Victim Impact after 7 years

Last summer I worked on a biography of my dad for the online journal

http://palaeo-electronica.org/splash/index14_3.html. Its November, 2011 issue was dedicated to my Dad. It contains a comprehensive review of his life and his profound impact on several different branches of paleontology. He continues to be deeply missed by the scientific community.

Now I have been invited to contribute to a very different kind of review: the parole hearing of one of the 5 people who ended his life. What relevant contribution can I offer to a parole hearing? It seems to me that what I have to say can best be expressed in an open letter to Ms. K.

Dear Ms. K,

Just over 7 years ago, you had a home and my dad was alive. Then, just after New Year's in 2005, you sat at your kitchen table while your husband and his associates plotted to ransack my father's home for drug money. I heard you took notes.

Mr. S claims that he told your husband and his friend to go at a time when my ailing father was not at home. This is ridiculous since he was mostly housebound. So they chose to go in the middle of the night. They succeeded in ransacking the house and savagely murdering my father.

Here we are 7 years later and I have been invited to write a Victim Impact Statement for your parole hearing. I don't know you. I don't know what the last 7 years have been like for you. I doubt that living in a Women's Correctional Institution has taught you much compassion. Perhaps you have learned to respect other people's property. Compassion and respect for others are the two qualities you need to learn. If you had either, you would never have participated in this inexcusable and horrific crime.

I understand you didn't know that my father had been murdered by your husband and his friend until a few days later. But the basic point is that you do not have the right to take other people's things just because you need more money for drugs. If you and the others had understood that basic fact, none of you would have planned to go over to his house that night in the first place.

But this is supposed to be a Victim Impact Statement. I am only one of the victims of your actions. Let me tell you a bit about what the impact of that night has been for me and for some others.

A large number of paleontologists are also victims of your rash deeds. They still miss him badly. You robbed the world of science of a unique and brilliant man.

My brother still worries everytime he goes out in public with his small children. He has become aware, thanks to the five of you, that the world is not a safe place and that he is helpless to protect the people he loves most from crazy, drug addicted people like the five of you. He copes with terror.

As for me, every year about this time, I have a very strong reaction. Sometimes I don't consciously remember that this is the anniversary of the murder, but my body remembers. I feel horribly sick or I have a night when I am utterly awake and jump at small sounds. Or I feel strangled and suffocated.

I saw the photos of what your husband and friend did to my dad and I heard the description of what it was probably like for him while he died. For a long time, I would dream it was me that it happened to and I would live through his last few moments over and over. I felt horribly guilty that I allowed him to die alone and by violence. It was his worst nightmare. I think I felt that, since I wasn't there for him when he was murdered, I could at least face the horror of his death and stand witness to it.

I think you knew that he was a WWII soldier since you wanted his Nazi memorabilia. Maybe you didn't know he had PTSD. He often had flashbacks of being a POW. I know he expected to die in POW camp. I wonder if, as he lay convulsing and suffocating, he hallucinated that he was back in the Stalag and dying. I imagine he did.

About a year after the murder, our landlady needed some work done on the roof of the building and insisted that I stay home in case the roofers needed anything. All I could think of was that the people who planned my father's murder were roofers! The first day I spent quivering and sobbing in a little ball in the corner of my living room as they pounded on the roof. I was sure they were coming in to murder me. The next day I told the roofers my fears and they assured me that I didn't need to be home for them. I spent the next few days at Starbucks.

This was about when I decided maybe I needed therapy. I have been in therapy ever since. My therapist has helped me let go of my fears, for the most part, and I rarely dream of my father's murder anymore. But only a year ago we needed a new furnace and the man who came to install it reminded me of Michael M. I completely paniced all over again. I called everyone I knew and talked to them loudly so that the installer would know that I was not alone. A good friend came over and stayed with me until he left and that really helped. But I still had trouble sleeping for the next 3 weeks because I was afraid they were going to come back in the night and murder my family the way you all did.

Any day I get mail from the Colorado State Department of Corrections is an automatic signal for my husband to order pizza because I will be in no condition to cook dinner. Yet I can't feel safe unless I know that they will keep me updated on the 5 of you.

We pay for the most expensive burglar alarm system we can afford. It connect directly to the police and fire departments and it has a “panic button.”

7 years ago, I was a confident, cheerful, happy woman. Most days I still appear to be that person. But a hard kernel of fear and mistrust has taken root inside me. It will bloom into full scale panic from time to time unexpectedly. I miss who I used to be.

I am a Catholic. Every week during Mass we say, “Forgive us our tresspasses as we forgive those who tresspass against us.” And every week when I say that one of your faces pops up in my minds eye. There is no one who has tresspassed against me more than the five of you. And I am supposed to forgive you. This makes me angry.

In the last 7 years, I have come to realize that you hurt me badly and damaged me (perhaps permanently) by your actions. But that was a one time act. As I allow myself to relive it, I am hurting myself over and over again. Some of that I can't help, but some of it I can stop by trying to forgive you. As I let go of my anger and grief and learn to forgive the five of you, I can slowly put an end to the nightmares and the terror. I must forgive the five of you so that I can stop the memories from hurting me any more. I have made some headway in forgiving the five of you for damaging me and my family so badly, but I still have a way to go. My father managed to forgive his captors and become a brilliant scientist in spite of his PTSD. I imagine he would want me to finally forgive the 5 of you so that I can be free from the damage you all did to me. 7 years has not been enough time for me or my family or the scientists to completely move on from that day.

I have no idea whether or not 7 years is enough time for you to be sufficiently punished or whether you deserve parole because I don't know what you have done with yourself while in jail. I am grateful that it really isn't my decision to make. I hope, if they allow you to move to a halfway house, you will manage to live a better life. I hope I never need to hear your name again.

Star Stuff

We've been streaming documentaries about how the universe works and physics beyond Einstein and I've been listening to Richard Feynman on Audiobooks lately.  It's fascinating stuff.  Frankly, I don't understand it at all, but it gives me lots of grist for random philosophical thoughts.

For example: I love the idea that we are made up of star matter and that the cells in our bodies are constantly renewing themselves.  I forget how fast this happens, but all the cells in our bodies are completely different from the cells we had just recently.  The man who said that mentioned how amazing it is that we stay the same even though we have no single cell in common with those we were made of a few days ago.

I've also been sorting, scanning and publishing all the slides my dad left behind.  They go back more than 60 years and there are a lot of them. I can tell you personally that MY cells have not been replicating themselves exactly for the last 60 years.  There is a big difference!  It might be a gradual evolution, but I'm definitely not the same person I was.  Looking at the photo of me beside the fossil "zebra" I found in 1965, you can easily believe that young girl shares no cell with me.

I'm clearly not the same collection of cells as this high school graduate in 1969 either.  Oddly, we have almost the same hairstyle...

You can see more of my family photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/j4zberg if you are interested.

This idea that I move through the universe as a random, loosely connected, bunch of atoms with a bit of consciousness intrigues me.  This bunch of atoms will someday loose their cohesiveness and that flicker of consciousness will shuffle off this mortal coil and um do something else.  (Or not.)

This bunch of atoms I call me landed here and has been traveling through the illusion of time for a bit, but it is closer to the end of this interlude than the beginning.  I'm thinking a lot about that since my 60th birthday.

My parents both were very active into their 80's and I hope to follow in their footsteps.  My mom is still running things, but you can't deny she's slowing down.  So I think it is safe to say I probably have a few decades left in me.  But I'm about 75% done.

Or maybe I'm just 75% ready for the next big thing.

Tax the Rich

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama says he's not engaging in "class warfare" -- he's just doing the math. But House Speaker John Boehner (BAY'-nur) says class warfare is exactly what Obama is engaging in -- and he says that's not the same as leadership. (End Quote)


President Obama promised to veto any budget plan that cuts Medicare without closing loopholes which create tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.  Speaker Boehner said, "Tax the rich, tax the rich.  That's really not the American way."  Then he went on to say that balancing the budget requires more people on the tax roles, more jobs.


So let's think about this.  What we need is more people working at Wal-Mart, earning less than a living wage and paying higher taxes.  We need more elderly going without medical care because they can't afford it.  We need to keep giving the wealthiest people "incentives" to get richer because "they deserve a break today."  We need to crush unions and collective bargaining because it's all those teachers and fire fighters and police officers being greedy that actually is behind the deficit.  That's the way the Sherriff of Nottingham reasoned and why Robin Hood is still a popular folk hero!


Yet it's President Obama that is accused of "class warfare" and not people like Boehner and the Tea Party?  


I think the "Trickle Down Theory" hasn't actually worked.  Nothing ever "trickles down".   It hasn't worked in the recent past.  It didn't work in the days of Rockefeller.  But speaking of Rockefeller and the Robber Barons, maybe Boehner has a point.  Maybe class oppression IS the American way, it's just not what I learned America was about when I was in grade school.    

Living in the Now

I am struggling to understand this concept.  I do not think I have grasped the essential wisdom of it.  It seems to me that I live too much "in the Now" - tending to whichever crisis is shouting it's need at me most loudly.  Living in the current crisis leaves me with a distinct feeling of claustrophobia.  I do not have room to expand or plan.  I am reactive instead of proactive.

I have read many books which talk about the wisdom of living in Now, but I still do not really understand it.  Part of the trouble, I suspect, is the inherent responsibility of possessions.  I own a house with a roof, for example, roofs need to be replaced on a regular basis and paying for the roof is not something one does without planning ahead.  Where does future planning exist in "living in the Now"?

My chosen lifestyle requires a lot of "giving thought to the future".  I see how Jesus or Buddha or Richard Rohr or Thich Nhat Hahn or Ekhart Tolle etc. have arranged their lives so that they can accept what comes to them with grace and wisdom.  I admire that, but I do not see how I can emulate that.  I cannot take the advice of Jesus to the rich man and sell all my possessions and live the life of a mendicant.  I need electricity to run Sam's machines.  I like air conditioning and heat.  People in Chicago regularly die if they do not have one or the other.  I really don't want to lose Sam or to die myself simply because I didn't plan ahead and budget well enough to pay the bills.

When I look for peace, I rarely find it Now.  I find myself fighting to rise above the Now to get a clearer perspective.  Now is usually terrifying.  There are too many things that need doing Now and most of them seem to be begging me to instantly save them from destruction.  Everyone and every thing in my life seems to need me to do something Now.  If I do not step aside from the current moment and reflect on things other than Now, I descend into chaos.  I cope.  I react.  I loose track of what is important to me.  I lose track of me.

Stepping outside the stream of life, reflecting, planning, pausing, praying, ignoring Now, I find a modicum of peace and the space to untangle the threads that pull me out of shape.  I reform myself and can begin to make decisions about which threads I want to pick up and which ones I want to let drift away in the wind.  But stepping outside is hard.  I need to fight for my solitude - fight myself and my impulse to surrender to the demands of Now.   It is far too easy to allow myself to drift in the chaos of Now and be swept away by the expectations of the people and possessions in my life.

I am learning that "Yes" and "No" are the two most powerful words in my vocabulary and both need to be used with caution.   I need to pause, at least momentarily, and reflect before saying either "Yes" or "No".  When I am swept away by the chaos of Now, I give myself away without thinking and usually it is by saying "Yes" or "No" thoughtlessly.  I am too prodigal with myself when I live in the Now.

And yet, when I listen to these wise men talk about their concept of Now, I realize that they are talking about something substantially different from what I experience.  I think my failure must have something to do with a difference of definition.  I have trouble grasping what they mean.

I think they have a lot less need to feel control and a lot more trust in the universe or God or whatever they call it, than I have.  I do not trust God or the universe to have the same priorities that I have and so I feel a deep need to control or at least try to control at least some of my circumstances.  I realize that God/the universe is more powerful, capable and even ultimately more kind and loving than I am on a global scale, but it seems clear that we are not more important than the lilies of the field and our individual survival is not of paramount importance to that force/entity.  So my individual responsibility is to take care of myself, Sam and my little corner of the earth.  For that, I need perspective and time outside Now to think.

Clearly there's something I don't get yet.

Doing The Math

60 next week.  Ak.  Actually, my knees are 60, the rest of me is still 45.  (Thank you Edgar of BoRics on Ashland near Diversey.)

Charley's cancer really solidified our resolve to figure out what we REALLY want to do in this life.  The goal is for him to retire next summer and for us both to begin doing something that brings us satisfaction and a moderate income.  It's a lot riskier doing something like this at our age with The Sam Factor than it was when we were young and unencumbered.  On the other hand, it may be our last chance to risk everything for a dream. I remember sociologist Tony Campolo once cited a survey of 80 year olds who said their greatest regret was about some opportunity or risk not taken.  So we are getting serious about this.  We're probably going to be 80 in 20 years.  Or 35 years.

The thought that has been repeatedly coming to me is that I am not a beginner.  I have done and learned a lot of things over the decades.  No really.  A LOT.  I'm not starting from scratch.  So all my experience must add up to something, I just have to do the math.

Sadly, math is not my strongest subject!

To get a handle on what/who I am, I've been going over my journals.  This in itself is weird.  I write journals feverishly at times and then not at all for years.  I keep them mostly because we have a house and there's room.  I never actually planned to look at them again.  All I really planned to do with them was destroy them before I die.  But turns out they are very interesting.  (What a narcissist!)  There are several themes that run as far back as the journals.

I love:
Creativity - making lace, jewelry, knitting, general craft stuff.  Music - singing, string instruments, penny whistle, odd percussion instruments from all over the world (http://www.propane.pro/tanks/the-propane-tank-recycled-for-the-drum-circle-0211/).  The wisdom of people with cognitive disabilities.  Children. Learning something (anything) new.

I have a very love/hate relationship with my interpersonal skills; but I am a good leader and a good listener and perhaps a good teacher.  Listening makes me insightful because I can synthesize what I hear from different people, or the same person at different times, into a single thought.  I'd probably be good at negotiation, except I wouldn't like to spend a lot of time in the same room with angry people.

Listening also helps me notice when two people are arguing about two totally different subjects.  Sometimes I can notice this even when one of the people arguing is me! It's a very odd experience and one I really don't know what to do about in the moment it occurs.  It is usually best to first agree with the other person - since their point really has nothing to do with mine - and then cautiously restate my point.  It's funny how often arguments are not about what the participants think they are about.

My journals also point out that I have a lot of fear which is mostly nutty and keeps me from making my dream into a goal.

And I like to write about the philosophy of me.

I don't know what this adds up to, but at least I've defined the value of X.

Experiments For Further Reflection on the eve of my 60th birthday:

1: Charley is going to buy me a ukelele  (I think I'll get a tenor, it has more tuning options)
2: I'm going to go to the beach with my grandchildren and try to blow giant bubbles like this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i-zYdOPG2k
3: With my friend Lawrence from Esperanza (http://www.esperanzacommunity.org) I'm going to paint a picture of "Helen's Bird" as part of the project "Dynamic Duos: Works in Collaboration" which will be displayed in October as part of Chicago Artists Month.

Religious Tolerance?

I was just remembering a wonderful conversation I once had with two people from Lebanon.  They were both Christians.  In fact, they called themselves Phoenicians and not Lebanese to distinguish themselves from Muslims who were also born in Lebanon.  They told me that they are direct descendants of the very first Christians and assured me that their style of worship and their theology was more "authentic" than Protestant, Catholic or even Orthodox Christianity.  I eagerly asked for more information.  

They were proud of the fact that their country is religiously tolerant.  They went to school with people of many different religious backgrounds.  They told me that they believed their country had a good chance of remaining peaceful because they grew up being friends with people from different religions.   (This belief was very strong in spite of the fact that one of them was living in the United States by choice as political refugee and the other was the son and grandson of refugees.)

I come from a very conservative evangelical Christian background which has long felt too narrow for the world in which I find myself.  I was fascinated by their very different understanding of Christianity, the bible and what it means to practice their faith.  I asked them about conversion.  Does anyone ever change from one religion to another or does anyone ever fall in love with someone from a different religion?  Apparently this does happen occasionally, but it is a very big problem.  Although they go to school with each other, each religion lives in a separate part of town and they all have last names that identify their religion.  Each of them had relatives who had married into another faith tradition and I got the idea that those relatives were not really welcomed into their families anymore.  

This struck me as both more and less tolerant than my own evangelical tradition.  I grew up believing that I had a moral mandate to convert everyone I met - for their own good!  It was unthinkable for me to pass up an opportunity to save someone from the fires of hell.  So religious tolerance in my youth was practically non-existent.  On the other hand, I can't imagine abandoning a relative because they married a non-Christian or choosing what house I buy based on the religion of my neighbors!

It seemed to me that they were saying that peace and religious tolerance were preserved by a careful balance of "separate but equal."  This flew in the face of everything I had learned as a child about the importance of saving everyone we met.  I asked them what they thought happened to their Muslim friends when they died.  They both looked at me blankly as if the question had never occurred to them.  Then one of them said thoughtfully, "Well, I suppose they go to their own heaven."  

This conversation was a real turning point for me.  I certainly didn't become an expert on Phoenician Christianity in one conversation!  But I learned it is possible to agree and disagree without desiring to change another.  It is possible to learn something new without accepting everything you hear the other person say.  It is possible to appreciate and respect a point of view you do not entirely share.  It is actually delightful to have a conversation with people who are different from me, to understand them a little better and to see myself a bit more clearly and walk away without changing them at all.

That conversation was many years ago.  I have had so many great experiences in my life and have allowed them to mold me.  I have learned to be myself among so many different kinds of people and revel in the differences.  I think true tolerance must be based on that "I Thou" principle.  I know who I am and I love who you are and I celebrate the fact that we are not the same.

This is true especially in my marriage.  Charley is eternally someone different not only from me, but also from who he was yesterday!  And yet he is firmly committed to the idea that we are exactly the same.  And that's really okay with me.  

Mr. Spock

Well, I just thought he turned out pretty well.  Sending him to Ben today for his birthday.  Next up: Cher's socks.  I promise!  After I finish the couch pillows for ME!!!!