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11:39 p.m. - 2003-12-03
Too Much
I was talking with one of my friends last night, when he started to tell me about the murder of his adult daughter five or six years ago. Now I've known him for probably 15 years, but I didn't know anything about this. It happened during the time when my Mom died, so I wasn't too conscious of anything and his daughter had a different last name which would have made the connection even less recognizable. Even so I wish I had caught it. He said her boyfriend had beaten her to death and he commented that the thing he needed most was closure. What really threw me though, was when he said maybe she had done something to provoke it - that she tended to be a bit "mouthy". I just commented that no one deserves what happened to her and that it wasn't her fault - the responsibility for the behaviour lays strictly with the murderer.

That triggered a whole flow of memories after our conversation. We had worked with a group on a politician's campaign about a decade ago. One day he was reaming out a group of his volunteers, because he found out that they had done something illegal with respect to another candidate's material - moved some signs or something like that. The volunteers all came from another country, originally, and had just returned from working on a campaign there. They all looked taken aback by the lecture, but waited until our candidate had left. One turned to the other and said vey seriously, "But no one was killed". The rest of us in the room did a double-take and said "Of course you don't mean that". One of the culprits said "No, of course we wouldn't kill anyone", but then, out of the side of his mouth,muttered to one of his colleagues "not unless they deserve it". Left the rest of us very uncomfortable for the balance of the campaign.

Next memory to surface was from the last election I administered in November 2000. There was a report, one afternoon, of a fight and stabbing that killed one student at the high school where a lot of my staffs' children attended. There was a lot of distress and fear for their own children expressed in the office. I watched but didn't intervene, just letting things run their course as our work progressed. It was very busy that day, and everyone seemed to be able to continue despite their concerns. About an hour after the news broke I noticed one of the moms/staff sitting at her desk with a frozen look about her. Nothing really obvious - she was still responding to the people coming in to register or vote - but just a sense of someone who is holding themself in check with great difficulty. I called her into my office and asked how she was doing. She said she was ok, but that the boy who had been murdered had been a good friend of her daughter's and she was worried about the effect it would have on her. Then a very strange thing happened. The face of the woman in front of me seemed to disappear and the face of the child she must have been, emerged. She commented that she was really spooked, because her older sister had been murdered under very similar circumstances just before she finished high school. I knew from her comments she would have been somewhere in her very early teens at the time. It was strange to watch the emotions play across the face of the child she was long ago, showing the seeking for answers or understanding written all across it. She said her sister's murderer had never been caught and that she still didn't know what her sister had done to deserve it. She said she really needed to be with her daughter right then and I told her to take whatever time away she needed. I covered her duties for about half an hour, until we could get someone else to fill in, since all my other staff were looking after members of the public and I needed something to help me refocus my reactions to her distress. She took responsibility to ensure someone was in to cover for her after that when she needed time.

This morning thoughts of death and family and violence were still very strong. I had John Denver's last studio recording before he died already loaded in my discman from the day before. The passion and pain in his voice as he sang, seemed to echo and express what I heard last night and in the other incidents. I switched to the Backstreet Boys, because I thought something a little lighter might be wise. The second song up was written for their manager who had died of cancer - I think just before the concert the recording was from. I realized I wasn't finished with the process I was going through, whether the timing was appropriate or not. I glanced up and saw the rolling files across from me swaying back and forth in unison, in time to the music. It's funny how the mind works sometime. I know, logically, that the building we are in was constructed to sway in high winds - an engineer told me that was preferable to the thing snapping off at the top with us in it, the alternative from his point of view. Even so I froze in mid-action and stayed there briefly. Next, I asked the manager of the library if she was seeing the same thing with the shelving as I was. She confirmed it, but expressed surprise too. Usually we can feel the building swaying before the shelves actually start to move. She checked the weather station and there was confirmation of very high wind gusts. OK. My response? I loaded up Elvis Revisited and danced with the King in my head. I figured if I was going to have a foot on either side of "the river", with the building feeling like it might touch down any second "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto" I might as well dance in celebration or anticipation, whichever came first.

Called to check in with my son at noon and the theme still wasn't over though. He said there had been another strange call, from Mississippi this time, for the same John Callaghan and gun and serial numbers. Four incidents over the past eight or nine months - Identity_Crisis - with my identity being used by some bad guy evading the law was just a bit too much. I called the police's local district office and spoke with a constable about it. He tried to reassure me the bad guys or their creditors wouldn't show up at my house, but it is not a good feeling. I'm supposed to call him back tomorrow to talk. I think I'll keep that appointment - the events of the past week or so have me feeling a bit hunted/haunted.

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