Mother

Dawn & Dark Pt. 2 (Dawn)

(Part 2 of 2, preceded by “Creep”.)

“Please bear with me. I made notes so I wouldn’t forget anything.”

This is her first time hearing from me. She knows my last name and title, but has never seen my face. The investigation was passed to me when the assigned detective left the unit, but I have been familiar with it- invested in it- since its inception.

I know that Mom is interested in our progress. I know that it is important to her that we know who her daughter was in life, who her daughter continues to be in her memory.

I am less certain about what Mom is actually searching for in a conversation with the detective investigating her daughter’s passing.

Mom’s daughter has been dead for nearly a month. No charges have been placed on the man who she was with when she died, the man who procured the drugs that killed her, the man who neglected to make the call that may have saved her life. The man who watched her die.

He’s been interviewed. Several times, in fact. I don’t believe that he tells the full story, that he doesn’t omit significant truths. I don’t believe that there’s anything he wouldn’t do to defer his guilt. I understand the self-preservation, but believe Mom’s closure should outweigh his survival instinct.

I press the green telephone icon and prepare to enter the dance.

Mom answers on the third ring and it is clear that she has not saved my number. Maybe she never had it. Her voice is unsteady and somewhat breathless, uneasiness adding a barely-shrill undertone to the pitch and roll of her speech. It invokes a profound sadness, a tenuous grasp on hope, slippery hope, the cadence a series of reeling, frictionless footsteps on an icy path. Her words seem carefully sequenced in an effort to avoid an emotional avalanche, but still rush to jumble together at the end of her sentences all the same.

I introduce myself and ask her if she has time to talk. She’s connected to the car’s bluetooth and is unhappy with the sound quality, so asks me to hold while she figures out how to turn it off. I listen to a series of clicks and bumps as she shifts around in the driver’s seat, searching for the correct digital sequence to engage a more direct verbal contact.

Once she’s switch to handset only, she requests a call back, has just pulled into the driveway with a car full of groceries and it is nearly 100 degrees outside. She’ll take the groceries into the house and call me back once she’s settled.

I’m aware of the heat because I’m walking while I talk, barefoot in the burned late-summer grass of my front and back yard. Today is my day off.

Sort of.

I’m free all day, and begin to tell her as much, but the raincheck request is forgotten as soon as it’s spoken. She flows straight from groceries in the car to the beginning of the conversation, and the next hour or two are spent pacing the yard, sweating, searching for the darkest corners of this thing and testing the limits of what Mom can handle.

I explain who I am and what my role is, mindful to avoid the sterility of phrases like “case”, “investigation”, or “victim”, easy words that used too often risk implying apathy, callousness, or “just a number” mindset. At the same time, I am mindful to speak truthfully, sugarcoating my phrasing as little as possible, and use words like “dead”, “death”, and “addiction”.

I’m professionally responsible for finding out what happened to her daughter.

I’m professionally responsible for holding the person(s) responsible for her daughter’s death as accountable as the law will afford.

I’m morally responsible for doing whatever is in my power to help her find peace.

The preamble finished, the parameters set, Mom asks the first in a long series of questions.

“Please bear with me. I made notes so I wouldn’t forget anything.”

“Please bear with me” while I ask you for details of my daughter’s death.

“Please bear with me” while I consult the gut-wrenching notes that I wrote when a question popped into my head.

Please, guy walking in his yard surrounded by everything he could ever ask for, please excuse this minor inconvenience.

I can hear the unmistakable crackle of unfolding paper, the sound sharp and prominent as it’s singled out by the mic of her phone. She’s not yet walked inside, so I assume her notes must travel with her, the running list of unanswered questions on standby in a pocket so that she’s ready when an opportunity for answers might arise.

She went to a store and bought food and essentials with a sheet of paper on her that lists questions about her daughter’s death.

She wants to know if I’ve seen the videos she sent to the first detective, videos that show her daughter singing along to her favorite pop songs. She wants me to know how vibrantly full of life her daughter was, how she lit up the room, and how she lit up Mom’s life. She wants me to know about her daughter’s aspirations, her hopes and dreams and where she thought her life was heading. Mom has fully accepted that Daughter is gone, that her body is no more, but speaks of her with a vigorous joy that causes me to doubt what I know to be fact. Could this person truly be gone when Mom speaks of her so presently, with such life? I sense very little energy is wasted on regret.

She wants to know about the guy that her daughter was dating. She knows his name but had not yet met him before her daughter died. She wants to know about his life, his parents, and what he thinks about all of this.

The treads carefully on the boyfriend topic, knowing but not wanting to know. Mom instincts describe this guy before I tell her, knows what he did and didn’t do, what he could have done. She doesn’t avoid him altogether, but palpably steels herself for the answers to the questions he raises.

She believes that she is prepared to hear the truth about what happened.

And I acquiesce.

I tell her everything I know, clarifying what is factual, what I was told, and what is merely conjecture. I tell her about the alleged drug use, the cocaine, the pressed Xanax, the fentanyl. I tell her about boyfriend’s alleged attempt at resuscitation, about his delay in calling 9-1-1. I summarize my interviews with him, his statements, and his attitude, coupled with and corroborated by what I’ve learned from digital data so far.

I share my experiences with this type of death, the things I’ve been told by grieving parents, and explain the risky nature of allowing her healing to hinge on man’s attempt at justice. I am honest about the posture of our current prosecutorial body, relaying the oft-brutal path that’s walked by the vengeful and toothless, those who seek retribution and are forced to depend on another to deliver it.

I am eager to give an answer to end all of her questions, and nearly naive enough to believe I can do it.

I can’t stop her pain, and don’t want to. That belongs to her, hard-earned and paid for by all the love she poured and pours into a child that she will never see again. I have no right to stop it, but maybe I can staunch the bleeding, provide some small measure of comfort in the form of honest dialogue.

I can’t make her forget, and wouldn’t dare to. But maybe I can bridge the gaps in the circuit, close the loops with factual information to dampen the noise of a racing and creative mind. For mom, uncertainty has bred a monster that has haunted her with shadows, with whispers of what might have been. Perhaps if I drag the monster into the light, the shadows of her imagination will disappear.

This is the dance.

A deadly-serious tightrope over an ocean of despair. A dialogue that I have no inherent right to, my authority on the topic limited by the impossibility of sharing her every experience and thought. Her life and experience are fictional to me. I know that she is real, that her daughter died, and that she is sad about it, but am unable to experience it in the way that she is experiencing it.

Simply put, I am not her, cannot be, and so the limited authority I have to discuss her anguish in a meaningful way is granted only by a willing exposure to the black and twisted darkness of her present condition. In order for my words to be received, they MUST be genuine. They must be FELT. To do this, I have to FEEL some semblance of what SHE feels.

My heart must remain open, lest I lose the thing that convinces me that I’m truly alive- the ability to connect, to care, and to feel.

I think I understand the risk of being pulled into a blackness from which there is no end. Most of the courage I have to plumb these dark corners flows into me from the tethers formed of the love of my wife and son, of their belief in me and vice versa. Strongly anchored in the warm light of their love, I am free(er) to stare into the cold ebon of the abyss.

Sometimes the dance is so immersed in darkness that to light it would be blinding, out of place, harmful. Hatred, despair, shame and revenge have hardened the hearts of some to such a degree that empathy and compassion are unable to find a way in, the love inside relegated to some sealed chamber to protect it from the lightless inferno that rages all around it.

Some hearts are different.

Mom’s heart is different.

She knows hatred, rage, and what it is to wish death on another. She doesn’t deny having these feelings about the boyfriend, but tries to feel them at their fullest, not allowing them to conspire in dark corners to overcome the miraculous privilege that it was to raise and know her daughter.

In fact, she spends an hour every morning in deep thought, sitting through the maelstrom of these negative emotions to prove to them that SHE is in control. She won’t dishonor her daughter’s philosophical memory by throwing her own life away on a rage that will never be satisfied. She looks the inferno in the eye to rob it of its power.

She knows what it is to hate him, but she will not hate him. She will not dwell on his harm or discomfort. She’s not afraid to, and the concept isn’t foreign to her, but rather an affront to her daughter’s memory, to what her daughterMs spirit represented in her short time on this Earth.

Her morning work is directed at moving through these feelings to the healing on the other side of them.

She proves that we can choose.

That we can feel without reaction.

That we are not merely slave to impulse.

Every morning it gets a little easier. Easier to see clearly her daughter’s face, her impact, and her soul. Easier to ignore the poisonous call to heed emotions that don’t serve her.

Easier to heal.

She hasn’t given up. If he can be prosecuted, she supports it. We agree that the responsibility for his legal accountability will be mine and mine alone. I held him to a moral standard when I had the opportunity, and for this she is grateful. As a result, several conversations later, she reports that her morning routine is a little shorter.

Her example stays with me, that of the awe-inspiring power of a mother’s love, how, wielded, it holds the potential to shed light on the darkest that humanity has to offer.

Of those that death has left behind, I’ve witnessed so many torn apart, all that “was” burned away by the inferno.

Her daughter’s death seems to have inspired not resentment or hate, but gratitude and love. I’m sad for her loss, but happy for her, grateful to have crossed paths with such wisdom and grace, and inspired by what her example might mean for the human condition.

Thanks for reading.