24

This morning I attended a funeral. As funerals go, it was actually very pleasant. There was a wide variety of visitors ranging from family to close friends to local celebrities and people who barely knew her. I was there because I had covered her daughter's murder trial when I was still a crime reporter. The trial was very long, very emotional and through that experience, I grew to really care about both her and her family.

The murder was especially brutal. Her daughter had been jogging in a nearby park when she was attacked from behind. The killer had left her for dead in a wooded area off the trail. It rained for several days before she was found washing away crucial evidence and keeping her murder a mystery for years and years.

As her mother, she made it her mission to find out who took her only daughter. She banged on doors and talked to everyone she could. She started a local support group for other parents of murdered children. The first time I talked to her, I honestly just needed a second source for a story about some other local murder. My heartless editor at the time had given me no background except that she was an advocate. I had no idea who she was, what she had done and on deadline that night I don't how much I cared. I had no idea she was the step-grandmother of a close friend from college. It wasn't until a year later when the police finally got a break in the case that I grew to totally understand all that she'd done.

Now that I am a mother, I think about what she and her family must of gone through the moment her daughter didn't come home in a totally different light. The fear, anger, sorrow. I really have to wonder how she kept going. And not only kept going, but made the decision to turn it into something good.

I don't know what I would do if someone murdered Jack. I think I would want to murder that person. I don't know if I'd become an advocate or just a shell of person. I don't know if I could get past the anger. I just don't know if I'd have the strength she had. She became the rock for so many other people.

I take comfort in knowing she's with her daughter. I can imagine what that reunion was like in my heart. The sense of relief and pure joy must have been amazing for them both. And though I am sad she has passed leaving behind her family here, I feel real excitement for her to be with her baby she's missed for so long.