Thanks to Coleen, Lena's mom, who made this animation of Bekah. Meet Lena another victim of vehicular homicide

9-16-01 4:04 a.m.

Hi sweetie. I felt you earlier. We were watching that dreadful news. My feeling is you want to be by me when I put on the news. My morbid curiosity, my tearful empathy, I think you are trying to keep me healthy. I'm a tough case too I'll admit that.

Do TV dinners count as cooking? :) You know what I did. You've a new neighbor in fact that area is filling up awful fast. (From here I can mostly hear just the sound of the TV - just now clearly, "We are at war.") I strolled the grounds looking for your flowers* but did not find them...though I did find the grave of a man who died on the same day as you. He has his headstone already. We'll be patient for yours.

Your best friend flaked. Two of your boys never called. I want to time the drive now. Then report the district attorney, especially if she drove faster than 10 mph on the way home.

Bekah I do think and fear it too: we are going to war. Paul and Andy both feel the pull of enlistment. Why can't I make them look at it as I do? I am right after all. Look at it historically. Ten years after the Gulf War 911 occurs. So the spectacular capability of the U.S. to wage war and dominate lesser foes did not mean shit. It will always be that way. Terrorism is not going away: look at Ireland! look at the Middle East. I posted my opinion though it was written in haste. Nevertheless I believe it speaks for the anti-war faction.

...slept awhile. I make a conscious effort to keep bitterness away from my pages. Not all of my thoughts and feelings are written down. There are mental/emotional wrestling matches where it is me versus me in perpetuity. No more ink need be spilled on the struggle to grow up. Just a variation of the con game theory. If I impart maturity it will continually be closer to a state I truly can claim.

By the time I'm allowed to die I should virtually glow with age and wisdom. And still I will cry because when I do, it is not always just for me. The lousy things we do to each other. This shit does not end. It never does. How I deplore watching it perpetuated by my country, the most advanced supposedly "civilized" of all on this planet.

I am emptying another pen Bekah - the volume of words I have spilled out just since you were murdered amazes me. I still think that it is an antidote to insanity. That the knowledge, the reality, of what you endured, is so horrible there is a danger that your mother will not in fact be able to stand it. To stand it then I drench myself in it graphically, repeatedly - this is the exercise, acceptance is the fitness for which I strive.

I am forced to survive my only daughter. As if that isn't hard enough or unfair enough - I must know the way she died. That is too hard, that is too unfair. I must endure the grinding of the wheels of justice while clinging to one slender spoke. Excruciating uncertainty. Although I have the certain knowledge that she was murdered, that a jury will learn it well enough to convict remains to be seen. Not to mention whatever depraved but legal maneuvers may be interjected to obfuscate the turning of the wheel.

All frustrations served up to the victim's mother on a platter - a Bitter Buffet if you will. Ms. Bales, come eat. Eat bitter until you think you could do murder as easily as she did. Now wash it down, with bitter of course! All we serve is bitter, now now, there. The next meal bell rings. Eat up, drink up. Your test is divided into many sections. Apply all your knowledge, love, wisdom, faith, certitude, righteousness, vengeance, experience. Apply it to the sky, kiss it good-bye! (evil laugh) Must make room for the bitter! Swishing with a tarnished tray that appears to be empty but weighs and weighs...upon that tray is what they did to my girl. Or what they may. What your murderer did is done, is there. Justice is all that can make that tray's contents palatable in any kind of way at all.

I say that in order not to belabor the facts. The facts are full of horror. The facts cannot change. You will not be alive again. Will I? Justice contains my fate Bekah. Murder swiped yours, and no good can come of murder. amen

Love eternal, mom

* When I visited her grave on Thursday I discovered that somebody had stolen the flowers left by Bekah's best friend and myself.
* from Othello: ""Reputation, reputation, reputation!
Oh, I have lost my reputation. I have
lost the immortal part of myself, and
what remains is bestial."

� Barbara Bales1987-2002 all rights reserved