Dobleve

Earlier this year we visited the House of Terror in Budapest, Hungary. It is a museum “commemorating the victims of terror” of both the Nazi and Communist regimes and is housed in what was once the party headquarters for the Hungarian Nazis and later became the headquarters of the AVH Secret Police. Among other sobering displays / exhibits is a huge military tank as you walk in. Behind it is a 2 story wall with the names and photos of every single person who was interrogated and killed there. Inside are more sights, sounds, rooms and artworks evocative of the experience of being a prisoner there. It was a terribly upsetting experience and thought provoking on many levels. We discussed at length the whys and why nots of remembering such a terrible part of history (at all) and in such a stark manner. Certainly the museum brought in to sharp focus so much else of what we had seen while traveling around Hungary, but much more simply, the museum seemed to serve to bear witness – to remember who had been lost, and how and why they had been lost.

Twenty years ago this week I lost – my family lost – my 15 year old sister, Kerry Ann Walker. She disappeared the week before Christmas 1988 and we learned a year later, almost to the day, that she would never be coming home again. We learned that she had been killed in December, 1988. The police eventually ruled her death a homicide, although to this day – in what seems merciful ignorance to me – my family does not know much of the specifics as to the who, the how, or the why.

What seemed unbearable in the early days and months following her disappearance: posting “Missing” posters of your baby sister; waiting for first days, then weeks, then months with no word; the eventual phone call you never in your life wanted to hear and never in your life will forget with words like “skull” and “dental records”; the graphic and horrifying news coverage on television complete with film footage of the “site” and the searchers as they combed the woods – all the things that seemed impossibly unbearable, eventually became bearable, simply because they had to. (This is in no way to undercut or downplay the very real impact of violent crimes on families/survivors who often go on to suffer through divorces, suicides, alcoholism, drug addiction, post traumatic stress disorder…, etc.)

Although we will never forget what happened to my sister or who she was in the short lifetime we knew her, we grieve almost more strongly because we do not have her in our day to day lives and cannot share with her the sorrows and joys any family goes through. We also grieve for who she might be today. She was an unbelievably artistic and creative child from the start. She never picked up a musical instrument (of which there were many in our household) she could not play, she created sophisticated art work from a very early age, and she was hands down one of the most social and cheerful children, and later young women, in every neighborhood in which we ever lived. There are times I cannot help myself wondering who she would be now, as a 35 year old woman. What kind of relationship might she and I have? Would she have children? Would I have nieces and nephews? Would she live in a small town or big? (or even in the US at all?!) Would she still look like our grandmother? Would she be an artist, a dreamer, a visionary, a thinker, a talker, a painter, a ????? Of everything, the greatest continuing tragedy of it all is that this world is short one Kerry Ann Walker.

It is rare that I talk about my sister or how she died and have usually favored more private ways to honor her memory. When Brian and I got married, for example, we decided to both change our names, each of us adding the other’s. People asked if that was because I am a feminist or because I am progressive and while I hope I am both of those things, we kept the name Walker because it is the one I share with my sister. On this, the 20^th Anniversary of her disappearance I want to publicly bear witness to who she was and how we lost her and that is why I write this today.

For every bit of sadness we feel this Christmas (and all the days she is not with us) there is far more celebration in our lives. I long ago resolved that to live any other way would mean that whoever killed my sister had gotten us both, and quite frankly I’ll be damned to let that be so. So this Christmas we remember Kerry Ann Walker with more love than can be put into words and celebrate the endless things in our lives there are to celebrate. We wish the same celebration for you – Merry Christmas.