First Wildflowers, Janet Christiansen, and Cemeteries

All image credits Gary

I went for a run yesterday morning after sleeping late. Finally the roadside snow is vanishing. These snowdrops are the first flowers I've seen outside this spring.  These were at a farm, but right along the road, so they got no benefit of sheltered conditions.  Just a tough, beautiful plant that I was SO happy to encounter.

This second series of photos immediately below is from Brown's Mill Cemetery that I run through near the end of the 5 miler. I noted several tombstones tipped over, not by the work of vandals, but just by the heaving of frost. Winter is hard on tombstones, particularly old ones.

Such a dichotomy: life and death, beginning and endings. There is a particular grave in this cemetery of a woman--Janet Christiansen--who was murdered by her abusive husband (I've blogged about Janet before, most recently here). 

I often pause there and reflect, so sorry for what happened to her but grateful in a sense that from her tragic death some nugget of good can result: I am reminded to live each day to the fullest and not to take anything for granted.  

Because life can change in a heartbeat, literally.

Janet Christiansen, Revisited...and Ultrarunning

Beem awhile since I posted about Janet Christiansen (last was here).

She was murdered several years ago and is buried in a local cemetery where I run.  An article in our local newspaper a couple years ago about her body being exhumed for additional forensic evidence to try to solve her murder led me to her grave and got me thinking about immortality and such.

Funny how odd events or things just kinda resonate for unkown reasons, but I've generally decided just to go with it, there are things to be learned.  I didn't know Janet; she's just a stranger whose story touched me.

What I've taken from Janet's story is that life is short, things can change in a heartbeat, and that there are no guarantees.  So the only sensible response is to live each day to the fullest and don't take anything for granted.

Whenever I run by there I ususally drop off some wildflowers--here, Queen Anne's Lace--just to say thanks to Janet for the valuable lesson that "you may not have as much time as you think."

The link, of course, to Ultrarunning is one I personally need to take to heart: if you feel like doing a particular run (be it training or a race), just DO IT. 

No time like the present; after all, the whole point of this post is never to assume you'll have the time at some later date.

"The Sadness of the Short Obituary"...Part 2

A year and a half ago I wrote about an obituary for one Caleb Christiansen, of California, whose obituary I happened upon accidentally via his mother and another Janet Christiansen sharing the same name.

See, I have a Google Alert set up for "Janet Christiansen--of North Carolina--who was murdered and is interred in a cemetery about half a a mile from my home.  Although she is a stranger to me, I pause there from time to time to bring flowers, and have previously blogged about reflections on her death, most recently here.

Anyway, turns out I was right about the short obituary for Caleb, not that it gives me any satisfaction.  He apparently struggled with drug abuse and died of an overdose (the link is to a story of the criminal prosecution of the dealer who sold Caleb the drugs).

The empty, senseless hole left in that family will never quite heal.  The death of a child, regardless of age (Caleb was 21) is an event that no parent ever wants to face.  My heart again goes out to that family that they may find peace.

When I run tomorrow I'll place an extra flower in the cemetery--one for Janet, and one for Caleb.  I have some mighty fine daffodils right now that are simply beautiful.

 

 

Turnip Flowers for Janet

[image credit PlantCoverCrops]

In a fairly recent trend, I notice where local farmers are planting turnips as winter cover crops.

The pretty yellow flowers did double duty the other day as memorial for Janet Christiansen, a local woman, a murder victim, whom I have previously blogged about here and here, where I wrote:

Janet was murdered in 2005. Her husband, Raven, was charged with the crime in 2010. She left behind a 6-month old, Kaiden, and was pregnant at the time of her death.

She came to my attention last summer when I read in the local newspaper that her remains were to be exhumed to gather additional forensic evidence. Her grave is only half a mile from my home, and I frequently run through the Brown's Mill Cemetery. Once I became aware of the circumstances, I began leaving wildflowers on her grave whenever I would run by. Today was no exception.

 

I have no personal connection with Janet or her family, it's just that her life, cut short, somehow resonated with me to help make me a better person by NOT taking my life for granted.

Rest in peace.

 

 

 

More Flowers for Janet

Over the course of the winter, Janet Christiansen got a few new neighbors. 

A short distance away from Janet's grave can be found the new graves of four elderly women: Catherine, Dorothy, Helen, and Ruth.  Of this quartet, Helen was the eldest, born in 1914, thus 97 or 98 years old; Ruth was the youngest, born in 1930, making her some 81 or 82 years old.  All were married, and three were widows: only Ruth did not outlive her husband.

Contrast that with Janet Christiansen's grave, which only bears the family headstone marked Christiansen.  There are no other inscriptions or markers that  would indicate that buried there are Janet Christiansen and a sister, Gaynelle, who died in 1982.

Janet was murdered in 2005.  Her husband, Raven, was charged with the crime in 2010.  She left behind a 6-month old, Kaiden, and was pregnant at the time of her death.

She came to my attention last summer when I read in the local newspaper that her remains were to be exhumed to gather additional forensic evidence.  Her grave is only half a mile from my home, and I frequently run through the Brown's Mill Cemetery.  Once I became aware of the circumstances, I began leaving wildflowers on her grave whenever I would run by.  Today was no exception.

Janet's life was cut short at age 25, in stark contrast to the four other ladies--Catherine, Dorothy, Helen, and Ruth--who had the good fortune to share a long life with a good man.  Janet's death serves as a reminder to me that life is short and there are no guarantees...and helps me to be a better person by not taking anything for granted.

The Sadness of the Short Obituary

I’ve posted before about Janet Christiansen (most recently here), a former local resident who was murdered in North Carolina back in 2005.  Last summer her body was disinterred from its grave in Brown’s Mill Cemetery about half a mile from my home.  The purpose of the disinterment was to gather additional forensic evidence, since authorities have recently charged her husband with the murder.

Anyway, I wanted to keep abreast of the case and set up a Google Alert to inform me of any web activity under the search terms “Janet Christiansen.”

A couple weeks ago I got an incidental link to an obituary for one Caleb Christiansen.  Here's a short excerpt:

Caleb Christiansen returned to the hands of God on Dec. 14, 2011. He was born in Upland, Calif., on Sept. 10, 1990 to his parents Chris and Janet Christiansen and was loved and cherished by them, his family and everyone who knew him. He moved with his family to Burnet when he was 1 ½ where he lived for the remainder of his short but full life.

This is obviously not the same Janet Christiansen, it’s just a case of two people with the same name.  But I was struck by the obituary of this 21 year old, likely because “Caleb” is a name in our family. Plus the fact that while the rest of the write-up tried to be uplifting, it really was fairly short. 

And the circumstances of this young man’s death are not mentioned, so my mind naturally assumed either drugs or suicide.  Usually if a young person has a fatal disease there’s a mention of memorial contributions to a group dealing with that affliction.

I have some experience with the short obituary.  In fact, I still regularly scan the death notices in my local newspaper to see whether I know any of the young dead who would have passed due to a drug overdose. 

The tragedy and the waste are so awful and hurtful.  My heart goes out to that family out there on the west coast, and for all families who are part of the short obituary.

 

Remembrances…and Ultrarunning

November is a time for remembrances. 

• On a global scale on 11 Nov we had Armistice Day (renamed Veteran’s Day, but the original name is better).  The “holiday” (if that’s the right word) commemorates the dead of WWI, the so-called war to end all wars.  That hasn’t worked out all that well.

• On the national scale, 19 Nov was the anniversary of President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.  He was speaking at the dedication of the new National Cemetery at Gettysburg, where Union dead from the battle some 4 months prior were being reinterred from their temporary graves scattered over the battlefield. The short speech has become iconic for its succinct and eloquent capture of the spirit of remembrance of the sacrifices of the Union dead.

• On the local scale, this morning on my early run on my beloved Harshman Road loop, I paused again at Janet Christiansen’s grave in Browns Mill Cemetery.  Janet was murdered back in 2005, and her exhumation last year to obtain forensic evidence really touched me (see previous post here).

I probably won’t ever get there, but the link to Ultrarunning is a somewhat famous memorial plaque in CA dedicated to Barbara Schoener.  She was a trail runner killed by a mountain lion in 1994 in northern California along the American River Canyon Trail, in the Auburn State Recreation Area.  This trail is part of the Western States Endurance 100-Mile Endurance Run trail.

  

Janet Christiansen...and Immortality

Image credit here.

Second post this week about immortality.  Wonder if that means anything?

The other day I ran through the cemetery where Janet Christiansen is buried.  I’ve previously posted about Janet here, here, here and here, and how in some way her murder touched a nerve in me, although I have no connection whatever to her or her family.

As I often do, I take wildflowers to place on her grave whenever I run by.  On this day I noticed a lone Queen Anne’s Lace right along the roadside.  The shoulder had been mowed by the township within the past couple weeks and plant growth remained quite low (4-5 inches)…except for this single Queen Anne’s Lace that stood up about a foot or so.  All by itself.  And seen by me just because I happened to glance over at the opposite side of the road.

So I picked it and carried it along the 2 miles or so to Janet Christiansen’s grave.  I placed it there and just sorta stood awhile thinking about life and death, the luck of the draw, and immortality.  I don’t try to communicate with Janet, it’s not that kind of thing.  It's not a weird sort of stalking of the dead.  I just am moved to ponder stuff when I consciously pick a flower and put it there.

Anyway, rest in peace.  Will be back soon.

 

Remembrances While Running: Janet Marie Christiansen

The backstory: This is another in a series of posts triggered by the murder (in 2005), burial, exhumation, and reburial, of Janet Marie Christiansen.  Her grave is near my home and I pass it often while running.

When I last posted here on 5 November that it appeared that her grave was still empty--that forensic tests associated with the reopening of the unsolved case were still presumably underway--a commenter in Alaska corrected me:

Thank you for caring about Janet and leaving flowers. She has been re-interred, though; the court order only allowed a limited time before the casket was to be returned to the ground. 

To which I replied, in Comments, explaining how I came to be mistaken:

You are right. I just called the local newspaper reporter who covered this story, and he said the judge had stipulated a 48 hour turnaround.

I had assumed the process would take some weeks. With the drought we had in Jul-Aug this summer, when I first saw her grave, it was still bare as no grass had regrown (unbeknownst to me, Janet's body had been exhumed and already reinterred).

Assuming the forensic process was still underway, I just figured I'd see a new disturbance of the ground once the forensic folks were done. Well, the grave never was re-disturbed this fall so I posted as though things were really dragging out. My mistake, and thanks for pointing that out.

For what it's worth, I wanted to set that part of the record straight, on the timing of the exhumation and reburial.  I am happy that Janet's body has been reinterred--that had to be so tough on the family.  I hope that the legal proceedings against the newly accused (her husband) will happen quickly.

Also, I wanted to point out something else I did not know.  When I Googled Janet's name a couple weeks ago--just to try to establish a date for her reburial--I was astonished to learn that this story had been covered on national TV (ABC News, I think).  All I was responding to initially was a short, tragic, local (I thought) story in my hometown paper since the grave was quite close to my home. That explains, I think, why I got several comments to these Janet posts on my tiny blog.

While I am only an interested bystander, with no dog in the fight, so to speak, the story of this stranger has touched me in a way that's hard to explain.  Maybe it's the feelings of fear of loss, that what happened to her could happen to any family; maybe it is the triggering of thoughts of immortality; maybe it's some sort of visceral connection on even a subconscious level.

All that said, I will continue to leave wildflowers whenever I run by.  Yesterday's were a couple dandelions that were still hanging on despite some heavy frosts.

Note: I have changed all references to Janet in this and previous posts to read Janet Marie Christiansen (dropping the married name Abaroa), as this is how she is referred to on the family site Tears For Janet.

 

Grave Still Empty...and Ultrarunning

I posted awhile back (Aug 2010) about Staying Buried...and Ultrarunning, where Janet Marie Christiansen's body in a cemetery by my home was disinterred for forensic reasons.  She was murdered in 2005, and recently authorities in NC have charged her husband with her death.

Couple Fridays ago, while I was running thru the tail of Halley's Comet (see my post here), I looped thru the cemetery to pause at her grave.

It is still empty, as evidenced by the weeds and grass growing on the bare earth uncovered from the disinterment this summer.  I've been placing flowers there whenever I pass by.  Last Friday's flowers were Chicory, a tough roadside flower with a lovely blue color.

As when I previously posted, I'm not sure of the point here; the whole situation at once seems necessary and sad and bittersweet.  But I keep being drawn back, as though writing about Janet--whom I did not know, neither do I know her family--seems like something I should be doing.  So I do.

Thoughts of immortality frequently are on my mind as I run.  And that sheer time to ponder is one of the totally underrated aspects of Ultrarunning.  Most people in their lives simply do not have hours-long blocks of time in which to think about as much--or as little--as you wish.  During my time on roads or trails, I can examine an issue, toss it about, leave it to focus on the now of the trail (footing, animals, water, whatever), later come back to it....

I think that aspect, more than any other, may be the real reason I run long.

For Ronni and Cher...and Janet Marie Christiansen

See previous post here.

Sunflower from my garden...may you rest in peace....

 

Staying Buried...and Ultrarunning

As an Ultrarunner, I guess it's fair to say that I am concerned, to a point, about immortality. That's because my running not only has to do with loving back country running, but also the physical fitness aspects as well.

See, heart disease and diabetes runs in my family, particularly among the male members, so I have more motivation than most to be fit. For example, my dad had his first heart attack at around age 50 and was an old man, physically, at the time of his death at age 66.  On the other hand, I fully expect to run an ultra on my 66th birthday.

So the fitness motivation sorta relates to delaying--to a point--immortality. That's why I was disturbed last week when I ran through the local Brown's Mill Cemetery half a mile from my home and saw the freshly disturbed grave of Janet Christiansen Abaroa, murdered back in 2005. Her body had just been exhumed to gather additional evidence. From the local newspaper, the Chambersburg Public Opinion:

Janet Christiansen Abaroa was found apparently stabbed to death in her Durham [NC] home in late April 2005. Her husband, Raven Abaroa, was charged in her death earlier this year. He remains incarcerated at the Durham County Detention Facility.

Although most of her immediate family lives in Virginia, Janet was buried in Brown's Mill Cemetery near Greencastle...she was buried in a large family plot, next to the body of her sister, who died years ago of leukemia.

The closest marker to Abaroa's grave simply reads "Christiansen." There is no stone bearing her full name and the dates of her birth and death. The family will likely install a headstone after the case is finally closed.

I mused a bit about our mores and rules about disinterring people. It's OK to dig somebody up for forensic reasons, because it's for a good purpose and the body is then put back afterwards. And it's OK to dig up mummies, say, from Egypt's age of the pyramids (although maybe that's changing).  But while it'd not be cool to dig up, say, President Lincoln, King Arthur's tomb would (probably?) be fair game.

So somewhere in that time continuum it starts out as a no-no to dig up graves (unless for law enforcement), but as you work backwards, at some point it seems that a grave ceases to be so much a grave as it is a historical site worthy of investigation.  It becomes OK because the science  makes it worthwhile to disturb a grave.

I'm rambling here, so I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the jury is probably still out on where grave robbing stops and history begins.  I don't hold any special belief in the sanctity of a buried corpse; after all, the essence of the person is long gone. 

I believe in the necessity in this case of exhuming the body.  But it bothers me symbolically that Janet Marie Christiansen's memory? spirit? has been disturbed. 

When I run my last ultra and die, I plan to be cremated and my ashes scattered.  But I also hope to figuratively rest in peace.