My Mom was Murdered

SHOCK, DISBELIEF, AND DENIAL It was around 2:30 pm when a colleague came to my classroom door and whispered that I needed to go to the front office. I remember grabbing her arm and asking, “What’s wrong?” “It’s only a phone call,” she said, “I will watch your class.” Thoughts of what it could be flew through my head, while I slowly moved toward the front office. My feet felt like I was moving through molasses. Then another teacher asked me, “Why are you crying?” I touched my face in amazement; unaware that I was indeed crying. “I don’t know,” I remember answering, “but, something is really wrong.” I was almost incoherent when I answered the phone, and my sister Cindy said, “Oh, you already know.” “No,” I said, “but it is something terrible. Just tell me quickly.” In her very gentle way, she told me mom and Christine, her lesbian partner, had been shot while stabilizing a fence post on the farm property where we grew up. Our sometimes friendly, sometimes crabby neighbor, James Brooks, shot them. They were dead. Immediately my legs collapsed and I fell to the floor moving my head back and forth, physically denying what I was hearing. Someone was screaming hysterically, and in some remote corner of my mind I knew it was me. Chapter 1 Shock, Disbelief, and Denial When someone is murdered, the family is often sent on an emotional rollercoaster where they experience wave after wave of anger, guilt, blame, depression and denial. Since the death is sudden and so traumatic it throws the family right into the middle of these emotions and adds to the intensity of grief. It is not uncommon to blank out and lose time. Many victims of violence experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) within the first couple of years of a loved one’s death. Large blocks of time are missing from the subconscious in both long term memory and short term memory. My sister Linda blocks out huge pieces of her childhood due to a combination of spousal abuse and mom’s murder. Like an earthquake, murder victims seem to share these moments of aftershock. It happens in funny little ways; such as, dazed looks, fainting spells, sentences never completed. Some people get anxiety attacks, and still others physically react by real or imaged heart attacks. It is really important that you drink a lot of water during this time. Friends will try to get you to eat, and that’s great if you can, but if that is impossible you might ask them to bring you some water. This gives your friends something to make them feel useful and it replenishes the fluids you will be losing. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a high stress syndrome that follows a psychologically traumatic event. We usually associate PTSD with war veterans. In fact, I first remember hearing the disorder called Shell Shock. However, we are seeing more and more victims of violent crimes develop many of the same symptoms.