Chapter 5: Coping

If this had been an accident or a disease, maybe I could have been more able to cope with what happened.  But I had no time. This was different.  Normie was with his friends, who I thought cared about him.  It’s the unknown that I can’t deal with.  I felt Normie’s friends weren’t dealing with what happened that night he was shot.  No one will talk about what happened.

There were many mornings I didn’t want to get out of bed. I had so many “what if” questions rolling around in my head.  Then I wondered why the parents of these kids were not dealing with this nightmare?  Where are their morals of what is right and wrong?  One day when I was alone for the first time in a little while I went up to my son’s room.  I looked around, fell to my knees and yelled at God, saying, “why my son, why me?” Normie had everything to live for I kept yelling and at that moment I got up and I tore his room apart. I found myself dropping to the floor once again with his shoes clutched in my hands crying.

I stayed there until I heard someone come home. I closed the door behind me and told my family no one was aloud to go into Normie’s room again.  I pretended like nothing had changed. From that day on, I told myself Normie was just away for awhile.  I was in denial.  The pain is like a jagged knife, so much of me died with Normie. It was so hard to sleep at night and when I finally drifted off into sleep it was very late. Some days I did not get out of bed or leave the house.  If I did leave the house, I often found myself at the cemetery.

All I kept thinking about was why these kids would let this happen to my boy.  I am there for everyone else, but no one could feel what I felt.  No one lost a loved on in such a tragic way as I had.  All I wanted was for someone to put their arms around me, tell me this was all just a bad dream and soon it would all be better. No one knew how to handle what I was going through or what I was feeling.  My doctor gave me more pills but I did not want to take them.  I ended up one day talking to my neighbor and I told her how I felt.  She gave me some advice and that was to call my church and see if they could help.

The next day I decided to call. The woman I talked with told me there were no support groups at this time that dealt with my kind of grief.  I told my neighbor and she gave me a number to call where she went to church.  I was hesitant to call but when I finally did I talked to a woman named Jan.  She told me about their bereavement group and that it met twice a month. At first I made an effort to attend. However my husband felt I did not need the group and that I should deal with all of my feelings myself.  The problem is that I felt myself going deeper into a depression, feeling more thoughts I couldn’t explain to anyone. The next time the group met I attended the meeting.  Although I decided this group was not for me I still went because I could talk about Normie.

I needed to start getting my feelings out and not keep them bottled up. I asked Jan if we could start a group with parents whose children died from a tragic death.  The people who came to the current group were older people who needed to deal with the loss of their spouse. I couldn’t relate to their feelings, I know they had suffered a loss but it still was different then mine.  I personally needed to talk with parents that lost their child to a violent death like I had. We did have a few parents who came that had lost their child to an accident.  They attended for a short time, but soon after stopped.  I haven’t been able to stop that soon. I found that I had been going to those sessions for about four years at the time.  I think the only reason I have not been able to move on with my life is because of the kids involved. They were my son’s friends. I have all these questions.  No one there that night will give me truthful answers to the events that led to my son’s death.  I lost my son and I feel that his friends don’t care.  The unknown and unanswered questions’ is what I cannot get passed.  I wanted to talk with parents who lost their children to a violent death.  I still tried to start another group with Jan.

We even ran ads in their church bulletins.  The ad read: “If anyone needed to talk about their own loss of a child to a violent crime to please call the church.”  We got one call from a mother who lost her son to gang violence in March 1993.  I did relate to her loss and I became involved in her green ribbon program.  I helped her out for a year but her goals were different then mine. I needed to find out what happened to my son.

Five long years had passed since my son was shot and nothing was happening with his case.  Everything seemed to be closing in on me and I tried to shove my feelings to the back of my mind for a long time.  I did my own investigation and when it came to an end, I felt the walls were still closing in around me even more.

The following year there was another family who joined the group after losing their son to gang violence.  As the mother of the boy spoke I could feel her loss. As she was telling her story, I could relate to her pain. In her son’s case, they caught the people who committed the crime. They were in and out of court with their case.  This was very hard on them and you could read it in their faces.  They continued to come a few more times to the meetings but then stopped.  There were a lot of problems with keeping the group. The times and days kept getting switched or cancelled.

In some ways I have gotten on with my life. In some ways I haven’t. It’s because of the kids involved that always holds me back.  These kids were who my son called his best friends; this haunts me in my dreams and thoughts.  People say I should move on.  Compared to five years ago, or even a couple of years ago, I have moved on.  I just cannot get over what happened to my son since I have no answers.  I made a quilt for victims of violent crimes which travel all over the country.  I started another much smaller quilt for our group.  So many of the group wants to forget what happened to them and their loved one.  I cannot do that since I am in limbo.  I need to stay busy.  I think victims should not be forgotten and this helps me remember my son.  They need to be remembered in a special way and that is what this quilt signifies.  We want the guilty to remember what they have taken away from us, and the never-ending pain they caused our families.