Member-only story
Lived Through This
How to Forgive a Murderer
My brother’s homicide remains unsolved. With no face and no name, there’s no one to hate.
When my brother was murdered, the police never found his killer, and my mom said, “Good, then I won’t have anyone I need to forgive.”
She was religious, righteous, or at least she tried to be, wanted to be. To forgive is divine, but without anyone to blame, forgiveness could not be expected of her. She felt she should be off the hook.
“I don’t think it works that way; besides, forgiveness also sets the prisoner free,” I said pointedly. “The only person you’re hurting is yourself, Ma.”
This was how she coped with her anger by thinking about forgiveness, not practicing it, but thinking about it. Her son had been dead only months, his killer unknown, and she was thinking of it — but technically, she had nobody to forgive.
She puffed her Marlboro Menthol Light furiously as she narrowed her eyes at me, the furrow between her brow deepening like a hatchet gash. They had the same brown eyes, David and her. The truth is she was angry as a viper. For her, being angry was easier than being hurt. She hurt so bad it was killing her.
How could she be mad at the person — the people? — who killed him when they were nameless, faceless nobodies? They could already be dead, too, for all we knew. She also toyed with the idea of being mad at the police for not being able to find David’s killer, but it wasn’t their fault. Then she wanted to be mad at God. But she also wanted to be righteous, and God was all she had left for that, so she took her anger out on me.
“So, are they just going to give up?” she spit the words at me like bullets.
I was the bearer of bad news week after week when there were still no tips and no witnesses came forward. I was the one who talked to the police and asked about the status of the suspect vehicle and gave them information we’d received from various sources. Though the sources were trying to be helpful, they never were. There was a reward for information but it only prolonged our misery by giving us hopeless hope.
