Karmic Expressions

My father’s family has experienced what seem to me to be an inordinate number of tragedies that are not duplicated on my mother’s side.

My aunt Carol was killed on her sixth birthday, run over by a pickup truck driven by her father, my grandfather Edwin Luther.

My great-aunt Tone died in a car crash in the same intersection where her husband had died 40 years earlier (in an automobile accident).

My cousin Ken and his three-year-old son died in a small plane crash over South Dakota.

Ken’s sister, my cousin Jan, ran her car off the side of the road into a ditch. When she was discovered many hours later, her body temperature was down to 72 degrees. She never fully recovered.

My cousin Nicole contracted Mary Lund’s Disease at the age of 27. She had to be air-lifted from Minot to the University of Minnesota where she was the first woman to receive a Jarvik 7 artificial heart. She eventually received a heart transplant, but contracted Mary Lund’s Disease for a second time a few years later, and died within days.

My cousin Kevin was born so profoundly disabled he never learned to talk. He was unable to sit up on his own or even feed himself. He passed away at the age of 7.

My grandfather’s depression was (understandably) severe. He was hospitalized multiple times. I remember visiting him at Willmar State Mental Hospital when I was very young.

The only mirror of this in my mother’s family is the death of her father Bernard Sheehan when my mom was three. There was a snowstorm, and some men were gathered in the back of a truck, heading out to do snow removal together. My grandfather fell out of the truck, hit his head and died.

The greatest Sheehan family trauma I remember is my godmother Marguerite’s death at the age of 42 from cancer July 5, 1965. I was 8.

Perhaps this family vibration strengthens my patience and understanding of Chris’ medical stressors, caused by his train accident at age 19. Waking dream, family dream.