Carol Clark - January 9, 1955 - December 4, 2019

My sister Carol Jane Clark passed away Wednesday, December 4th in Memphis. It was exactly two weeks after our mother passed away. Carol leaves her father John Ewing Clark, brother Rick Clark, sister Beth Clark, niece Sarah Clark Alonso and nephew John Clark Burchard.

Carol was born Jan 9, 1955, in Memphis, TN and she lived there most all her life. She was the second of the three of us siblings.

Carol was exceptionally smart, caring and very kind. Growing up, she was the most athletic of the Clark kids, especially excelling in competitive swimming, but also in baseball or football with the neighborhood kids in the yard. I certainly couldn’t keep up. She loved animals and, for a while, went to school to be a veterinary nurse. She deeply appreciated her family and would literally give someone in need what she could, even when she was struggling through hard times herself. Her heart was a big one.

Carol loved and wanted to be loved and, while she reached out, there always seemed to be a wall between her heart’s desire and the way the world around received her. She had many heartbreaking chapters in her life that were exacerbated by a combination of emotional and chemical disorders that started to show themselves around the time she was in high school.

There were suicide attempts, including her last one when Carol went back to the railroad tracks in the neighborhood where we grew up and laid down in front of an oncoming train. She miraculously survived but lost her legs in the process. To this day, I still can’t wrap my mind around the violence of this act of attempted finality and the desperation that brought Carol to undertake it. As much as our family has never recovered from this tragic act, it must’ve paled compared to the years she felt trapped in a world where she had little place at the table.

While Carol was angry that she failed to accomplish her goal to die, she rallied around and the following years had their peaks and valleys till this year when it was obvious she had entered a serious state of decline. The last time I talked to Carol was three weeks ago, which was the day we informed her that our mother had passed away. She was barely responsive. Two weeks later Carol was gone.

Carol Clark was the sister of Beth and me and the daughter of Pat and John Clark, the aunt of Sarah Clark Alonso and John Clark Burchard. She was priceless. I have to believe she is in a better place.