To Tell The Truth

To those of you who are related to me...I apologize for this post. The subject matter will not be something you want to read.

I believe in the past that I may have mentioned that my maternal Grandmother was murdered. We live in her house, which is also the place that she was killed. About 2 years ago, because of the hard work and persistence of many members of my family and the Alabama Department of Forensic Science, my Grandmother's murder was finally solved.

At the time Miss-D was only 10, none of my children knew that their Great Grandmother had been murdered...only that she had died. I could not imagine being a little kid and finding out that you live in a house where a horrific crime took place.

The day the killer was named there was a lot of publicity. I was warned by the Sheriff that the press would be all over me and that the best thing I could do was cooperate with them and then ask them to respect my privacy. I spoke to every member of the press that asked me to. I answered every question that I was able to. One of the TV stations wanted to come out to the house and get footage. I asked them very nicely not to...reminded them that they already had footage from the time of the murder...and explained that I had young children who I did not want to expose to this.

I picked the FlyingMonkeys up early from school, resigned to the fact that I was going to have to tell them what was going on. As we pulled up to our driveway I saw the news van...and the arsehole reporter filming. I had them leave...immediately.

That night Rob and I sat down with the kids and told them what was going on. I had checked them out of school because I was afraid that some idiot would spill the beans...I wanted to be the one to tell them. I also wanted to tell them as little as possible about it. I only told them that she had been murdered and that the bad guy was dead.

We were able, until yesterday, to shield them from the gruesome details. This is amazing when you consider that the idiot reporter not only filmed my house that day but my mailbox...complete with address...and ran this over and over on TV and had it on the news station's web page.

There were a lot of details that I never wanted the kids to know about...hell I never wanted to know about them. Early in the investigation of her murder some of the parties involved had very loose lips...

Yesterday at school a teacher asked Miss-D about her name. Said that it seemed familiar to her....One of the children in class stood up and blurted out the information about my Grandmother complete with a detail that I was unaware the general public knew.

Last night I noticed that Miss-D had gone to bed early...I knew something had to be going on. I found her in tears. She had Googled my Grandmother's name and found a multitude articles about the murder. She wanted to know why I didn't tell her that my Grandmother had been raped. Why I didn't tell her that the guy twisted a coat hanger around her neck...Why anyone would do that to a sweet little grandmother....

She was angry, sad, sick.....When I tried to explain things to her she couldn't understand why I was so calm. I told her that I had 14 years to adjust to this and that she had only had hours...that I understood why she was so upset.

I had to tell her what my Mom told me when this happened...that the police believed that she was unconscious during the worst parts of her attack....I told her, I swore to her, that this was it...that there was no worse secret that I was keeping from her...

She didn't sleep much at all last night.

15 years ago the news of the world was like white noise for me. I would hear about a murder and feel badly for the family but then got on with my day. After what happened to my Grandmother things are different. I hear about a murder and I wonder if their family will be huddled around the table drinking coffee and trying to figure out what to do like ours did. I wonder who will be answering the incessant phone calls from freaks that want to know the dirty details. How are they going to make burial plans while waiting for the police to release the body. How long will it take them to clean up the greasy finger print dust that seems to cover every surface of the house....

Since her murder I have been keenly aware of the damage that ripples through all of the survivors. Of the million ways if changes all of those lives. Miss-D was born almost 2 years after my Grandmother's death...and last night it smacked into her like a tidal wave...

So now I wonder. There are details that she does not know, details that were not in the articles and should not have been public knowledge, but may be. In the years that I have lived here I have had complete strangers in Wal-Mart ask me about things that made me want to vomit. Things they should not have known. So how long will it be before some dumbarse asks Miss-D about some of them? Maybe I should tell her...but I can't. Speaking those words to her would be like covering her in tar...an emotional beating...I can't do that.

My heart is heavy.