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When the Worst Happens, How Does a Family Go Forward?

Posted on: Tuesday, 28 March 2006, 09:00 CST

By Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

Mar. 28--She doesn't hate God. She could, but she doesn't. "I know God," Barbara Weimer says. "I don't blame him. I trust him. God doesn't take delight in Kelly's death. I don't feel betrayed." Few would judge her harshly if she said the opposite, if she were bitter and angry. Few would have any quarrel with her if she decided that faith were a cheat and a sham, if she lifted a fist to the sky and cursed. Most people would understand. But that is not what happened.

WEIMER, it says in big block letters on the blue-black headstone in Clarendon Hills Cemetery in Darien.

And below that, this: Kelly Marie/1985-2005.

And then this: She Loved the Lord.

"She really did," says Barbara Weimer.

It's winter now. A brutally cold day. Barbara Weimer gets chilled easily; she is a petite woman, with small hands and delicate features.

When she first started coming here, it was spring, and the weather was soft and delicate. Pastel weather. Then it was summer, and the air was heavy and hot, the sky a solid ceramic blue. Then fall; the winds picked up, and the sky faded, seemingly a square at a time, starting at the corners and working its way inward. Then winter.

She has been coming here since last April 29th, when her oldest child, Kelly, was buried. Barbara came in May and June, in July and August and September. October. November. December. January. February. March.

Grief, like faith, often is presented as a series of rote steps and therapeutic stages. Packaged as a journey that everyone undertakes in pretty much the same way.

Except that Barbara and her husband, Bill Weimer, didn't.

Grief, like faith, is as individual as a fingerprint. As unique and specific as DNA. Yes, there are common traits. But in the end, we grieve the way we worship: in the solitude of our own hearts.

When Barbara came here in the summer, she would sometimes bring a lawn chair and sit and read. First, though, she'd do something else.

She didn't like the way the grave looked -- the grass scraggly, almost sepia-toned from the sun's stubborn one-eyed stare -- so Barbara would hoist two large plastic jugs of water from the back of her mini-van.

She'd load them onto a bright yellow dolly.

She'd wheel the dolly to the gravesite.

She'd fill a watering can, over and over again, and each time after she filled it, she'd sprinkle the liquid over the rectangle of turf. You didn't want the water to pool. It needed to be even, uniform.

That was all Barbara could do for her now. She couldn't wash her clothes or make her a sandwich or give her advice about boyfriends. She couldn't teach her anymore, as she had done while home-schooling Kelly and her other two children, Billy, 18, and Alisa, 15.

But Barbara could do this.

She could water her daughter's grave.

Once, a battered red pickup truck pulled up behind Barbara's mini-van while it was parked at the cemetery. An older man -- maybe 70, maybe more -- with a deeply lined face and crest of thick white hair climbed out and walked slowly to the grave next to Kelly's.

He stood there silently, lost in the thicket of his memories.

Finally he turned and said hello to Barbara. She asked him who was buried in the grave before which he stood. "My mother," he said, and then added politely, pointing to the grave Barbara had just watered, "And who is buried there?"

"My daughter."

The stranger's face changed. He seemed to realize how young the daughter of a woman Barbara's age -- she is 47 -- must have been. You expect to bury your parents, not your children.

"Well," the man said, "God knows what he's doing."

- - -

Bill and Barbara Weimer live on a gently winding street in Woodridge, an affable suburb west of Chicago, in a sturdy, split-level house of salmon-colored brick with a sloping front yard and a basketball hoop dangling over the driveway and a wide wooden front porch.

When you press the doorbell, Bunny -- an aging mutt rescued from the pound, named for her poofy yellow fur -- sets up a racket on the other side of the door. Once you're invited in, though, she's shy and sweet.

They live, Bill and Barbara Weimer do, the kind of life you're supposed to live, doing things the way you're supposed to do them, raising their children with earnest care, working hard, having fun, trusting God.

They live a life of ordinary blessings, lavishly bestowed.

Both grew up on Chicago's South Side. Barbara is devoted to the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a brightness at the center of her life. Bill, 51, who wears his curly gray hair neatly trimmed, is a computer analyst who works in downtown Chicago. He's also been a professional magician for more than three decades, working weekends at clubs and bars.

He doesn't share his wife's religious fervor. He never has.

Both were raised as Catholics. For Barbara, it wasn't enough; for Bill, it was a little too much.

"I grew up at 24th and Oakley," Bill recalls, "and every two blocks there was a different Catholic church. St. Michael's, St. Stephen's, St. Paul's. We went to church twice a week. Friday and Sunday. It was a part of life."

These days, he sometimes attends Saturday services with Barbara and the kids at the small Adventist church at New Castle and 84th Street in Burbank. Mostly, though, Barbara handles the religious part of their lives, keeping the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, educating the kids at home until it's time for college.

"My religion takes a different route than Barbara's," is how Bill explains it. "It's more internal. I like talking to God one-on-one, rather than going in a church and singing about it. I don't have a problem with what she believes. I'm just not as enthusiastic."

- - -

At about 11 p.m. EST on Monday, April 25, Kelly Weimer was strolling across the darkened lawns of Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tenn., with her boyfriend, Jonathan Davidson, 21.

They were flanked by myriad trees that rise with solemn rectitude throughout the campus of the school run by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. White pines. Oaks. Poplars. And, of course, magnolia trees with their large, polished-looking leaves, leaves so purple and showy that they appear to have dressed up special for the occasion.

The thousand-acre campus of the 113-year-old school is tucked in a valley in southeastern Tennessee, protected by the rising green of the steep terrain. Train whistles throw off ghostly hoots as locomotives shoulder their way around the mountain curves.

Right next to the school is the McKee Baking Co., makers of Little Debbie snacks -- you've seen the company logo stenciled on the sides of square white trucks, a dimpled tot in an old-fashioned sunbonnet -- the most famous of which is surely the oatmeal creme pie.

When the bakers are at work, a scrumptious smell rises from the factory and wafts through campus, surfing the curl of the breeze. Students quickly figure out the best places to linger to catch the faint trace of sweetness in the air.

That night, as Kelly and Jonathan ambled across the wide expanse in front of Thatcher Hall, the stolid, red-brick women's dormitory, they talked in soft voices about the summer ahead. This was finals week; their separation was imminent. That fact wove a kind of passionate sadness in and around their words.

In two days Jonathan would be heading home to his family in Charlotte, N.C., and Kelly would be returning to Woodridge.

They'd had dinner at a deli in a mall just up the highway from school. Then they'd gone to Barnes & Noble. She'd bought a copy of Nicholas Sparks' "The Wedding"; he'd bought two Harry Potter paperbacks. At a theater in the same mall with the deli and the bookstore, they'd cuddled through a showing of "The Interpreter."

They were a good-looking couple. Everyone said so. Kelly, who wanted to be a high school English teacher, had blondish-brown hair that rode her shoulders and a mischievous, fetching smile. Jonathan, who planned to follow his father into the ministry, was a lanky towhead with a charming grin and casual swagger. He seemed to live his life the same way he wore his clothes: loosely, carelessly, without a crease or a press or a care in sight.

They kissed and said their good nights, and then Kelly walked through the white-tiled lobby of Thatcher Hall -- a sign on the wall stated primly, NO GENTLEMEN IN THE LOBBY AFTER 10:00 P.M. SUNDAY THROUGH THURSDAY. THANK YOU -- and opened the door to the stairwell.

Three flights up. She lived in Room 372.

Her roommate, Lori Wilson, a quiet, pretty, round-faced young woman from Lewisburg, W.Va., was already asleep. Kelly took her textbooks and a flashlight to the bottom bunk, pulling the covers up over her head so she could read. She didn't want the light to bother Lori.

A few minutes before 4 a.m. EST, the fire alarm in Thatcher Hall was activated, a shrill, insistent wail. Kelly and Lori woke up reluctantly, and agreed in sleepy indignant voices that this was a highly inopportune moment for a fire drill -- a night before final exams. Talk about lousy timing.

A resident adviser was hammering on each door, up and down the hallway, so the women knew there was no way to ignore the summons. Kelly rose and turned on the light. The young women felt more exasperation than urgency. She and Lori debated what to take along: Cell phone? Jacket? It was a foggy night, a bit chilly, with an on-again, off-again rain. They might have to stand outside for a while. Sweat shirt?

Lori opened the door and peered to the right, toward the small common area about 25 feet away that featured a couch, two end tables, a couple of lamps and, just beyond the furniture, a small room with a washer and dryer.

One corner of the yellow couch with the floral pattern, Lori noticed, had a few flames and a bit of smoke blossoming from it.

Lori closed the door and told Kelly what she'd seen. "I've got to get my computer," Lori added, unplugging it and sliding the unit into her backpack.

Kelly, who was wearing a white T-shirt, maroon sweat pants with a blue stripe, white socks and white sneakers, urged her to hurry. Lori grabbed the room keys.

First Kelly left the room, then Lori, and as soon as Lori pulled the door shut behind her, she realized how much gray smoke had gathered in the hallway in just the minute or so since she had last looked out, a great bellying mass of smoke that was dropping lower and lower with frightening speed.

It was a sticky, clinging smoke, like nothing Lori had ever breathed before.

Lori turned left, feeling her way along the wall toward the double doors that she knew lay at the end of the hall.

She couldn't see Kelly.

"Kelly!" Lori cried.

"Lori!"

It was Kelly. Lori was sure of it, even though it was coming from the direction of the fire, through a dense weave of dark smoke.

Lori heard Kelly's voice again, fainter this time: "I'm coming! I'm coming!"

- - -

Wednesday: "A breath and a half"

About this series

Tribune reporter Julia Keller met the Weimer family at Kelly Weimer's wake April 28, 2005. With their permission, Keller followed family members over the course of the year, as they came to terms with Kelly's death.

Keller interviewed Kelly's friends and family members and accompanied the Weimers to church, social events, family functions and visits to Kelly's grave. She interviewed representatives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. She also traveled to Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tenn., and interviewed school officials; Kelly's friends, classmates and teachers; and public safety officials and the medical examiner in Hamilton County, Tenn.

Keller, who also serves as the Tribune's cultural critic, joined the newspaper in late 1998.

For more on the series, go to chicagotribune.com/faith

jikeller@tribune.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: Chicago Tribune

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