved is an amputation.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

 Today, my brother's sweet wife, Kari, would have been 28 years old. She left this world very young. Please offer a prayer for the repose of her soul and for the peace and comfort of the family she left behind, especially my brother and her parents, brother and niece. Grief is a process, a journey. It's not over in a day. It comes and goes. You want the world to just stop while you deal with it, but life always goes on.

“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?
How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

We have decided to honor Kari's memory with a donation to the Education Fund of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (and also with a Mass). We plan for this to be a yearly gift. Kari was a teacher, a Texas girl through and through and she loved flowers. It's just a small little thing, this gift of ours, but I hope it will help us remember her in the years to come and what a gift she was to my brother and this world even though she was only here for a short while.

“I see people, as they approach me, trying to make up their minds whether they'll 'say something about it' or not. I hate if they do, and if they don't.” ― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything."
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Eternal rest, grant unto her O Lord and may perpetual light shine upon her.

May her soul and all the souls of all the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.