Tragedy at Home

 This morning, one of my co-workers was murdered. He, his wife, and his daughter were shot by the daughter's boyfriend. The boyfriend fled with his four year old daughter but turned himself in at a local police station four hours later.

Hearing this news made me both sad and mad. Whenever I hear about domestic violence, it makes me sick to my stomach. Next month, February 7th, marks the 15th anniversary of my mother's death. She was a victim of domestic violence and lost her life as a result.

Throughout my childhood, not a weekend passed where my mother and one of my stepfathers didn't argue or fight. Sometimes, I would wake up to splatters of blood all of the house and since I didn't see anyone laid out on the floor I assumed they were okay.

The week before my mother's death, I remember stopping by the rooming house she lived in every day for two weeks. I even knocked on the neighbors doors and no one had seen her or her boyfriend.

Periodically, I had seen news reports about a woman's body being found by some fisherman in a lake in a small town in Mississippi. Authorities were having trouble identifying the body. The Mississippi and Tennessee police eventually got together and ran her fingerprints. If it hadn't been for the time mom had spent in jail after cutting a previous boyfriend, we probably would have never found out what happened to her.

I had just made it home from a college class when my aunts and uncles showed up at my dad's house. When they told me the news, all I could say was, "I knew it was her, I knew it was her."

Two weeks before my 21st birthday, my mom was gone--forever. Domestic violence, to me, is the worse crime ever. How could you hurt or kill someone that you claim to love? I don't want anyone to love me that much.