Another tribute to Karin

My Cousin's Clothes
By Marsha Bolton Rivers
In Tribute to Karin Walsh Faulkner
December 31, 2008

Once upon a time, there were two sisters, Etha and Helen Moses. They grew up together in pre-Depression Richburg, New York, on a block full of aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents, most employed by the local oil industry, and all faithful members of the First Day Baptist Church.

Living in such close proximity to so much family suited the elder sister, Etha. She married Bill Herne, and they lived happily ever after, nestled among the hills and the relatives. Helen, however, was persuaded to part from her hometown by a tall, handsome man nine years her senior: Paul Wheeler, my grandfather. So swept up in her zeal for Paul was Helen that she finished her final two grades of high school in one year, married Paul, and settled with him in Binghamton, 140 miles to the east.

Bill and Etha welcomed three children: David, Gary and Nina May. Paul and Helen had a son, Loel, and a daughter, Etha – named for her dear aunt by her presumptuous grandmother, who filled in the birth certificate before Helen had awakened after delivery.

Before I bore my readers with genealogical details, let me skip ahead to the next generation: Nina May Herne married Grant Walsh, a gifted businessman who has invested most of his successful career as a health care executive. Etha Wheeler, my mother, married Sid Bolton, a reluctant music teacher who made his living leading the school band but has pursued his true passions outside of work: reading, running, and taking care of his family. That includes me, his youngest daughter.

Grant, too, loves his wife and children passionately, generously. That he has had more means to do so might explain why Grant and Nina’s daughter Karin, my second cousin, took on the persona of a princess. She attended private schools. She learned to play the harp. She became fluent in French. She loved the color pink. She delighted in Disney. She wore high-end clothes. She required three plug-in appliances to coif her bouncy hair. And her disposition rivaled the purity and sweetness of Snow White.

I saw my cousin Karin only a handful of times in person (we traveled together once as teenagers, which was how I discovered her hair ritual), but I felt as though I knew her rather well – a closeness perceived by perhaps hundreds of others. Karin, you see, was a blogger. In fact, I think she started blogging before many of us had even established e-mail addresses.

At first, she blogged about her wedding plans – to Steven Faulkner, an engineer she met in California when she worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers (putting her master’s degree in international business to good use). The celebration of their nuptials was, of course, a fairy-tale affair: exquisite gown, harp music, country club reception with more courses and more desserts than I could count. Steve and Karin had taken ballroom lessons for several weeks before their big day, and the sheer bliss on their faces as they waltzed to “Could I Have This Dance?” was, well, priceless.

Karin continued to blog about everyday life. She was big into scrapbooking, too. Then, a few years into marriage, when conception did not occur as quickly as Karin expected in her orderly life, she took it as a sign that God meant them to adopt. That’s when the blogging began in earnest.

Through Karin’s blog, her friends and family members experienced the excitement, the angst, the details, the anticipation, the paperwork, the expense, the waiting, waiting, waiting, and finally the elation of the adoption process. I remember the day that Kevin Byron Faulkner joined our extended family almost as vividly as I recall my own children’s arrival into the world. I paid even keener attention than I might have otherwise since Kevin, born in Russia, was just three weeks older than my son.

Karin blogged about Kevin every single day. Every day! I tried not to feel jealous, guilty or resentful of her energy. Instead, I admired her devotion to her boy. She was so sincere, so intent on creating a loving home for him. And he was – and is – so incandescently happy. Such an exuberant child! Much like his mother.

Not long after Kevin’s arrival in America, Steve and Karin began the adoption process again – this time, much wiser about the arduous journey ahead of them … or so we all thought. Because they wanted three children, and because they did not want to endure the proceedings any longer than necessary, Karin and Steve decided to adopt two children at once – as “virtual twins.” Kien, a son, and Aria, a daughter, were born within a few days of each other in Vietnam. The Faulkners made plans to bring them home.

A long year later, Steve and Karin were allowed to adopt Kien. But Aria’s adoption was held up. What happened in the meantime was wholly unexpected: Karin was diagnosed with a rare, aggressive form of kidney cancer. With characteristic vigor and vitality, Karin fought her disease. And she blogged. First, within hours of receiving her shocking diagnosis, she sent an e-mail message to her many friends and relatives, sharing the news and asking for prayers. Then, a day or two later, she set up another blog: http://karinupdates.blogspot.com/. Over the next four months, she told us all about her treatments, her multiple medications, her many trips to the hospital, and her and Steve’s difficult decision in November to go ahead with Aria’s adoption. On December 10, she checked into the ER with pneumonia. Five days later, she was gone.

I am still in shock. I dreaded the day of the funeral – dreaded it from the first day of her diagnosis. My friend Matt had died of cancer 3 ½ years ago, despite many fervent prayers for his healing. While I didn’t blame God for Matt’s death, I learned that sometimes God denies us the things we most desire. I don’t understand why, and I don’t expect I ever will. So when I received Karin’s e-mail on September 5, and began reading out loud to a co-worker, I started to cry. When she hugged me, I blurted: “I don’t want to go to her funeral.”

But of course, when the time came, I made plans to fly to North Carolina to be with her dear family – my family. Being a second cousin, I felt somewhat outside the circle – except that with Karin, no one was outside the circle. She blogged for all to read. Her openness amazed me. And I grieved with her many mourners.

Karin’s funeral was on a Friday. On Saturday, my mother and I planned to fly back to Buffalo. However, the weather postponed us – as it turned out, by three whole days. We returned to the Faulkner homestead and were greeted, well, like family. That evening, standing in the kitchen, Karin’s mother Nina looked up at me and inquired, “How tall are you?” She wanted me to go through Karin’s clothes – “She won’t be needing them anymore,” she said.

The next day, I found myself standing in the closet of a cousin a barely knew in person, but knew intimately through the written word, her blogs. Even though Karin’s accounts were remarkably detailed, I don’t recall her ever mentioning her favorite brands and clothing styles. I found them uncannily similar to mine (the only difference being that mine are mainly thrift-store finds): Lands’ End, Coldwater Creek, Talbots, Jones New York, Christopher & Banks – solid colors, mostly; a tad more pink than in my closet, and a few more florals; V-necks, like mine; mostly separates (finding a good fit is hard for us tall girls). I took a deep breath and began assessing the shirts, one at a time, looking, considering, sliding each hanger to the left. How on earth would I decide what to take and what to leave? I couldn’t possibly take them all. I didn’t feel I should. But Nina seemed determined that I should take some. The prospect seemed to comfort her. And I certainly wanted to comfort her, if I could, even in this seemingly small way.

Going through Karin’s clothes, I identified with her in a way that I believe – and I hope – will render me forever grateful for each day that I enjoy the privilege of living. At 35, Karin was just one year older than I. (Will I have only one more year to live?) She was two inches taller than I. (So why do her gowns fit me to a T? Strange – “like the cousinhood of the traveling dress,” I mused.) “Why am I still here, and not she?” I fairly shouted inside myself. Then the tender line of the French musical Les Miserables came to mind: “Oh my friends, my friends forgive me, That I live and you are gone. There’s a grief that can’t be spoken. There’s a pain goes on and on.”

I proceeded through the shirts, the skirts (I left the trousers – she was two sizes slimmer); the gowns, inexplicably, fit perfectly; and I took just one pair of pajamas, soft ivory cotton with a pastel harp print. Then I looked down and realized: her shoes might fit me (we tall girls have big feet). I slipped on a pair of pink ballet-style Crocs – princess shoes, I thought – and they fit. I nearly gasped. Wearing the garments of a deceased person bore one kind of weightiness. To literally walk in her shoes … it felt like too much! As if, somehow, it would be up to me to carry on with her living. Not her life, of course, but my own, in memory of her … in honor of her life and death … in honor of the fact that I can live and breathe and love and, if I choose, blog! So why wouldn’t I?

Karin’s husband Steve heard my gasp and my declaration: “Oh! Even her shoes fit me!” He stepped into the room, I think to reassure me that he didn’t mind my going through her things. “You sound awfully sentimental about shoes,” he teased, and he added: “Karin was sentimental about everything. I’m not.”

Nor am I, normally. But, stepping into my cousin Karin’s shoes, trying on her clothes, taking them home with me, and embracing my children at the door, I have carried another song in my heart: “I will never be the same again, I can never return, I’ve closed the door, I will walk the path, I will run the race and I will never be the same again … the Glory of God fills my life, and I will never be the same again.”

(song can be heard at -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ou36Er2mI )