Here is my message to the stapmother of Lora Owens:
What I would like to say to Mrs Owens, is that I have
no personal or political agenda or any axe to grind. I
merely think capital punishment is wrong. I am not a
christian, nor even a believer, but I believe in
forgiveness. Not only for the perpetratos, but also
and especially for the victims and/or their families.
I can't feel the pain you feel, but I know that it is
possible to forgive, as it has been recently shown in
the case of a murdered teenager in Britain. His
mother, a christian has said she forgives. Luckily, I
would say, in Britian there is no capital punishment.
What I am saying has nothing to do with redemption or
mitigating circumstances. It doesn't matter whether or
not Williams means what he says, or whether he is a
'changed man'. What matters is, as you call it,
closure. Closure for you, and a hope of closure
(redemption if you will) for him. I do not expect your
feelings to change at this point in time, but even if
he is put to death, I hope you eventually find it in
your heart to forgive, and to accept that capital
punishment is not an answer. Even if by then Williams
was dead, your change of heart would not be
meaningless.
I wish you strength in coming to a sense of closure.
Having had a family member brutally murdered, I can tell you that "closure" is a non-existent thing. The pain is always there and will always be there, though diminishing and in changing form over time. Nothing but my own death will bring that pain to an end, and I think that nothing should bring it to an end.
RépondreSupprimerMaybe it depends what 'closure' means. It must mean different things to different people. Obviously, murder is a particularly hard way to loose a loved one, but having lost my father far too early on in life, due to an accident, I know that I need to get some closure-and it's been almost twenty years! Closure to me doesn't mean I forget, or that all pain will disappear, but that I can turn that pain into something positive-whatever that may be.
RépondreSupprimerWhat I meant to say, was that there are different ways of getting closure, but, that hatred and revenge don't seem to me to be a constructive way of going about it.
The word to me means the end of something, suggesting the end of pain. If one is mentally healthy, that should not occur. You and I have encountered a loss of which nothing can remedy. We just have the same partial healing process as enveryone: wait.
RépondreSupprimerMaybe. I think I'm mentally healthy, but I'm not sure coming to terms is just a matter of waiting. There's a certain amount of soul searching to be done. That's how I see it anyway.
RépondreSupprimerAnyway, we're all individuals!
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