Between worrying about Kurt, caring for Caroline, praying over the book I’d been asked to think through, and just the day-to-day stress of work, my commutes to and from the church were the only quiet moments I’d had in recent weeks. And most of the time my brain just shifted into autopilot. I’d even managed to pull into my driveway before realizing a truck had been following me for the last few minutes and had pulled up right behind me. For a worrying second I thought it might be the detective again, but then Kevin Marshall stepped out of his car, offering an uncomfortable smile.
“Uh, hi. I was passing through town today, and Chris asked me to bring something by.”
He ducked back quickly into his car and reappeared with a small grocery sack. He walked toward me holding it out, and even from a few feet away I noticed his blue eyes—the kind they write romance novels about.
“Chris was, uh, cleaning out some files the other day, and, uh, he found several photos of Nick. We thought you would want to have them.” His face turned red, and I realized that right about then he was doubting the wisdom of that decision.
“I’d love to have them.” Our hands touched as I reached out and took the bag from him. For just a moment we looked each other in the eye, a lifetime’s worth of sorrow communicating between us. “Do you want to come in for some coffee?”
“Thanks, but I’ve got to get back.”
I also thought his eyes held just a hint of guilt. Was it because he had the son who survived? Or maybe it wasn’t guilt at all. Maybe it was my own envy I saw reflected. I pulled the bag away, careful not to look at the contents. “How is Chris coming along?”
“Oh, he’s doing fine. Still limps, of course—will for the rest of his life—but he’s able to get around and do all the things he needs to do.”
“I’m glad.” And I was. I’d only met Chris on a few occasions before the tragedy, but he’d been one of Nick’s best friends at USC, and one of the two surviving members of the Mardi Gras attack. I wanted him to live the life that Nick was no longer able to.
Kevin nodded and turned. I followed him toward his truck and swung the bag. “Thank Chris for me.”
“I will.” He cleared his throat. “Just to warn you, I think there are a few pictures from New Orleans in there. We spent a while talking about whether or not we should get rid of those, but Sheila argued that a mother would want to have pictures taken of her son the day before he died. I don’t know, but I figured women understood these things better than Chris or I.”
“She’s right.” And she was, but I wondered how I would ever get the courage to open this bag and look into it.
He nodded toward my Ford Escape. “Hey, I noticed as you pulled in, your passenger side brake light is out.”
“Yeah, it has been for a few weeks now. I just can’t seem to get my act together to take it in and get it fixed.”
“That’s easy enough to fix. Rick could do that in a minute or two. Tell him to give me a call if he has any questions.”
“We’re, uh …” I looked at the car, then back at Kevin, “separated.”
His hand fell from the handle of his truck and he shook his head. “I was trying so hard not to say anything stupid, and now look at what I’ve done. I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. We’ve been separated a couple of months. Between Nick’s death and Kurt’s addiction, things just got a little too hard to take around here, you know what I mean?”
“I understand it better than you can imagine.” His face was sad as he shook his head, and I remembered Nick telling me about Chris’s mom. She’d been somewhat of a plastic surgery addict, until a botched operation left her in constant pain. After that, she’d begun fueling her life with booze and prescription drugs. In Kevin Marshall’s face, I could see that nothing had changed for the better in the last few years.
“Well, I’ve got to be going.” He climbed into his truck, and I stood in the driveway and watched him pull away.
A moment later, I stood outside the door to Nick’s room, trying to get the courage to open it. His things had remained more or less unchanged since his death, and I had learned early on that spending time in there only opened a sadness that I hadn’t yet learned to manage. Avoidance had always been one of my defense mechanisms, and aside from the occasional cleaning, I rarely stepped foot inside.
The room was dark and smelled of dust. I promised myself I’d come clean it in the next week, but not today. Not now. I set the bag of pictures on Nick’s denim bedspread, barely glancing at the framed certificates on the wall, the posters of the Dodgers, and the small shelf of trophies, mostly earned in scholastic events rather than sports. I closed the photos in the room with the rest of the memories. I would look at them later. At that moment, I didn’t think I had the strength.
Saturday morning, I took the podium at the Living Above Grief seminar. The faces changed from event to event, but the expressions never did. An energy-sapping, mind-numbing grief shrouded this room like fog rolling in off the Pacific. Most of these people were lost so deep in it that sometimes the thought of simply vanishing forever into the emptiness seemed like the only option. I had been there. Truth be told, I was still there, but they didn’t need to hear that. They didn’t need to know that I still woke up crying, that I dreamed about Nick’s murder, that I still wanted to scream and rage and throw a tantrum. No, what they needed to hear was that with God, life could go on.
The PowerPoint presentation was dialed in to perfection. I always started with a few pictures of Nick as a child. “My son Nick wanted to be a missionary from the time he was very small. He used to line up his stuffed animals and tell them all about grace through faith.” I flipped to the next slide, which showed him dressed in his favorite costume, his face painted green. “Of course, he also wanted to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.” There was always a little snigger around the room at this point. Everyone enjoys a cute kid story. I went to the next slide. “This is Nick, repainting the wall in his brother’s room.” A small murmur of “awww” went around the room before I continued. “Lest any of you be deceived into believing this was public service, he’s painting over the words ‘Kurt is a stupid head’ and several similar comments, which he had applied with oil-based paint. Yes, my son was a not only a tagger, but he was a tagger inside his own home.”
More stories, more laughter. As we got to the photos from his teenage years, they would look at the gawky, skinny kid who had been my son and smile. I always waited until I had the audience relaxed and loosened up before I moved into the hard part. The last slide I showed was the one from the day we moved Nick into the dorm.
“When my son went away to college, he got involved with a very mission-minded group. So during Mardi Gras, he and a couple of friends took the week off from classes and went to New Orleans. They decided there was no other place in the world more in need of a Savior than the group of people that would be partying on those streets.” Here, at this point, I always got choked up. I hated that I did, because I was talking about overcoming, and here I was, four years later, still unable to finish the story. Of course, everyone seemed to understand this, but I considered it a failure. If I was really living in the strength of Christ, I should be able to have the strength to tell this story without crying. Shouldn’t I?
“They came upon a group of young men who pretended to be interested in what they were saying. This pretense lasted only long enough to get Nick and his friends to a secluded area where they could rob them. The boys had only about fifty dollars among them, which infuriated their attackers. My son Nick was beaten to death.” Each time I told this part, I was grateful for the officer who recommended that I not be the one to identify my son. I still saw him in my mind as the healthy, happy boy I’d always known. “One of his friends was left unconscious but later recovered. The other will never walk without a limp again.” For just a flash I saw Kevin Marshall’s blue eyes in my mind. It comforted me somehow.
The murmur of sympathy went through the group as it always did. Now was when they were completely on my side. Now was the time I had to deliver the encouragement that would see them through whatever crisis they were facing.
I talked about the day afterward. The trip down to New Orleans to identify Nick’s body. I talked about the week and months afterward—the funeral and trial—trying to capture a bit of both the deep sorrows and tender moments of comfort I’d felt. I talked about the comfort some friends offered and the distance that grew between others who’d seemed suddenly afraid of me. I tried to be honest and transparent. They’d know otherwise.
“People always ask me if this makes me angry at God. I won’t lie to you—you’re all far too valuable for that. Yes, I was angry. Yes, I questioned my beliefs. After all, if God really is able to do anything, why didn’t He step in and save my son and his friends? Why did He let them suffer that way?” With each question, the heaviness weighted me more and more, even now.
“And I won’t stand up here and insult your intelligence by pretending that I know the answer even now. But the one thing I do know is that He has been there, and more. When I think of what my son experienced just before he died, how it must have hurt him to know that the very people he came to help were the ones who were doing this to him—well, I realize the One who understands that even more than me is Jesus. I wonder at the grief he must have experienced, beaten, abused. And all the while the people He was suffering to save spat at him, called Him names. And it must have been ever so much harder for the Father, who watched the whole thing, felt every bit of the humiliation being heaped upon His Son. He could have stopped it, could have given everyone in the crowd every bit of what they deserved. But He didn’t. He loved me enough that He experienced that kind of grief for me, and even for those who scorned His very Son.”
I always had to pause here. Even though the words were mostly the same from seminar to seminar, the depth of God’s love always struck me anew. I couldn’t begin to fathom the love that would allow Him to do that.
Finally, I moved forward with some practical steps toward dealing with grief, my personal experience, and some stories from those I’d counseled.
“I had to learn to accept that He loved me. Period. And let it go. It’s exhausting carrying around the weight of grief all the time.” Knowing nods all around. “You’ll find the burden much lighter if you will allow Him to carry you, rather than trying to do it all yourself.” I thought of my son’s addiction, my own crumbling marriage, and once again I prayed to God that He would help me through this.
I showed a few more slides at the end, as always, and finished with some from Nick’s teenage goofy years to help lighten the mood. Then I opened the floor to questions.
A woman with a flowing skirt and trembling hands stood. “How long did it take you to get to the point where you no longer miss your son?”
Putting on a brave front was one thing, an out-and-out lie was another. I shook my head. “I hope I never reach that time, to be honest. For me, remembering Nick means missing him. And I’ll never forget my son. But more and more, the memories come to me with joy rather than just pain. I can laugh when I think about him rather than just fall apart. And the feeling that grows stronger each day is that I can’t wait until I get to heaven and see him again. You know, I’m thinking he’ll even have his room clean there, which is more than I could say on Earth.” Again, a few laughs, but my mind flashed to that bag of pictures still sitting on his bed, just waiting for me to have the courage to open it and look at them. I doubted anything but pain waited for me.
“How did your son’s death affect your family?” A voice from the back broke my reverie.
This question always came up, and I hated it. Remembering Beth’s earlier comments of the same opinion goaded me into answering. These women needed to know what they were up against. “Nick’s brother, just a couple of years younger than him, fell into despair after Nick’s death. Drug abuse followed soon thereafter.” This admission always caused a soul-deep groan in the room, which shook the place to its core. Today, however, I could add one more layer of hope to my talk. “But I am happy to report that my prodigal has begun rehab and is back on his way to the life he had before.” I didn’t admit to my separation from Rick. It was temporary. We really would work it out, especially now that Kurt was on the mend.
I saw a raised hand in the back. “Yes, in the back.”
“Whatever happened to the boys who killed your son?”
This question usually came, although I always tried to avoid it. The shift of focus from overcoming grief to seeking justice could undo everything I’d just said. “They were convicted and are in jail serving life sentences.” I looked through the auditorium. “Anyone else?”
“Do you think it eases your grief, even in a small measure, that the guilty parties are in jail? Would you wish the same thing for other parents of victims of violent crime?” It was the same voice as the previous question, and I recognized it now. Detective Thompson.
I looked into the back row but could not clearly see his face from where I stood. “Nothing done by human hands can ease my grief over the loss of my son. Only God can do that. Does it make me feel better that those men are locked up so that they cannot do the same to someone else’s son? Of course it does.” If he’d done any homework at all, and I was quite certain he had, then he already knew that the boys who killed my son all had a long record of violent crimes. In fact, the case had become something of a poster child for groups pushing for stiffer penalties, but this was not a conversation I wanted to have at this time.
“Would you say, then, it is the basic right of all parents who’ve had children die by violence to have the guilty party brought to justice?”
“I don’t know about basic rights of all parents. All I know is that my son lived a life that he could be proud of, and in his death, I will honor him by moving forward the way I believe he would want me to. Part of that includes not losing myself in the bitterness of what might have been, or who I can look to blame. Now, are there any other questions?”
There were none. Beth came forward to make a few announcements about the afternoon workshops. As soon as she was done, I hurried down the aisle, determined to demand an explanation from Detective Thompson. How dare he come here and try to undermine what I was doing?
“Mrs. Stewart, may I speak with you a moment?” An elegant-looking African-American woman wearing a stylish suit extended her hand. “My name is Reisha Cinders, and I am the host of the Christian America Talk Show. Have you heard our broadcasts?”
As much as I didn’t want to talk about broadcasts right now, I did want to be polite. Besides, I knew where I could find Detective Thompson, he’d given me his card. I looked at the woman. “Of course. What do you need?”
“I was wondering if you would like to be a guest on our show.”
“Me?”
“I believe your talk could be an inspiration to so many others. And your answer to the questions could have been nothing less than Holy Spirit–inspired. Next month we’re having a series on leniency in the justice system. Since I know that is what had previously happened with your son’s attackers, I thought you’d be a first-person voice on the topic. Whether you think justice or mercy impacts a life more.”
I wondered if she would still think my answers Holy Spirit– inspired if she knew the questions were asked by the detective investigating my son, and that the answers were given by a mother who would do anything she could to defend him. Still, I took her card. “It sounds like a good program. Let me spend a little time praying about it and I’ll get back to you.”
She nodded. “I need to know something by early next week.”
“I’ll be in touch.” I walked the rest of the way down the aisle, looking for any sign of Detective Thompson. He was gone.