Would-be murderers
I wish I could somehow make future murderers listen to me. If so, I'd beg them to retain one word: Don't.I'd tell them that nobody wins, and everybody loses -- that the victims' families wouldn't be the only ones permanently altered.
Long after the crime fades from the public eye, people will still cry over it. Years after the fact, they'll still lose entire nights of sleep. Two dozen years later, some will find themselves talking to a stranger about it for the first time, outside of immediate family and people who had to know. The stranger will suddenly feel sucked into the story and wish there was some way to fix things. Instead, the stranger will also stay up late, then toss and turn before finally going to sleep out of sheer exhaustion.
Because, when it comes down to it, there is no way to fix it. Murders can't be undone. And so many of them can't be prevented because, for those of us who want nothing more than for murders not to happen, we don't know when the next one will take place.
Posted by Layla at 9:36 PM, December 16, 2005
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