Writers Corner for August 5, 2011

Share your writing with the world.

This is the place to do it.

Send your Writers Corner submissions to Maureen Dolan, [email protected].

We prefer e-mail submissions, and we ask that you limit the length of your stories and poems. Please include your hometown with your submission.

You can send hard-copies by mail to Maureen Dolan at The Press, 201 Second St., Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, 83814.

This week, we present a true story submitted by one of our local writers.

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MURDER AND MIRACLES

Carolyn. Beautiful. Feisty. Willful. Loved her man. Adored her children. She was my ally in a strong-willed family that would have swallowed the two of us whole had we let them. I married the baby of that family of boys, she the eldest. This bunch was a wildly boisterous, highly opinionated, evangelical Christian patriarchy, with parents fiercely devoted to their boys.

We were the two, of 10 adults, that thought vacationing in the summer cabin on the lake was a great idea, just not the only idea. We lobbied for the family retreat, but also for new and varied experiences. We were the two who chose to stay home, and make raising children a career. We planned outings that didn't have to include twenty family members at a time. We shared child rearing ideas, dreams of our future, thoughts about life and love, compared notes on idiosyncrasies, and most often offered understanding to each other in the midst of a clan, whose energy and expectations swirled around us like a mighty storm.

John, her husband, was a schoolteacher. They had two sons, Johnny and Ken. We went to their home, four hours away, and spent weekends occasionally, they came to ours. We saw each other at family gatherings scattered throughout the year.

The year was 1980. Johnny was 8, Ken 6. My son, Chris was 4, daughter Tara 2. We had visited John and Carolyn less than a month ago. I talked to her the night before.

At just after six, with dinner finished and cleared from the table, John sat down to read a book. Johnny, across the room from his dad, industriously put together a simple model while seated on the floor. Carolyn got Ken in the shower to begin the "getting ready for bed" stuff. She began tidying the living room a bit, before reading bedtime stories and getting the kids off to sleep.

They lived in a rural Oregon coastal community - if you could really call it a community. Twenty homes nestled in the woods, connected by winding graveled lanes. You might glimpse a house through the trees from any given spot.

Into this peaceful scene came a thunderclap crack. Startled, Johnny and Carolyn, looked up to see John's head gently turn into the wing back of his chair as his eyes closed. Johnny saw a thin trickle of blood come from his left nostril. Carolyn said, "Oh my God! John." She ran toward him, but saw someone with a rifle walking toward their home.

Yanking Johnny off the floor, she ran down the hall and into the master bedroom, where she had him stand behind the door of the room. She whispered to him to stand absolutely still and not come out, not for anyone. "Don't move."

She raced further down the hall toward Ken in the shower, as gun shots splintered the front door open, shattering glass. She turned off the water, told Ken to lie down in the tub, and pulled the curtain back in place. He did. He could smell the cordite now.

There were watermarks on the wall where Carolyn's hands steadied herself as she raced around the corner into the family room. She dialed 911 and whirled around when someone said, "Carolyn!" He shot her between the eyes, turned on his heel and walked down the basement stairs and out into the night. Neither Johnny nor Ken moved. Agonizing minutes later, neighbors, who had heard the shots, found the boys paralyzed with fear, riveted in their hiding places.

I was bending over each of my children to kiss them good night after their bedtime story. I vaguely heard the phone ring. Requisite tickles, glasses of water, and final trips to the bathroom accomplished, I turned to see Mark standing in the doorway of their room. White as a sheet, his eyes were tormented. I walked toward him, turning the lights off in the room as I did. There was a moment of "knowing," and I didn't want the children to see desolation's eyes. I took his hand, drew him away from the door and asked in a low voice, as I led him away, "What is it? You're white as a sheet!"

"John and Carolyn have been murdered," he said in monotone. He swallowed hard, struggling to say more. "So were their neighbors down the lane." Six children instantly parentless. Mark and his brother drove immediately to Coos Bay, held the boys while they talked to the police, and brought those two little ones back to live with us.

I woke that night, and many others, screaming when I thought of Carolyn turning to face her killer. Why!?! Why her?! Her eyes haunted me. Those beautiful eyes. Windows to her soul. She had known, in that instant, she would die, and it haunted me. Dear God, her children need her. I love her. Why?! I asked in anguish, then fury overtook me. No! It was NOT God's will - it isn't that he wants them home. I will NOT accept that from this family or their church. Someone killed them. Chose evil. I want him to die. Slowly. Painfully. Oh please, someone hold my heart. Do you glue a heart back together? Does it knit itself back to some semblance of wholeness? Does this shard of pain ease? Will my mind clear? Each heartbeat bruises - battered up against the reality of loss. What of these precious boys? How do I help heal these children? And she would want me strong for the sake of her children. Yes. OK. I will be strong. If I am not, we have all lost. Sweet Jesus, give me strength. Oh, God, her eyes. Her eyes. It's not in me to do this. I have babies who don't understand. And two little boys whose world blew apart, cataclysmically shattered. I don't have time or energy to argue with the universe. Just give me strength. For them.

Carolyn's children were dazed, as were we. While people came and went from our household, I'd hear Ken walk up to someone and say, "My mommy and daddy are in heaven. But I don't want them there. I want them here." Then he'd show them his "new" room. And Johnny? Every evening near dusk, he'd go white and sway on his feet...the time of their deaths. We began having dinner later so I could close the drapes in the family room - windows frightened him - and hold him for half and hour. It became our story time with all four children sitting on or around my rocker.

One day I had talked with Carolyn. The next day she was gone. I thought about all the days we'd filled with stuff that didn't matter. All the times I'd thought about calling and let the day whisk me away. I wished I'd followed through so I'd have more memories of her. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, if I'd known I was going to die, I'd live my life differently. Every day I'd tell my children I loved them. Everyday I'd hold them. Every day we'd create memories. Everyday they'd leave our home with a hug, a kiss, and without unresolved conflict. I would never take up an issue before they left for school. I would send them out into the world secure and loved to face their day, whatever it might bring. I'd find joy in every day. I wanted to find something in every day that counted for embracing life, not just the living of it.

Weeks later, Carolyn's mother and I began the process of the practical at John and Carolyn's home. Her mother said, "Take something of Carolyn's to remember her by." I wandered the house, filled with memories. This, her sons should have ... and this? Her son's children might want. Photos? Something she crafted? How do you walk through a house that once was a home, and find anything that represents the soul of the one who no longer resides there? She had African violets in a bay window. I looked at them and thought, "I want something living. She was so beautiful. I'll take a violet."

I brought it home as a daily reminder of her love, of the preciousness of life. A year later Carolyn's violet sent off a "start." I potted it. It flourished. I decided I would give each start (one a year) to someone special. Someone who could appreciate the gesture of 'passing Carolyn's love' along. Someone unique. I would ask each of them, when their violet grew a new shoot, to transplant it, and continue her gift of love and connection, by giving it to someone of their choosing.

I have her violet still. For 30 years it has thrived. If every person gave one of Carolyn's violets away every year, her living legacy of love would number in the millions. Life. Hope. Love. Connection. A testament to miracles.

- Laura Landgraf, Post Falls