The day Sunny died was a very strange day. The weather was unusual. It was mid-September. It was unseasonably warm and extremely windy.
Her living room is pumpkin-spice orange. The very pleasing kind. And it smells the same way, spicy and warm. It’s a very sunny day and everything glows. Kari is cheerful and beautiful, the kind of beauty that has been enhanced by simmering for a very long time. She has long curly silver hair and bohemian earrings that dangle over her shoulders as she talks and laughs. She laughs a lot.
She doesn’t cry when she tells me about the day Sunny died, even though I do. It was so long ago. And so much has changed…
Q: Tell me about how you and Sunny met.
1972, Brainerd, Minnesota…
Kari: I was sixteen. Sunny was a bit older than me. I met him through a mutual friend and he had a motorcycle, he took me for a ride. He took me to where he was staying and we talked for hours. I was on speed then. But somehow in this conversation we had talked about it and it all got flushed down the toilet. I went home and it was late. I woke my mom up and said, “I was just with the guy I’m gonna marry.”
They rented a place in the country and moved in together.
Kari: A mutual friend came over one day and said ‘I need to talk to you.’ He said, ‘Sunny’s gone and he’s not coming back.’ And I absolutely fell apart… ‘Well it’s just not gonna work and I’m sorry I had to tell you this…’
We left and I sobbed, it was uncontrollable. Then I said, ‘No, we need to go back.’ And he took me back and Sunny was there waiting for me. No cell phones, no nothing. And he said, ‘I’m wrong, I’m wrong, I’m wrong.’ That’s when we knew we were gonna get married.
They set the date for the middle of February.
Around this time Sunny decided to go into the Army. Only weeks later, just before he left for basic training, Kari contracted the German Measles. And she found out she was pregnant. The doctor assured her that the baby would be unharmed by the disease, but he wasn’t entirely correct. They wouldn’t learn this though until years later. Their son Joel was born in El Paso, Texas on Halloween day.
After Sunny’s training was complete they were sent to Germany. She was eighteen years old. Married. Moving to a foreign country. With a new infant. The year was 1974.
Q: Tell me about living in Germany.
Kari: Our apartment was vaulted. As with most European apartments, there was a main hallway with all the rooms off the hallway. And you had to turn the water on to heat it. There just wasn’t hot water. We lived downhill from the base, so whenever we went to the commissary we walked uphill all the way. The shopping section was “old-city European”, with cobblestone walking streets and small shops of all kinds.
While in Germany she became pregnant again and their second son was born. They named him Justin.
Kari: There was no telephone. The people downstairs had one. In order to call the US to tell our parents we had to put in a call to the operator and then wait twenty minutes or so for the operator to call us back with the connection.
Shortly afterward they moved back to the states.
They bought a mobile home and in August, they had it moved to a trailer park in a suburb of the Twin Cities. Sunny got funding to go to school for architectural drafting and he started in September. He began working with an architectural firm and he had such potential that the owner was talking partnership before he was done with his first year of school.
Q: What was Sunny like?
Kari: Sunny was artistic, and did a lot of drawing, plus he was very quick at learning new things, and the architecture came easy for him. He was very sociable, and had a sincere charm that made him friends easily. People were not only comfortable with him but I think he made them feel very special. He was also very quick to assess the situation around him and gain the advantage. Everyone loved him. Everyone.
Q: Tell me about life with Sunny.
Kari: I guess I would have to say we lived a kind of “hippy” life-style. You nursed until the child was done nursing, even if they were five. And you all sleep in the same bed together. We had two beds we pushed together and that was where we all slept. We loved being parents, and planned to just keep having babies.
The next summer he had gotten a new motorcycle. The neighbors took the kids and I went riding with him one day and I was really uncomfortable. And I loved motorcycles, that was our only transportation when we were first together. I never had been uncomfortable before. But here I was, suddenly feeling so uncomfortable now that we had the kids and we were both out riding together. And that’s the last time I was ever on a motorcycle.
Q: Tell me about the day Sunny died.
Kari: The day Sunny died was a very strange day weather-wise. It was a year after we had moved. It was mid-September. The weather was so weird. It was just really warm and there were strong strong winds.
He called to tell her he was coming straight home after school instead of going to work because the weather was so bad for riding. She hung up the phone and felt very uneasy. Over the next hour the uneasiness grew and he did not return. Then the phone rang.
Kari: Nobody came to tell me. I got the telephone call and the person said, ‘Has the Chaplin’s office been there yet?’ And I hung up the phone. I never even asked who it was. And then I just panicked. And nobody was around. I ran from door to door in the trailer park, but nobody was home. So I just made myself go back and sit and wait for the phone to ring again.
When it finally rang they said, ‘He’s been in an accident.’ And I said, ‘Is he okay?’ I thought they’d say, ‘Yes, he’s in the hospital.’ … ‘No. He’s dead.’… On the telephone. Nobody ever came to my door.
[Relatives] must have identified his body because I never had to do that. Somehow I got the stuff he had in his pockets, but I don’t remember how. I called my mom and my parents drove right down. Then I had to call his parents, and it’s like how do you tell people this? ‘Sunny’s dead.’ I mean that’s all you can say. ‘Sunny’s dead.’
The day Sunny died she was 22. Sunny was 23. Joel was almost 4. Justin was 2. It was 1977.
Q: How did the boys react?
Kari: It’s really interesting, shortly before that we were all sitting outside on the picnic table and there was a dead butterfly. And Joel was just fascinated by this butterfly. And he didn’t have much speech. He was hearing impaired from the measles I had when I was pregnant with him, but we didn’t know it yet. So he didn’t have much speech. It was like, ‘How do we tell him about death?’ So we said, ‘The butterfly has a broken body.’ … So when Sunny died that’s how I explained it, I said, ‘Daddy has a broken body.’ I knew that God had provided that butterfly.
We would sit and cry together. It would just come in waves, the sorrow. And you just cry through it. We went up to my mom and dad’s, we were out there for a week. I remember being in the basement and it just hit me. I just sat down on the steps and sobbed. And then it would pass and it would be okay. It was kinda this back and forth thing but I cried with the kids. And I knew it was good that I was doing that. And we had talked about it, that we would cry together and all three of us would be sad.
Q: What kinds of things would trigger the grief?
Kari: We used to get high and watch Carol Burnett. So one day I decided I was going to do that. So I got high and watched it. And it was a big mistake. It was awful. It was awful. Didn’t do that again.
One thing I read is that you can kinda go insane with that type of sudden unexpected loss in particular, you go a little bit insane, but you don’t know you are. And I remember thinking to myself, ‘Oh I’m glad that’s not me, I’m doing really well with this.’ Oh my goodness, no I wasn’t. I was in shock. And I didn’t know it. I mean I went into this state of rebellion, like a teenager. Starting a physical relationship with a friend, getting high… I quit wearing bras and everything! And this was all around the kids. Looking back I think, how did Joel and Justin turn out so good? But they were always the focal point. I know I loved them. They were the center of my life and everything was around them.
Q: How many years ago was this all?
Kari: … Thirty-seven
Q: After all these years, and all the healing you have had, what kind of emotional response is there when you talk about this?
Kari: There’s an internal thing that happens because it goes back to that person, who I was back then. And I had the whole split personality thing too, so it feels kinda like that, it’s like experiencing it as a different person, but I don’t feel emotional pain or anything with it. But I can relate to how I was feeling then. I can remember the pain, but I don’t feel it anymore. It’s not there.
But the story isn’t over quite yet. There’s still more I want to tell.
When Sunny died everything was paid for. The trailer, the bike, everything. With social security coming in, she had more than she needed to live on. She put the money away and in time she purchased a house for herself and the boys. And that was when things took a bit of a dangerous turn. That was when she met Billy.
Q: Tell me about Billy.
Kari: I don’t know how I connected with Billy. But not long after that he moved in with us. He had a drinking problem. He was very verbally abusive. I remember one time we were going to visit family up in McGregor and he decided he didn’t want me to go with him and he pushed me out of the car and chased me with the car to run me over. And then decided, no it was okay, we were going to be together. The remorse was so gentle it makes you forgive.
Q: How long were you with him?
Kari: I think it was probably only nine months, but I think that last three of it was, ‘How do I get rid of him?’ I had called a friend in the trailer court and said, ‘Please pray for me.’ I knew I needed prayer and I didn’t know what to do.
Q: When did you realize that you were in an abusive relationship?
Kari: We would go to the plasma bank for drug and booze money. One day when I was done and waiting for Billy this woman with a couple little kids came up to me and she whispered to me, ‘Do you have any money? I want to get a cab and get out of here before he’s done.’ It was a boyfriend she was referring to. And I knew she was abused. She looked terrified. And I had this little thought… ‘that’s me.’ And then I thought, ‘No. I’m above that. I’m not abused and needing help.’ But whatever went through my mind I knew, I looked at her and I saw myself.
Q: Was there a time when he really harmed you?
Kari: Yes. I sold Billy’s dog to somebody. He wasn’t around very much and I couldn’t take care of the dog. Well he lost it. Thankfully not til after the kids were in bed, but that was the only time that he was really really physically abusive. He nearly put the piano down the steps. That’s what this scar is from [she lifts her head to show me a sizable mark on her chin].
He didn’t cause a lot of damage in the house but he got me pretty good. I just prayed that the kids would stay asleep and then we went to bed and he passed out. And I just lay there. I kinda moved to see if he moved and I got up and I gathered up the kids in a quilt and I don’t even think I put my shoes on. I went next door. It was a lady and her mom, and they did quilting and sometimes they would have me help. They couldn’t stand my kids because they were so wild. I didn’t discipline them. They were just wild, I didn’t know they were wild. But they were aware that there was something that was wrong, they were concerned for me.
So in the middle of the night I’m knocking on their door. And they gathered me in. I was terrified of calling the police. I called my mom and dad and Sunny’s parents and they came down in the middle of the night. And in the meantime he had woken up and had called looking for me. They lied but he could see the light on. He didn’t come looking for me. But we called the police in the morning and when they came they removed him. We put a restraining order on him.
Q: When did you find out you were pregnant again?
Kari: Probably a couple weeks later I heard he was in treatment. He wanted me to come down to the treatment center. So we went and started participating in some things there and that was when I realized I was pregnant. He was talking marriage and I’m thinking, ‘I don’t think so!’ He quit the program and said he’d do AA.
Q: Did he stay clean?
Kari: No he did not stay clean. I met some people in AA and I became very close with them. They really helped me. I had the restraining order on him. He would show up sometimes. The neighbors would call and say, ‘I think he’s in the backyard.’ And I would panic.
Billy was allowed to attend the birth of their child, another son, they named Tobiah. He came and went for the first year of the boy’s life. Then he disappeared. They didn’t see him again for thirteen years.
But over the next few years she got connected to a church. She and Sunny had talked about it right before he died and they had attended a church once just before it happened. She began to heal. She began to find peace for the first time in her life. And then she met Brian.
They met in bible study. Brian was twenty-one years old. He was very excited to get married and assumed God had a special young girl for him to meet soon. When he asked God who it might be, God pointed Kari out to him and he said, ‘You’re crazy.’ He had been saving himself for a young virgin. God was pointing at a twenty-seven year old single mother with three unruly boys. He told Brian, I want you to marry her. I want you to be a father to those boys. They needed a father.
Q: Tell me about meeting Brian.
Kari: We were in home group together for awhile, but the first time I really talked with him at length was on Valentine’s Day when Justin was 7, Joel was 9 and Tobiah was 3. We were on our way to our home group leader’s house for his birthday. It was a nice day so we decided to walk. As we left our driveway, Brian drove by, stopped, and wanted to know if we wanted a ride so we all piled in. He offered to drive us home afterwards, and I said sure. Then I thought I should invite him in for a cup of tea just to be polite. It was the kids’ bedtimes, so I said I would get them to bed and then we could have some tea. Well, he followed me into their rooms while I tucked them in and prayed with us. I thought it was a little strange at first, but it wasn’t uncomfortable as he chatted with them, and prayed together with us.
Kari had also been praying about marriage again. She had asked God, ‘How will I know when it’s the right man?’ Shortly after this a friend told her God had a message for her: ‘You will know him because he will come to your door and he will tell you he is the one.’ The friend had no idea what Kari had prayed.
Meanwhile God was telling Brain to do something crazy. ‘Go tell Kari you think you are supposed to get married.’ He thought he would completely freak her out. But the feeling would not leave him. He went to her door and she opened it. He said, ‘You may think this sounds crazy, but I think God is telling me that we are supposed to get married.’ Kari stood wide-eyed in the doorway.
Q: Tell me about what it was like when he came to your door and told you that.
Kari: All I could say over and over was ‘I’m overwhelmed. I’m overwhelmed.’
Though many friends were thrilled with the union, many others in the church were in an uproar, trying to abort the wedding. It was shocking, this young virgin marrying this single mother of three who was six years older than he was. But the two could not be swayed. They knew it was an arranged marriage. God had made himself very clear.
They were married in his parent’s backyard four months later.
While on their honeymoon, the three boys practiced calling Brian ‘dad.’ It was accepted from the start, he was their new father. She was pregnant with her fourth son, Jesse, one month after that. Then they had a fifth son, Timothy. Brian adopted the other three boys.
They have been married now for thirty-one years. They recently returned to Minneapolis, Minnesota after a seven-year missions stint in Israel.
The day Sunny died was a day she would have probably undone if she had been given the option back then. She would have probably chosen to keep him. Who wouldn’t? But if Sunny hadn’t died, many lives would be very different. And others wouldn’t even exist. If Sunny hadn’t died she never would have met the man she has been married to for the past three decades. She never would have had her younger three sons. And this matters a great deal, especially to me. Because I am married to one of them.
