I have led a fairly charmed life. Sure my job isn’t what I dreamt of doing, and I have less free time than I’d like, and I could come up with any number of other minor “problems” in my life, but realistically I have it pretty great. Most people, if they gave it some consideration, would put themself in the same position: they have it great too.
You don’t always realize this and sometimes it takes a fairly jarring event to bring to the forefront of your thoughts. On Saturday, November 17th, I had just one of those events. A friend of mine was murdered by a jealous soon-to-be ex-husband. Its not the kind of thing that you think of happening to you or those you know. Everyone deals with death. When parents and grandparents get to a certain age or when friends are diagnosed with diseases and infirmities, the possibility of their passing creeps into the recesses of your brain. You understand it is coming, you may not like it or admit it but, your subconscious knows it.
Murder is a completely different animal. There are no warning signs for the friends and acquaintences involved. Sometimes there are indicators of conflict or something not quite right in a person’s life, but there is an imaginary line that everyone has in their head that says “Yeah, that really sucks, but what are you going to do, kill him?” People assume that this line won’t be crossed and this is why there is no warning. But there are people out there that don’t follow these rules, they don’t have that imaginary line, or if they do, it is shifted ‘n’ degrees to the right.
An event like this leaves you with mixed emotions. At first I was confused. That quickly turned to anger, which changed to sadness. However, I’m back to anger. I don’t know if this is the common ending point in the grief cycle, but I don’t think I’m going to get past anger when I think about this individual….ever. Too many things about this story make me angry, primarily though it is the absolute lack of regard for human life from a piece of shit human being. What is it in our society that fosters the belief that sneaking through a window and murdering someone in their sleep is ok? How do we fix this? My brain can’t reconcile my statement above about the lack of regard for human life and for my desire for this man to be given the death sentence (which I don’t believe exists in Connecticut). Generally a screaming liberal, I find myself begging that this guy be put to death. I can only hope that my rage can turn to something else. I hope this blog helps me to do that.
My relationship with this individual was friendly. At times over the past number of years we were very good friends, hanging out most weekends. At other times our contact was much more sporadic. Even during a semi-recent falling out that was, really, my fault, I still considered him a friend. I guess what I really wanted to do with this post was say ‘goodbye’ to my friend here as I did not get to during his life. He did not deserve his end, but it has helped remind me to view my own life a little more clearly.
it is so sad about Erich. i have thought about this a lot since you guys told me. he was a great kid, really i barely knew him, but i still always liked him, for no real known reason, he just had a great way about him. i read one of the articles about this after you guys told me and it just seemed surreal to know that i knew this kid they were talking about. it’s just too sad.
i’m glad that his death has made you hyper aware of the good things in your life, and i’m sure Erich would like that too.
as for the death penalty, i certainly understand your feelings, and i’m not trying to talk you out of them, but i do think you should try to think about what good it will really do to have this man killed. it’s no real solution. there is no solution…because nothing will bring Erich back. so there is really no penalty great enough.
By: 1979semifinalist on November 28, 2007
at 3:58 pm