What is, is

A few posts back, I wrote about a tragedy that's touched me this past week. An old friend was killed. Violently. I said that NJ has the death penalty, but we don't use it. I also said that one day, the animal who murdered her will get what's coming to him.

Let me clear things up - I am angry that something like this happened to someone I know. True, I'd lost contact with her, but that doesn't change the fact that it touched me, or that I was very close to her at one point. She was going to be my matron of honor.

She has four children - two of them will not dance with their mother at their weddings.

Two of her children have children of their own.

These two will not even remember their grandmother. They will know her through photographs, through recollections, through newspaper articles now. They will never hear her talk of how things were in her day, or about the music she listened to, or maybe the boys she dated, or the idols she had crushes on. She will never be the one they come to because 'Mom just doesn't understand me!'. She will never be able to spoil them rotten. Ever.

They will never know her.

Ever.

Is it wrong to want vengeance? Hard to say. But I will never forget the sight of a mother grieving over the casket of her daughter. I am a parent and I cannot imagine burying my daughter. Not ever. Not in my worst nightmare.

Yet, this mother did just that.

I saw how many people's lives this woman touched. It was standing room only at 2:30 in the afternoon. I saw the tears and heard the remembrances. I saw the embraces that were tighter than usual and lasted far longer. People holding onto to one another to help each other try to accept, try to understand.

Try to rationalize something that is impossible to rationalize.

So please, please don't scold me for being angry, for wanting this animal to pay for what he did. True, there is no empty place at my table come Christmas. But for one very large family, there is that empty place.

She was many things - daughter, sister, aunt, mother, grandmother. Think about that.

A mother who will not dance at her son's wedding.

A mother who will not dance at her daughter's wedding.

A grandmother who will not get to spoil her grandson or granddaughter.


Her killer will live out the rest of his life at the taxpayer's expense.

How is that justice?