Be still my heart - please...

“I am a man of constant sorrow
I've seen trouble all my days…
But there's one promise, darling:
I'll see you on God's golden shore.”

- Bob Dylan: Music & Lyrics

Dateline:

Tucson, Arizona – February 2, 2016

“I’m grateful for this opportunity, because it will give you the chance to meet my daughter Jennifer,” she began.

The conference room looked like it might hold a little more than 100 people. It was one of those venues where the ascending seats were in a semi-circle from the front of the room, up to the entrance in the back. Twenty-five or so folk were scattered on either side of the center aisle.

On the large dual screens on either side and behind the woman was a picture of a beautiful young girl…beautiful might not be exactly the right words. Brown of hair and eye, she was cute with sparkling eyes, and at somewhere around the age of 14, had one of those faces that ‘owned the camera.’

The moment the woman began, I was mesmerized.

I wasn’t sure why, but everything seemed to slip away and it felt like there were only two people in the room and I was one of them. This doesn’t happen to me often, but there was a seriousness…a gravitational foreboding from her presence that was magnetic.

She was a quiet 50ish woman with a nondescript look…so much so, I cannot even conjure her appearance in my mind.

Her voice was not particularly rich, nor compelling, but the spirit emerging from her words held my mind like a pair of industrial grade vice grips.

The story…

“I was teaching kindergarten in 1999 and preparing to take a large group of children on a field trip the next day. What person in their right mind would do that?” she said with a small ironic smile.

“Jennifer was a fixer, someone who was drawn to people who needed help.”

Her boyfriend had gotten into trouble and had ‘friends’ that said they knew someone who could help him. They set an appointment with this person and told Jennifer’s boyfriend they would take him. Jennifer said she would go along for support…she didn’t need to do this.

“See you when I get home Mom,” the girl said and off she went.

She never came home....

On the way, the driver pulled off the road and on some unknown pretense they all got out. You see these people had never intended to take Jennifer or her boyfriend anywhere.

“They shot Jennifer in her right upper chest,” she said.

Using a laser pointer, she then directed the red dot to a spot under the smiling girl’s right eye and said, “This was the bullet that killed her.”

I was stunned as my eye drifted from the speaker back to the picture of this ‘full of life’ young girl in the photo.  The woman was so quietly expressive I could not help envisioning the wounds on this young girl’s body…I felt a tremor.

“Her boyfriend ran and collapsed on the doorstep of a house a mile and a half away. He was shot six times. I don’t know how a boy runs a mile and a half with six bullets in him, but he did and he survived," she said.

I felt a claustrophobic tightening in my chest.  It was almost as if I had suffered this intimate and personal loss.

How this came about…

Anne (not real name) was part of a team of presenters at an introductory seminar for the Victim Advocate program of the Tucson Prosecutor’s office.

This innovative program, begun in 1974, was the first in the United States to provide personal and legal advocacy for victims of traumatic events (e.g. domestic violence, rape, auto accidents, accidental death or murder of loved one).

They work with the police and are on call 24/7... available for whatever might be needed for someone in shock from an unexpected traumatic event. This is not a counseling service, but rather an acute intervention team of volunteers.

This organization teaches courses on the language of crisis management. I had heard about it during a Citizen’s Academy presented by the Oro Valley Police Department, in the small town in Arizona where we live. One of the directors of the Victim Advocate program spoke to us during one of the evening presentations.

I was interested in taking this course and possibly becoming a volunteer, so I showed up for the introductory program Tuesday evening at the appointed time. It was a curiosity as much as anything else…until…until Anne began to tell her story.

The story of Jennifer’s murder came with an uncomfortable intimacy, but when she spoke of the positive role of the victim advocate that arrived with the police, she burst into tears.

“I am here tonight, because were it not for the Victim Advocate program, I don’t know that I could have made it.”

“I had no one. This person [speaking of the advocate]…someone I didn’t even know, sat with me, got me some water and provided an anchor at a moment when my life had completely collapsed.  I do not have words to describe how meaningful this was for me. All these years later, I still feel a sense of gratitude.”

“Five years before this, I lost Jennifer’s older sister to cancer, now I had nothing…I was completely empty…”

The impact…

How does this happen? I thought.

What cosmic forces allow these things that rob one of everything?

How is it we as human beings are able to give of our spiritual bodies and provide real sustenance to another human being by word or touch?

How is one able to receive help that unlocks our own deeply buried reserves of strength?

There is no understood mechanism of action for the power of the unseen…no formula…no recipe. There is only the human heart that seems so constructed that it is able to give of itself in moments of need and able to receive when all seems lost.

On the drive down into the city, I was thinking about what was on the schedule for the next day and the rest of the week. The Victim Advocacy course just another adventure in exploring a little more about opportunities in the Tucson…that was the drive down…

The drive home, the rest of the week and to this day…I have not been able to put the starkly intimate image of Anne’s story out of my mind. 

I have seen a lot in my life, but somehow the image of this young girl and the quiet urgency with which Anne told her story touched me deeply.

“I’m grateful for this opportunity, because it will give you the chance to meet my daughter Jennifer…”

I did, and I still ache...

- ted