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Health & Fitness

Picking up The Pieces...Part 16

This life – AFTER Murder...

Honestly, I have the best mom I could ever ask for   she takes care of me even on her bad days she makes sure I'm healthy and safe She loves me more than anyone else on this planet loves me or could ever love me, and I love her that same exact way my mom is always there for me, even when she's broken down in tears, if she sees that I need help, she is always right there by my side.  And I couldn't ask for anyone better than her   She's the best thing in my life that I love the most she's my favorite person she's my saving grace She's my mommy beautiful, smart, kind, strong, protective, caring, supportive, and amazing   I couldn't ask for anything more she's my world & I'm hers I love you mommy !! :)

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     Love is not conditional.  Love is endless, boundless, timeless, ageless. Love is what each person desires most in this life, and what we need if we are really to experience being ‘human’.  Love inspires HOPE within us – it lifts us up, and allows us to see many more possibilities for our life, because we know we are no longer alone.  Whether it was for one year, or a lifetime, love is the bond that makes others as precious and vital to us as ‘ourselves’…   Love touches each of us in way, in a place within us, that the pain of losing it is the same.  I spent my entire adult life loving children.  My children.  All children. 

     I firmly believed that it takes a community to raise the children!  And where the parents in my community were failing their children, I stepped up each time to that plate…  I reached out every time a child was in need, and extended my loving hand.  They in return would grasp my hand, and discovered the certainty of a better future.

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     Many times, over the years, Saskia would say to me “Momma, in a world where everyone else has got it so wrong, how DID you get it so right?”  Always in reference to my ‘mothering’ of children, the many ways in which I tended to and loved them all.  Words that made me so happy to hear, coming from my daughter.  Words that now cause me such excruciating agony, such immense sorrow!  For I got it all wrong baby – so, so wrong indeed! 

     What a fine mess I find myself in.  My old life – crashed into a WALL!  And in collecting so many children along the way, well, they were all here beside me as we CRASHED! 

     Not only is it too much to even imagine, that one among them has done such a thing!  But the effect this has on them all – last year, they were simply in too much SHOCK!  NOT ONE could comprehend, nor believe, that this was REALLY HAPPENING!  It has undone too much for them, each and every one of them!  My life’s work – all falling apart! 

     They are all pretty much at the same point now, that threshold of becoming adults.  Taking those pivotal steps in life on the road towards their futures.  It is a time in a person’s life, when they are filled with the MOST HOPE!  Hope to fulfill their dreams.  Hope, they can become who they want to be.  Hope to find all they desire from life.  It is this vast amount of HOPE that helps young people overcome obstacles and work to achieve their goals!  And at this pivotal point, Gary has stolen this hope from them.  And left them all too entirely wounded, spinning out of control.

     They are not MURDERED Victims, but they are all Gary’s VICTIMS of MURDER just the same.  All of us held to this same terror and pain, looking out at the world from behind such HORROR that Gary has left us to attempt to survive.  I stand here alone as the adult in the aftermath of what Gary has done, and I have no idea how to help them anymore.  I don’t know if I can save them.  The hopelessness and the anguish they feel, has changed their way of thinking about life, and the future.  These last few months, there has been a shift in the children.  From shock - to RAGE, anxiety and such deep despair.  So severe, that on Wednesday, one of them attempted suicide…

     I can look outside, and see the world just is, standing in dark times.  Grandiose atrocities are taking place almost daily - 20 children shot dead at a school here, too many murdered at a movie theatre there! The economy is in the tank, and the scarcity of jobs makes a college degree useless to make enough money to survive.  The realities of paying off student loans, food and gas prices soaring, mandatory Obamacare  sucking even more money from our paychecks – the future just does look bleak, from your perspective… 

“When life comes knocking down my door, I'm sitting on a chair behind it with a shot gun saying - "surprise!  What are you gonna put me through that I haven't been through already?"

Kessa Burke

 

     While here from the inside, the frequency in their need to share with me all these things they are feeling has increased, and the intensity of what the children are dumping with me is tenfold.  I AM glad, they are dumping it here with me.  They NEED to be able to dump it somewhere.  I just don’t know what to do for them.  I can’t fix this.  I can’t make it one bit better for any of them.  Gary has stripped me of my MOTHERHOODevery moral, loving, decent thing it ever meant to me!  He has robbed me of my most basic human needs, and my ability to protect or give comfort, in any way, to my children…  And in doing this, he has destroyed all my hope for anyone and everything, forever more!

     I made the choice, so long ago, to be a MOTHER.  I dedicated my entire adult life, to my children.  It was my life’s passion, what I most wanted to be, what I was happiest and most fulfilled doing each and every day of my life.  My children are the most sacred things to my being, as integral to my existence as the air we breathe.  It is this most sacred and integral piece of me that Gary destroyed to me!  I have been violated in the most inhuman way possible.  Something from which I could never heal, and in fact becomes more painful everyday, in every way… 

     Our home was always sanctuary for so many children.  A safe place, where they found acceptance, and guidance, and real, true unconditional love.  Some only wanted, while others honestly NEEDED, to belong with our family.  So many children over the years!  Most were my children’s friends, while others were the children I worked with at school who would follow me home…  Each one finding their way to us, and wanting, to be a member of our family.    None of them calling us Mr. or Mrs., not even Paul or Cat, but always – mom and dad.  

     Family isn’t just, the biological people you are born to.  Family - are the people who love you for who you are.  They have your back, always.  Family guides you towards being the best person you can be in life!  And family is always responsible unto you, because they love you.  Sometimes, our biological family’s aren’t what we need, sometimes not even what we want.  They are, however, the most important relationships we have in our life.  Because they are our true parents, and siblings.  And if we cannot find a way to make those relationships work on some level, we will most likely fail in all relationships.  So it becomes imperative to have at least an ok relationship with our biological families.  And we can make up for what is lacking from this family, by forming our own families that are compiled from other people that we choose to call family.  This helps balance it all out…

     I spent my entire adult life, collecting children into our family.  Giving to them whatever it was they were in such need of, to make them whole.  I gave to them hope of a better future, by helping them to see all the possibilities the future held for them, and how they could choose to make their future what they want!  I held them all to the morals, values and responsibilities of a family.  And my love is so huge – I have, loved them all!

     Where once my life’s work was the reflection of so much love, and positive change – now, everywhere I look it is the reflection horror and pain.  I brought them in, and loved them as if they were my own.  I forged the bond with them that made them too close, with what has happened…  From the outside, they would have just lost a friend.  But that is not what I have done to these children.  The way they feel, about us?  Each one, has lost a SISTER, in losing Saskia.  They have witnessed mom and dad SHATTER, and fall to pieces.  This desecration has happened to THEIR FAMILY – no, not the biological source, but something that hurts for some of them even worse – because it was the family they chose, made of the people who gave them those things in life they so needed…  And without us?  They have lost their family, lost their way – lost their hope.

I can't eat, sleep, and shake a lot. I can't be alone for any more than a couple hours without thinking about killing myself. I do not trust myself anymore and can't find a reason to get out of bed in the morning. I feel like I'm slowly dieing and I am scared of who I am. I am not a stable person and its scares me that I have to keep talking myself out of suicide.  I laugh, I smile, but inside I shake and shudder. I feel sick and as though I might vomit. I have become a lifeless husk with no meaning or motive and am trying anything I have to so that I don't end up on suicide watch. This is where I am in life right now.”  I was Gary’s friend, and this is what he has done to me!

 

It's the terror of knowing -

What this world is about!

Watching some good friends

Screaming let me out!!!

 

These are the days, it never rains, but it pours!

This is ourselves -

This is life, after MURDER!

 

Gary, what have you done!

 

 

 

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