Sand Sculptures

Jill and I spoke at a recent Every 15 Minutes program for Biggs High School. Well, really, Jill spoke, and I sat and tried to hold myself together.

The kids who participated in the program are the good kids. Good kids aren’t the problem. It was obvious we were preaching to the choir. 

Rachel was one of the good kids. She wouldn’t drink and drive, and she wouldn’t let her friends.

Still: she was killed by a drunk driver. 

I’ve been over it thousands of times in my mind. There was nothing Rachel could do to prevent it. She did all she could do. There was nothing I could do to save her. That night Rachel’s life was in Elva Diaz’ hands… Only Elva didn’t know it. I’m not really calloused enough to claim she wouldn’t have cared, wouldn’t have acted differently if she had known. Alcohol made her stupid and careless.

What message from Rachel’s story could we relay to a group of good kids that aren’t part of the problem? We have no assurances. We can make no promises. We were at a loss for words. 

You can prevent yourself from killing yourself or someone else by driving while intoxicated, which is sufficient reason. But there is nothing you can do to prevent a drunk driver from killing you. I’m not saying there aren’t things that can decrease the likelihood. You can stay off the road. You can stay home. But people have been killed in crosswalks, on the sidewalk, people have been killed by drunk drivers while they were sitting in their living rooms.

You can pray for protection. 

But we tried that too, and it didn’t work.

We could tell from their questions that most of the Biggs High School kids are Christians. We confessed to them our faith and our confusion, our anger and our sadness. They came up afterwards to console and encourage us. It was sweet and compassionate - a decent, human thing to do.

When Darryl Spessard shared the story of how the life of his precious daughter, Andrea, had been taken by a drunk driver with Rachel’s High School during the Every 15 Minutes event at Orland High School her Senior year, Rachel had reached out to him with compassion and sympathy. The very student that played the part that Rachel had played - the victim who dies at the hospital - came to comfort us as Rachel had done. 

Rachel was that exactly that kid. There he was, and Rachel was gone. I couldn’t help wonder what would happen to him...

We were asked what lessons we had learned. The assumption underlying the question is that there is some meaning, some greater purpose to Rachel’s death. 

What sprang to mind was Anne Lammott’s words from her book, Help, Thanks, Wow: “Any snappy explanation for suffering you come up with will be horseshit.” But that’s not what I said. 

I said something like, “I don’t want to leave the impression that everything that has emerged from Rachel’s death has been bad. We have learned some really important lessons, we have experienced some really good things, met some really wonderful people we may have not have otherwise. In many ways, we are better people than we might have been. But all these things have come at too terrible a price. We’d rather have Rachel.”

My answer was honest enough, I thought, but not too honest.

This I know: Life isn’t predictable or safe. Eventually, it will kill you.

I heard the mother of one of the victims killed by the bombing at the Boston Marathon say, “It’s such a waste.”

I know the feeling.

Since Rachel was killed I have been haunted by the fruitlessness of her life, the senselessness of her death - the tragedy, the waste of it. 

Her death was not only a waste of her life, but of mine. I don’t know if time is money - but it is life. I’m reading a book called, The Exquisite Risk, by Mark Nepo. He says, “...wealth is time, not money.” Time is the real, precious currency of our lives. 

I spent my time, my life loving Rachel, and now she is gone.

What do I have to show for it?

A sand sculpture erased by the tide. I kept the ocean to my back, forgot it was there. Perhaps I supposed this one so worthy and beautiful surely would be spared...

The question now with the tide coming in, is love a good investment?

I don’t like the way the way things turned out, but I’m still convinced time spent loving Rachel was not time wasted. I love her still. Grief is only love in distressing disguise.

I believe - and this is my belief - I’m not going to blow anyone up to prove its veracity: Time spent loving is life well spent. I believe love is never wasted.

The bargain of life and of love is death and loss. These are not unexpected contingencies. They do not and cannot present insurmountable obstacles to love. We do not cease to love because we know we will lose, anymore than we cease to live because we know we will die.

James Joyce said, “We have only this one short life in which to love.” 

The challenge of life is to find the courage to love in passing. To go, loving. To love and let go. There is no other way to love in this world. And no better way to spend whatever time we have left.

Storytelling

“There was another life I might have had, but I am having this one.”

Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go

It’s been nearly five years since Rachel was killed. Shortly afterwards, Jill and I had dinner with a couple who had lost their son nearly ten years earlier. I knew they knew how we felt because already the man had asked me questions I hadn’t told anybody were on my mind. The burning question, I think, for both me and Jill the night we had dinner was: “Will we ever get over this?”

From my current vantage point, I can see the foolishness of the question. Then, we hadn’t yet fully absorbed the reality of what we were facing: the rest of our lives without our daughter. We were desperate for hope from someone who had walked the road ahead of us. The couple answered our question as compassionately and honestly as they could. Ten years after his death, they told us, they still weren’t over the loss of their son. For as long as they walked this earth, they never expected they would be. The going get easier, but it never gets easy; the hurt gets better, but it never goes away. We should have known. They had learned to live without him, as harsh as that may sound. In Life of Pi, Yann Martel says, “You can get used to anything...isn’t that what all survivors say?” And while getting accustomed to the loss of a child seems at first unimaginable, undesirable, heartless even, it ends up, after all, to be sadly, horrifically...possible. Perhaps even necessary. Our hearts sank there at the table as we imagined the road ahead. We didn’t want to drink this cup, but drink it we would, together. A bitter communion. 

The man we had dinner with occasionally attended and preached at our church. He had formerly been an elder. I took his place on the board. The couple had ceased attending before Jill and I began. I don’t think we had met the woman before the night of our dinner. Though I never knew exactly why she quit going to church with her husband, it is reasonable to assume she had spiritual difficulties in the aftermath of her son’s death that made it impossible for her. They may have had some understandable and all too common marital problems. I detected some uncharitable attitudes about her and the choices they had made... 

In the days before Rachel’s death I thought of the man as a tragic and somewhat heroic figure. I admired him, but, of course, I did not envy him. I remember being always aware of his loss, even when it wasn’t explicitly mentioned or acknowledged. Like talking to someone behind glass. You can have a normal enough conversation, but there’s always that between you. Content to just admire and pity him from a distance, I never wanted to know how this man had managed to survive. Like most, I didn’t think I could. I recognized it could have been me in his shoes, but I was so shamefully relieved I didn’t have to wear them that I never wanted to tempt fate by getting too close.

I recently heard a radio broadcast of a Jewish mother who had lost her son to a Palestinian sniper. She said that those who manage to survive the loss of a child must choose to live. Is that what happened? Did I choose to survive? I don’t remember, not consciously, anyway. Many nights I would have been content to close my eyes on this world and wake up in the next… But there is always something that must be done in the morning.

Predictably, Jill and I quit attending church. We made a valiant attempt to hang in there; we really did. But after some developments that required further commitment and demanded more involvement, we finally had a long talk in the hot tub and confessed to each other that we simply no longer had the heart for it. Though I still cannot articulate why, church had become more hurtful than helpful for both of us, and we couldn't stand pretending otherwise any more. We realized that we weren’t serving anyone, least of all ourselves, by staying there when we lacked any true desire. We haven’t been back to the last church we attended as an intact family since the end of last December. It turned out to be almost like an unintentional New Year’s resolution - except that we have uncharacteristically nearly perfectly kept it.  Our year without Jesus…

After writing that last sentence, I Googled it to see if anyone had written on that topic, and I found this blog post: https://rivercityrevolution.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/a-year-without-jesus/ The author speculates about the antithesis of a popular book from a few years back called, My Jesus Year. He qualifies his blog entry as merely “a thought experiment”, confesses how easy it would be to fall into the (bad, selfish, lazy) habits of “pretend atheism” and cautions people against actually trying the experiment for themselves at home. I have to admit, it’s scary how easy it is has been to drop the routine of a lifetime.

It would be an exaggeration, though, to say that Jill and I have lived like atheists for the last year. Practical agnostics, maybe. The truth is, God is still a central figure in our lives, even though we are less certain than we have ever been about who He is, what He is like, and what we can expect from a relationship with Him.

God and church are two distinctly different things. The Bible asserts that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Jesus, Immanuel - God with us - made an unqualified promise that he would never leave us nor forsake us. I learned from Oswald Chambers that because we lose our old idea of God does not mean we have thereby lost God, and the loss of our former form of belief and the birth of a realization more closely approximating the truth is perhaps always and necessarily painful and traumatic. Did we really believe the truth could be cheaply and painlessly acquired? Doubt is as undeniable and inevitable in this life as pain, loss, confusion, and disappointment. Christ felt abandoned on the cross, but I don’t believe even he ever really lost God. I don’t think that is possible. I hope not. When walk out of church, God inhabits the world we encounter outside the door. I really believe God is always with us, as near to and indistinguishable from our very breath and being. 

Dan Haseltine, the lead singer of Jars of Clay, recently blogged about his break with the traditional evangelical church. He said, “I have to believe that God is in our story.” It isn’t good enough for him or for me anymore to be told what to believe about God. We each have our own experience that has brought us to the place where we now find, or have lost, ourselves. Through no fault of our own we have fallen out of step with the rest of the parade. It wasn’t our plan. I was content teaching Sunday School every Sunday, preaching, serving as an elder. I would happily have remained in that place if I hadn’t been removed by forces beyond my control. Sometimes, surrender is the only viable course of action. Maya Angelou said, “...life...taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, (is) as honorable as resistance, especially if one (has) no choice.” 

If God is in our story, and our story takes where we do not want to go, then it is an act of faith to surrender and trust that God has something vital to teach us along the way. Nothing else makes any sense to me. Right now it’s the only faith I have. In Life of Pi, the main character tells the inquiring writer that he will tell him a story that will make him believe in God. It is his story, of course. How else could he know? Martin Luther, the original Reformer, said, “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also in the trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” I would add, he also writes it in our hearts and with our lives. How else could we believe?

Snapshots Along The Way

Here are few snapshots of the past few months:

Jill and I went Christmas shopping, and had a pleasant enough experience. We decided to have lunch at Chili’s. At a table near us, a family was having a birthday celebration for their college age daughter. They sang happy birthday. Her name was Rachel. Of course it was…

When we traveled to southern California for Christmas we passed a car with a bumpersticker that read: “Freedom Isn’t Free. My grandson died for it!” In a way, Rachel, too, died for the sake of freedom: The freedom to drink and drive. No one celebrates her heroism, though. True, she did not choose her sacrifice or volunteer to put herself in harm’s way. With no greater protection than her blind faith in the goodwill of her fellow drivers, she took her chance, as we all do, every day. Now look at us. God bless America...

I get Google alerts for “DUI Homicide”. I don’t read them anymore. It is the same sad, maddening story every day. Nothing has changed. Rachel is dead. The world wasn’t impressed enough to change. How many more Rachel’s it will take until it does, I am too sick to reckon…

Two days before his 21^st birthday, our son, Erik, and his friend, Amanda (whose boyfriend Aaron was killed in a drunk driving incident), were rear-ended at an intersection by a 17 year old girl. The impact propelled his car into middle of the intersection. Fortunately, nobody was crossing at the time. His car was totaled, though. The driver’s mother, who carried the insurance, is underinsured and will not cover the cost of replacement. Happy Birthday! Jill and I were in Chico that night, going to see the movie, The Way, by Emilio Estevez, about a man who carries his son’s ashes as he finishes his son’s pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Erik didn’t have the heart to call us that night. He waited to call us in the morning until he knew we would be home from church. Another phone call. Another reminder of the fragility of life, of how slim the thread by which all our hopes hang...

No Christmas tree. No holiday music. A pile of cards stacked on the dining room buffet were the only evidence of the season inside our house. We didn’t have the heart for it, and because we were going to be in southern California, we had a good enough excuse not to make the effort. We put up a wreath and lights outside. Any casual observer would never know there was a completely dispirited couple making a show of life inside. True, it wasn’t as dreadful as it has been. I don’t know if we are showing signs of improvement, though. We were numb, indifferent, going through the motions. Merry Christmas!...

Dispirited. I received an email invitation from the Abbey of the Arts to consider seeking out a word that would guide my spiritual direction for the coming year. The word that was given to me is: “dispirited.” Hardly encouraging. But true. I recognized the truth of it the instant I heard it, and, as I lay on my bed listening, I heard it all night long. So there was no mistake. It’s not as bad as it sounds, though. It’s necessary first to acknowledge the problem, to find the starting point, before we can take a step in the right direction toward wholeness. Jill and I have already begun to do that. I don’t know where it will end. By the grace of God, the grace of God…

Some of Rachel and Erik’s friends visited us while we were down south. There was a moment when two of Rachel’s friends were sitting on the sofa with a space between them, and I had the distinct thought: Rachel should be sitting right there in that spot, laughing with her friends, discussing her job, her school (no, she would be finished with school by now), her boyfriend (or husband, or child…)with them. I let it go. I tried to be thankful for the gift of the presence of those who were there in the moment. A step in the right direction. Still: How much more beautiful the world would be if only Rachel were here…

I had to get out of the house, so I revisited Mt. Rubidoux. I walked to the cross at the top of the mountain to watch the sun rise. I went seeking something, but I did not know what I wanted. Though I did not receive anything tangible, I did come away with the conviction that many other seekers have walked the same path up the mountain with a heavy heart. I found signs along the way...

The cross is a holy emblem that reminds us of a noble act and a sacred idea. But as I observed the birds, the coyotes, the people on the mountain that morning, I had to acknowledge that they were no less holy than the cross I had made the goal of my pilgrimage.

I am reading Charles Frazier’s Thirteen Moons. The protagonist describes a Native American he knew, called Bear: “Bear loved all the tangible manifestations of Creation as fervently as Baptists do King Jesus. It was not the spirit of winds, rivers, mountains, trees that he worshiped, it was the living things themselves.” The living things themselves... The phrase resonates. One of the things I have come to appreciate more painfully than I ever thought possible is just that: the unique and irreplaceable precious life of each individual. The holiness of life expressed in every particular. Rachel is just one of the billions of humans that have ever lived. There has never been and there will never be another. How is it possible to live with the loss of something so uniquely precious? That is what I am dying to find out…

SENTENCE

We thought it would be a huge relief when the trial had concluded. There was a month between the end of the criminal trial for Elva Diaz and the sentencing hearing on August 5, 2011. We had to be away for two weeks for the trial, and when we returned home, we found that we had a lot of catching up to do: the bills had piled up, the garden and the yard was overgrown, and the to do list had increased at work - urgent demands all vying for our attention. We found ourselves unexpectedly stretched thinner than we had been in long time.

To add to our distress, we were tasked with writing a Victim’s Impact Statement. We had known for three and a half years that the day would come when we would need to submit one. And we have dreaded the prospect for as long as we have known about it. How could we possibly hope to articulate what Rachel means to us? How could we describe the kind of person she was? How could we convey how her death has impacted us? Multiply them as we may, we knew mere words could never bring Rachel to life. Every attempt to capture her essence, the depth of our pain, or the quality and magnitude of our love is doomed to failure.

Sentencing. Making a sentence. A sentence is something meaningful - but it is also an artificial construct, a symbolic approximation of truth, an interpretation of reality at some remove. For us sentencing meant making a declarative statement of our love and our loss of Rachel, however inadequate it may prove to be

Our Victim’s Impact Statements were to be read and considered by the Probation Department for sentencing recommendation and by the judge for sentencing determination. We invited anyone affected by Rachel’s death to submit a statement. We never knew how much our words might influence the actual decision making process, but we hoped, at least, to impress upon those who read or heard them what we all have lost in losing Rachel. A surprising number of people - over 30 in all - submitted statements. Each one captured something unique about Rachel and her impact on the person who wrote it. Jill compared the final package we put together to a multifaceted jewel, each perspective revealing a slightly different aspect of Rachel - the whole an impressive thing of beauty. Reading them was an intense emotional experience for us, and we will treasure each one as a precious gift for as long as we live.

We were surprised both by who did and who didn’t submit statements. We don’t resent those who didn’t, because we understand the difficulty and futility of the task. Some people tried and never succeeded in finding words. Some people were silenced from the outset by the overwhelming impossibility of the task and never actually put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard, as the case might be). I sat down at the computer one Saturday morning with much fear and trembling, not knowing whether I would be able to find the words or not, fearing that I wouldn’t. I was nearly paralyzed with anxiety, panic increasing as each moment passed, trying not to entertain the idea of failure, powerless to banish the thought from my mind. I didn’t want to let Rachel down. Early on, as I had imagined the task, I fantasized about my statement being the best thing I had ever written (since it was without question the most important). But, mercifully, I realized that was unrealistic, demanding too much of myself, and I settled for just getting the job done with some degree of authenticity. I accepted that my words would be inadequate and that my love for Rachel could never be satisfactorily expressed. I gave myself the freedom I needed to hazard the attempt and to fail.

In the end, I did write a statement only four typed pages long. I can’t judge whether it is good or bad, adequate or inadequate. I was just relieved I would have something to read to the judge in Elva’s presence at the sentencing hearing. Jill’s statement was 12 pages long, and that was not enough to say all she wanted to say. Judge Mark Johnson was touched by the words of the eight people who read their statements in court, though, and it was clear by his bearing that he sympathized both with our loss and the difficulty of our task. To him, Rachel was as real as our pain. That he understood what we had lost is a surprising source of comfort to us. For that, more than anything else, we are grateful.

A sentence is finite. We understand endings. A sentence is a punishment with an end in sight. For Elva, the sentence put a period on the term of her punishment. It is, I suppose, ultimately a hopeful thing. There will be a predetermined end to the unpleasantness of the legal consequences for her crimes. Judge Mark Johnson sentenced Elva Diaz to the upper or “aggravated” term for Gross Vehicular Manslaughter. Ten years. Perhaps, in the bewildering calculus of the legal system, three or four years with credit for time served. Now Elva Diaz knows how long she will have to suffer.

But it is not so for us. Our sentence is indefinite and continues on for as long as we can imagine the future. A run-on sentence. It never really makes a point, never reaches any sensible conclusion...

God On Our Side*

The courtroom is a strange congregation. I am reminded of nothing so much as a wedding, where the attendants are seated according to their relationship with either the bride or the groom. Only this isn’t a wedding. We avoid eye contact across the aisle. It is rather a somber assembly -. more somber, perhaps, even than a funeral.

Like a funeral, one of the principal players is conspicuously absent: the victim, namely, Rachel.

We have dreaded the day of the arrival of the trial since we learned that Rachel had been killed by a drunk driver. We knew it was coming. It took 3 years, 4 months, and two days to come to fruition - long enough for Rachel to have graduated college; long enough for her friends and contemporaries marry and have children of their own.

When Jill and I finally got the news that the actual trial date was confirmed, our hearts started pounding in our chests. We tried to use techniques we learned in yoga, breathing deeply and consciously to relax and calm our troubled hearts enough so that we could sleep. We both lay awake in bed all night, feeling our hearts pounding out their distress signals through the mattress. We wondered if they could keep the pace through the night or if they would simply giving out from exhaustion. It’s a strange thing: I didn’t think my mind was overly anxious - I told Jill and reminded myself that this was Elva Diaz’ trial, and not ours. But somehow our bodies were unconvinced by our reasoning.

We haven’t experienced such a bodily reaction since the first weeks after Rachel was killed. We felt as we did when we planned, attended and spoke at Rachel’s memorial services. Only this time the terms under which Rachel could be mentioned were scrupulously regulated: No mention could be made that the trial began on her 22nd birthday. No representations of her image or her name could be visible. A friend of Rachel’s who got a tattoo in her honor was forced to cover it up.

Strangely, though, once the proceedings began, Jill and I felt better. Our hearts slowed to something approaching their normal rate. We were able to sleep. Perhaps the anticipation really was worse than the reality, as with so many odious things in life. Perhaps there is something about the mind-numbing mundanity of the judicial process that makes what would normally be intolerable possible to endure. Perhaps, even this is a blessing.

It is out of our hands, now. Though how much we have ever been in control is questionable. There is something pacifying in the knowledge that whatever could be done has been done and that all that is required of us now is to show up and witness the proceedings.

Not that it has been easy to sit quietly while the facts have been intentionally distorted, confused, and covered up, while those who have sworn before God to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth have done no such thing. Not in every case, but often enough that I can feel the anger rise in my chest like a fist. I swallow hard and keep my mouth shut.

But we have been strengthened by those who have sat beside us day after excruciating day. And we know that those present with us in court represent only a small portion of a much vaster congregation of love, present to us and for Rachel in the ways they are able. One dear friend who could not attend the first day of trial described to us how she had got on her knees in the restroom at work to pray for us as the trial began. Many who hardly know us but who have been touched by Rachel’s story and share our pain, have sent encouraging cards and emails, assuring us of their loving thoughts and prayers. All I can say is that we are truly, truly, humbled and grateful. I feel I owe a debt of love I can never hope to repay. And that has given me a new appreciation of grace.

On Sunday evening we decided to walk the trail to the cross at the top of Mt. Rubidoux. We shared the trail with more people than I imagined. It felt like a pilgrimage. There was a celebratory atmosphere, and an infectious fellowship that made perfect strangers exchange pleasantries and make small talk as we made the ascent. We shared a higher purpose, a common aspiration - making it to the top of the mountain.

We reached the summit just about sunset. The view from the top was spectacular, with a 360 degree view of the Riverside area, so often obscured by smog. Families mingled at the cross and read the inscriptions left in honor of Father Junipero Serra and other local historical dignitaries. We spotted lizards and kangaroo mice. We watched the sun drop behind the coastal mountain range.

In the failing light, we made our descent. The mountain was covered by or made up of huge boulders. On one boulder near the top I saw chiseled into the rock an inscription of the words of Jesus: “Let Not Your Hearts Be Troubled...” Jesus spoke those words to his disciples when they received the distressing news that he would be leaving them soon. It was a boulder such as this that sealed their Lord’s tomb, and, against which all their hopes were dashed. But after it was rolled away, the boulder was transformed into another affirmation of God’s ability to overcome any obstacle and to keep his word. Countless people around the world have taken courage from the words written on this rock over the millennia and no doubt thousands have been inspired by them on their way up to or down from the cross on the mountain. Still, they spoke personally to me, again. I took the message to heart.

The following day, as were seated in our places in court, Jill turned to me and said, “Ray is here.” I didn’t understand. I didn’t know who she was talking about. I turned to see my dear friend, Ray Houle, who had traveled all the way from Connecticut to share this difficult ordeal with us. I couldn’t have been more surprised or pleased if God had dispatched an angel straight from heaven. In every way that really counts, I suppose he did.

I’m not saying God or the universe is on our side. I recognize that each person in the courtroom is a precious child of God, and he has no favorites. I have consciously reminded myself of this as I have looked at each face present. Tomorrow, Thursday, June 30, the jury will be tasked with deciding Elva’s level of guilt for her crimes. The outcome is uncertain, and it is out of our control. But I know now more than ever that love is with us. And, since God is love*, that is enough.

The End of the Road

Today is June 18, 2011. Tomorrow is Father’s Day. Jill and I started the day out right, in our hot-tub, drinking our morning coffee. Afterwards, we had a quiet breakfast, reading the news, and then began to tackle the endless list of chores and minor projects to be done around the house. As we do so often, we turned on the radio and listened to NPR as we worked: we listened to This American Life, and a locally produced acoustic music program called Harmony Ridge. Both shows were appropriately topical, featuring stories and music that revealed and celebrated Fatherhood. I often moved about the backyard in a blur of tears.

Last night I dreamt of the house we lived in when we brought Rachel home from the hospital. Everything was different in my dream, as it would be in real life if we had the opportunity and heart to revisit it. The house was vacant, and as we walked around trying to decide whether or not to replace the carpet, I told Jill that I hand’t realized how much I loved our lives there - I wished I had known well enough to cherish it.

I acknowledge that some of what I feel is nostalgia and not pure grief. Rachel, even if she had not been taken away from us by a drunk driver, would be on her own, living her own life, and not with us. But, in my defense (not that I need to defend myself), I did my best to let go of Rachel when the time came, though my heart was not really in it. Selfishly, I wanted to forbid her to move to southern California to pursue her dream of becoming a forensic scientist. Sometimes, I wish I had been a selfish, overbearing father and pressured and manipulated her into staying close to home. If I had, she would probably still be alive. Does that make it right? It’s difficult in cases like this to separate the intent from the outcome. I think I could live with being a lousy father. I find it hard to live without Rachel, though, somehow, I must.

There is a poem by Ellen Bass that I read a few months after Rachel was killed. It is called “After Our Daughter’s Wedding.” The title is enough to bring me to tears. It describes a mother sitting on a lakeshore after her daughter’s wedding reception, weeping. Her partner asks her, “Do you feel like you’ve given her away?” No, she explains in the rest of the poem, she is weeping from relief that her daughter has survived to see this day, in spite of everything that can and so often does happen. She compares the perils of childhood to that of baby sea-turtle hatchlings hobbling across the beach, exposed under the moonlight - an image that reminds me of a harrowing scene from “Suddenly Last Summer,” where the vision of baby turtles being devoured on the beach by hungry gulls displaces the memory of the violent death of a young woman’s cousin. That movie horrified me, and the image from Ellen Bass’s poem resonates with every parent. As parents, our most basic, instinctual imperative is for us to deliver our children safely into adulthood. Sweet life. Survival. Every year I empathize with the worried birds that guard the yard as their fledgling offspring fresh from the nest test their wings...

I think I could be happy knowing Rachel was “Somewhere Out There,” even if I was denied ever seeing her again. And, to be honest, sometimes I have to pretend that is the case just to be able to survive another day. Just knowing that she is beautifully alive would be enough. I know, we always want what we can’t have...

This American Life featured stories of predictably distant fathers, fathers who could never find the words to say, “I love you.” Of course, it made me consider the kind of father I have been to my children. Clearly I wasted precious time on things that seemed so urgent to me then but, in hindsight, were not of primary importance: Making a living, paying the bills, a clean house, home improvement projects... In the end, love is all that matters. Recently Jill and I watched an episode of MadMen. Don Draper, a newly divorced father of two, seeks advice about his young daughter who is behaving strangely. He is justifiably worried about her. His female friend advises him that as long as his daughter is convinced that he loves her, she will be fine. I hope that is true. I know that love doesn’t make everything ok. But when all else fails, maybe it really is all we need. I hope Rachel was the remarkably confident, amazingly capable young woman she was in part, at least, because she could take her parents’ love for granted.

Thursday, June 23 will be Rachel’s 22 birthday. We have been getting graduation, wedding, and birth announcements from her friends. We are happy for them. We truly are. As much as we can be. Rachel should be here, passing these milestones, and we should be sharing her joy. Instead, we will be driving together as a family - me, Jill, and Erik - to be present at the criminal trial of the woman who killed Rachel. It appears that opening arguments will begin on Rachel’s birthday. Rather than holding our breaths while our daughter makes wishes for a happy future, we will be staring at the back of the head of the woman who killed her, as she tries to evade a reckoning for her crimes. We do not know if this is some kind of cruel joke, an auspicious sign, or maybe, just another one of life’s befuddling little ironies.

It has been a long road, and, I must say, quite a wild and horrible ride. Since February 21, 2008 we have known someday we would arrive at this destination: the criminal trial. It isn’t where we wanted or chose to go. For going on four years, the course of our lives has largely been determined by Elva Diaz - her choices and her actions. We look forward to putting this in our rear view mirror, and breaking the constraint Elva Diaz has on the course of our present life - though she has forever altered its shape and quality. We know that the end of the trial is not the end of the road. The road continues, and we must go on...

AMUSEMENT

We finally took down the Christmas lights today. We were the last on our block. It’s not that our Christmas spirit is indomitable: we barely managed the effort to put them up in the first place. In fact, the Christmas lights and the wreath we bought from the Sober Grad Committee and hung outside the front door were all the show of enthusiasm for the holiday we could muster this year. For the first time in our marriage, we didn’t buy and decorate a Christmas tree. We simply could not do it. On Christmas Day, we escaped to the movies and saw True Grit. Movies are amusement: literally speaking, a diversion that causes you not to think.

The reason the lights stayed up until nearly the end of January is that we simply couldn’t find the energy to take them down. It was just easier to keep them burning night after night and let the neighbors believe we just couldn’t let go of the magic of the holidays.

Christmas is just one day out of the year, but it highlights and typifies the hideous transformation of our lives since Rachel was killed by a drunk driver.

It has always been my intention to articulate here the far-reaching consequences of one bad decision. The qualitative change of the character of Christmas for us is just one of the consequences. They are new every morning. The other night Jill and I sat on the couch and watched the season premier of American Idol. I fought back tears as I watched a 16 year old girl dedicate her performance to her loving father. I can’t even watch an inane T.V. program. Rachel was a beautiful singer, but her voice has forever been silenced...

Last weekend Jill and I went to the wedding of one of Rachel’s best friends from high school. Nearly three years have passed now since Rachel was killed. It’s that time: all of the young people she grew up with are graduating from college, getting married, making their own lives. What would Rachel be doing now? I got to watch the father of the bride walk his beautiful daughter down the aisle and trust her to the care of the man she loves and to whom she vows to devote the rest of her life. I can’t help but anticipate what comes next: children, grandchildren I will never know.

These are the brutal realities we must face day after day. We have to live with the realization that there will be no happy ending to our story. Rachel is not coming back. While we are conscious that we still have much (though much less) to be grateful for, we can’t escape that fact. As David said of his first son born to him by Bathsheba, “He cannot come to me, but I must go to him.” We can look forward to joining Rachel in death. Sadly, that is our fondest hope.

I haven’t written anything about the court proceedings, yet. Let’s just say they are going as expected. Elva is playing every card to keep herself out of prison for as long as possible, and her defense is playing right along. She has been in custody in county jail (not prison) since July (six months! - which, of course, will be credited to her as time served), and we still haven’t even had a Preliminary Hearing, let alone begin a trial. Our next court appearance is January 28, which occurs right between my Mom and Dad’s 50^th wedding anniversary, and my Mom’s birthday. I get to miss them both to be with Elva Diaz in court. And I get to miss work and buy a plane ticket to pay for the privilege.

Reading the Signs

The longest night of the year, December 21, 2010, there is a rare, full lunar eclipse, though we cannot see it because it is hidden behind the clouds.

The last lunar eclipse I am aware of occurred on February 21, 2008, the night our daughter was killed. I worked late that night, mounting a customer’s flat screen television and hooking up her surround sound system. The woman told me that her son was fighting in Iraq. She said she only kept herself from worrying to death by not thinking about his safety. I was silently grateful that my daughter was away at college and not at war.

When I got out of my truck at home, I paused to view the eclipse with no sense of ill omen or impending doom. I’m not superstitious. I went into the house and greeted my wife, Jill, as if our lives would go on in the same blessed way forever. Later, the clouds moved in, and, while we slept, it began to rain. Our daughter was dead before we woke, though we didn’t know it. I have often tormented myself with the thought that I missed something, that I failed to apprehend some obvious message that, had I really been paying attention, could have prevented disaster.

I don’t know what it means that this year’s lunar eclipse occurs on the winter solstice. Now it seems a particularly portentous event. To add to my anxiety, this morning’s devotional reading is from June 23^rd, our daughter’s birthday. It recounts Jesus’ parable of the reluctant wedding guests. Eugene Peterson, the author of the devotional book, says, “We are faced with a life and death summons. The responses we make to God in Christ are the stuff of eternity.”

It is raining again. It is raining, and I am listening. Surely there is some decipherable message here, if I can only find the key to unlock its meaning, if I only I had the ears to hear. I am paying attention, now. I observe the signs. Someone is trying to tell me something. Still, nothing makes any sense...

Everything And Nothing At All

The woman who killed Rachel has been caught. She was a fugitive for over a year, during which time all of us who love Rachel languished in Limbo.

Dear people, happy for us, have been asking us how we feel. It’s complicated.

Jill and I have been trying to find the right words to describe our feelings. Happiness isn’t really even on the radar. The best we have been able to come up with is: relieved and grateful. We are relieved that the woman who took Rachel’s life and deprived those who love her of the joy of her presence will finally begin to suffer the consequences of her own crimes. We are grateful to those who worked so tirelessly to make it possible to bring Elva Diaz to justice. We are grateful that Rachel’s loved ones have finally been liberated from the Limbo we have been imprisoned in for nearly three years and are finally able to move forward.

Still. Elva Diaz’ capture simply marks the sure beginning of a process we have dreaded since we received the terrible news that Rachel had been killed by a drunk driver.

Our neighbor was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. He had to wait for treatment while the wheels within wheels of bureaucracy turned at their own unhurried pace. While he waited the cancer grew, making the success of the treatment even more doubtful. Finally, his application was approved and a date was set for his treatment. He is pleased to receive the treatment he needs for a chance at survival, but, obviously, he doesn’t relish radiation and chemotherapy.

That is the way I feel right now. I guess I should be pleased that the criminal phase of our ordeal has begun, because the only way to get it over with is to go through it. But the last thing I can think of wanting to do right now is to be confined in a room with my daughter’s killer, to have to look at her, to be forced to listen to her pathetic excuses - as if she were the victim and not my daughter...

We haven’t won the lottery. This is no trip to Disneyland. It is pitiful, even to me, that we must be “happy” to have the privilege of this dreadful experience - our day in court. I would much rather be happy that Rachel would be graduating from college this year, or that she was engaged. But I do know some poor souls who, deprived of their loved ones, do not even have the small consolation of an actual criminal trial. I am sensitive to their plight and grateful that we do not share it.

What I am especially grateful for is that now we have the assurance that there is an end in sight to this part of our ordeal. No court of law is going to bring our daughter back, and no punishment for her killer will make it right. Whatever happens, we will still be bereft of our precious daughter. A conviction for her killer will be something. In this world it is perhaps everything, all there is. Still, we are left with nothing at all...

PUTTING HER AHEAD OF US

Many people wonder at our courage and strength. I understand that they simply don’t understand. I know, because I used to feel the same way: How could anyone survive the death of a child? It is inconceivable. And, the fact is, we really don’t want to conceive of it. We don’t want to entertain the idea that it could happen to us. The fact that God only chooses certain people for such a trial is a sure sign of their extraordinary character...Isn’t it?

That’s not the way it works. I can’t conceive of any more loss than what I have already suffered: best friend, grandparents, sister, daughter...I know, however, if I don’t die first, other losses will mark my pilgrimage through this valley in the shadow of death. Loss is one of the naked facts we must learn to reckon with and, finally, accept. We are all losers. Jesus tried to teach us: we only gain life by losing it, letting go. We only keep the treasure we give away. It all slips through our fingers eventually; why not let it go, give it up, give it away? We spend so much of our lives trying to cling to what we cannot hold. Our time would be better spent in other more worthwhile pursuits: loving, for one.

This is what I have learned: We endure what we must. I don’t know how the starving AIDS orphans endure their plight. They do it because they must. I have survived the loss of Rachel so far not because I am strong or courageous or virtuous or special, but, simply, because I have no other real option. And that is the way we learn all the hard lessons of life - Not because we choose, but because, at last, we must reconcile ourselves to the given facts of our lives. So much for victorious living. It is much more like surrender, more like defeat. I would not have chosen this path; it is not what I had planned for my life, or my daughter’s. A daughter should steward the memory of her parents, not the other way around. Everything is out of order now…

But look at Christ...His dark agony, his apparent defeat in death on the cross, turned out to be the victory he sought and on which all our hopes depend. He overcame by submitting to his defeat, by suffering and dying. It doesn’t make any sense, but it does give us hope.

In the end, God’s promises are our only hope. A desperate, drowning person will grasp at anything, I know. But on my best days, I truly believe. Some would counsel us simply to put this whole horrendous mess behind us; forget about it and move on. We can’t do that. We live in the present, and Rachel’s life and death has changed the whole landscape of our present lives. Even if we could, we wouldn’t want to. Rachel, our hearts insist, is more than a memory. The only thing that keeps us moving forward instead of dwelling in the past now, is the awareness that it is only in the future that all our hope is realized. We will never find Rachel in the past. We can’t put her behind us. We must put her ahead of us. That is what keeps us going. She cannot come to us, but we shall go to her.

Ambushed

One of the terms tossed around in grief circles is “ambushed.” (Grief Circles: The club where every member is enlisted against their will)It is used in reference to an unexpected painful reminder of what has been lost. Jill experiences it often when she is out shopping: she sees a mother and daughter out shopping together, maybe even arguing, and she is reminded of Rachel and the fellowship she will never experience with her again in this life. It is difficult, and embarrassing, when you burst into tears in the middle of a department store, or a bank.There are so many losses to grieve...

It happens frequently, and it cannot be avoided. You can't prepare yourself. The other morning I was watching the news as I was putting away the dishes, getting ready for work. A commercial came on - I honestly don’t know what it was advertising - but a father and a daughter are having coffee together. The father remarks that his daughter got home awfully late the night before. She gently reminds him that she is “not 16 anymore.” “Still...” the father answers. The daughter appeases him by saying that he’s not going to have to worry about how late she stays out anymore. “Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” the father asks. She shows him her engagement ring. They hug and the father tells his daughter that her fiance is a lucky man. As he goes back to his coffee, he drops the bomb: “That’s what I told him last week when we talked!...”

This sweet little snapshot played out in front of me, and I found myself weeping as I continued putting away the dishes. What can you do, but cry and carry on?...

I never had any doubt about Rachel Getting Married. I both anticipated and dreaded the day I would walk her down the aisle and hand her over to another man. When Rachel was only a couple of years old, Jill and I watched “Father of the Bride.” I cried in anticipation of the day I would play second fiddle to another man in my precious little girl's life. I cried the morning of her 17th Birthday, too, just knowing that day was becoming a reality: she was slipping out of my hands...It is no consolation that I don’t have to worry about that anymore...

Sometimes the ambush seems particularly painful and mean spirited - almost personal. Jill and I had a difficult weekend recently: On the heels of the two year anniversary of Rachel’s death, and probably prompted by it, we had a cyclone of upsetting phone calls and developments. We look forward to the end of the workweek, but that Friday was a nightmare, and had us both at our wits' end. We awoke the next morning and tried to continue our routine, lingering in bed a little and then sitting together at the kitchen table to drink coffee and read. Jill went outside to get the newspaper and returned to the table ashen-faced and shaking. Elva’s picture was on the front page, along with an article about the continuing efforts to find and prosecute her. Not a good way to start the day. Though we appreciated the fact that the paper was reporting on this unfinished business, we had no idea the article was going to be published, and we just weren’t ready for it. Ambushed again.

After that shock, we tried to carry on with our plans for the day: rearranging some of the furniture in the house. I decided to put on some music to lighten the mood. I plugged my ipod into our stereo system and programmed it for shuffle. First, I have a confession to make: I currently have 28,614 songs on my playlist (I have the 164 gig ipod). I could listen 24 hours a day for 115 days before a song would be repeated. The second song into the shuffle that morning was “Part Of Your World” from Disney’s “Little Mermaid.” That was “Rachel’s song.” Ariel made a big impression on her as a little girl, and she grew up singing that song. I can hear her singing it in my mind’s ear. “Part Of Your World” was the song her good friends from Orland High sang at Rachel’s memorial service. We continued doing what we were doing in a fog of tears...But what are the odds? Can such a thing be purely coincidental. I don’t know. All I can say is that it doesn’t feel like it. And more than two years on, we still feel under siege...

THE SKY IS FALLING

Lately, I have been having dreams where I am weeping inconsolably. I don’t know if this is a result of taking anti-depressants - the subconscious mind finding an outlet for what the conscious mind blocks - or if it is simply the reality of Rachel’s loss to us finally settling into the deepest levels of my mind.

I have also had dreams of her being here but not here - back from the dead, but not realizing what has happened to her. In these dreams I try to hold her, try to find some way to keep from breaking the spell that will send her back, away from us.

Two years later, we are still struggling with this loss, as we will, no doubt, for the rest of our lives...

Recently, we visited a newly dedicated memorial to victims of violent crime at the new site of the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office. The names of all the recorded victims of violent crime in Riverside County are etched in black marble. Rachel’s name, sadly, is among them.

A plaque inscribed beside the wall states:

A VICTIM’S VOICE WILL BE HEARD

On this wall the names of victims appear.

Violent crime removed their voices from our community.

It is the commitment of the men and women of the

District Attorney’s Office of Riverside County

that a victim’s voice will be heard in our courts

so that justice will fall like mighty rain,

and the lives of our loved ones

will not have been in vain.

Above the entrance to the new facility is written in golden capital letters:

LET JUSTICE BE DONE THOUGH THE HEAVENS MAY FALL

As a family, we are honored that Rachel’s name appears among those written on this wall of remembrance of victims of violent crime. We appreciate that the crime that took her from us is acknowledged for what it is: an act of violence.

But this is not what we had hoped Rachel would be remembered for. She was and is for us so much more than a victim, a name among too many other names scratched upon the surface of a black wall. And the meaning and value of her life is not a matter to be decided in a court of justice.

For us, Rachel was too good, too beautiful, too alive to be just...gone. We still can’t get our minds around the hard, cruel fact of her enduring absence. And those who visit the memorial and read her name written there will never know the real and vibrant and beautiful human being, full of dreams and promise, that Rachel was. In my mind, water should perpetually pour over the memorial wall standing in the center of a black marble bottomed pool to represent the innumerable and unfathomable tears shed by those left to mourn those who have been lost...

What is left for us? Two years out and still waiting, “A VICTIM’S VOICE WILL BE HEARD” and “LET JUSTICE BE DONE THOUGH THE HEAVENS MAY FALL” ring hollow in our ears: The woman who killed our precious daughter so far has successfully eluded the consequences of her actions. Rachel’s voice has not been heard. No one has been able to speak for her, and no one has been made to answer. Justice has not been done, and I don’t know which will come first: a trial, or the sky falling...