This is the anniversary month Marc was taken, recently it’s been hard. I cry more & keep having flashbacks & attacks of all sorts! Have been asking for prayers of comfort lately! Sometimes I get the feeling the enemy is saying, ‘you’re a bad mom, you should be feeling so guilty about what happened to Marc! How can you enjoy your life since he’s gone’?
No one can ever pay the right price for taking Marc’s life so early! My loss has been so very great, every day has it’s moments of pain, but then each day has rewards from this tragedy! I can’t accept Marc as being somewhere real distant or silent, I’d not want to live if that was the case. I can’t handle ‘separation’, I just refuse to see things that way. I tell him, “You don’t have to hang around me all the time, Marc, I know you are so curious and love people, I don’t feel bad if you visit Chris or your dad or Paul, but come back when I need you, okay?!”
Sometimes I feel maybe I’m too selfish in my mourning. I’m almost seeing this as something that happened to me alone. The crime wasn’t only about me! It’s a family thing too, a community thing!! Others ache for Marc, mourn in memory of his words, his smile, his expressions of love! The way he died! This crime hurt a whole group of people, I’ve really become aware of how many people we touch in our lives that we never fully know care!
I believe the defendant Andrew is paying the right price and picking up the pieces of his life. He’s got a past, family, prison life to deal with …. he’s doing his share of the penalty. I’m SOOO glad he was caught! And it’s so crazy good, but he is too! For me, as a parent or a citizen, I need to see enough justice so I can live in this country and feel good about things!
What’s important to me is how we deal in our hearts with evil done to us or our loved ones. I’m still very angry that evil was done to my son, you never get over that! But I can’t live in hate! Our family is not living with some nebulous, oppressive weight on our shoulders like some families live with when their loved ones don’t get the justice they need. We aren’t hating some group, or police or whatever. We’re done and moving ahead, thank God. But from the beginning all I was focused on was getting justice …. for all! So it was a great vindication for me when the suspects were caught, I knew I was on the right track to pray for justice.
While I’m glad the guys were caught, I’m not laughing at their situation. The main defendant wasn’t a guy who was grinning about his deed but someone very broken and remorseful. I know that alot of criminals don’t care much for the family or others, I know Marc’s killer isn’t like that. I was so relieved about how things were handled in court, I heard what each attorney presented, I listened to the defendants. My family is pretty much at peace with how things worked out, and I know Marc knows we did our best. We still love him and talk to him, keep him in our lives! What a wonderful way to live!