I briefly mentioned in my last post the local case of a 19 year old kid named Brianna Denison. She was in the local news every night for the last month, and she had been abducted from a friend's home near the University of Nevada, Reno and had gone missing. A serial rapist was suspected, they found a spot of blood on her pillow from the scene of the crime. It felt ominous and I suspected the worst, but night after night we saw search parties on TV going through remote parts of the area, looking in near blizard conditions at times in Washoe Valley and other spots, a whole community captivated by this woman. I know it is easy to be cynical. OJ Simpson once uttered the great quote that people die every day when asked how he felt about Ron Goldman's murder. Yes - people do - and we can't see the faces of the countless hundreds of thousands who die in wars, of hunger, of violence in the inner cities. These faces do not make it into the papers. Yes - it is somewhat biased that the beautiful women who are tragic victims are the ones people pay attention to.
Even so - when I found out yesterday that they had found her body - so decomposed it could not immediately be identified - and then they confirmed it was in fact her - I felt a loss as if I knew her, when I never met her or saw her until I found out about this. I know everyone always sounds great after they die, but according to this article she brought people together, put other people ahead of her, and was looking forward to studying to be a child counselor. Based on what everyone had to say about her, she was well loved and admired in this community. Even local Latina activist writer Emma Sepulveda who normally focuses on issues such as South American politics and immigration laws, took the opportunity in her Sunday column to focus on her, sayng that she had been in her home and knew her and felt the sense of tragedy upon interviewing her friends who were coping with the possibility of her death, before the reality of it was confirmed by an autopsy yesterday afternoon.
I agree she is pretty based on her pictures. If I was in her class, maybe I would have been one of several drawn to her, who even possibly had a crush on her. Unfortunately attractive women can be targets. Sexual predators are drawn to them and if they spot a chance of vulnerability they will seize on it like lions zooming on unsuspecting prey. My wife knows this first hand, in her own way. This may be one of the many reasons why we have our daughter in Tae Kwan Do - although it cannot guarantee a defense against a predator who is relying on the element of deadly surprise for an attack, it certainly can't hurt either.
For whatever reason - I can't exactly explain - I was tossing and turning last night, images of the field in the South area of Reno (not far from where my buddy Youndy stayed when he visited me this summer) stuck in my head. I know some who read my posts may see me as an unrealistic, idealistic hippie type - muttering my love mantras in a world where terrible acts of violence are happening all the time. I realize the cheesy cliche Bush utters about the terrorists kind of applies here - as this is an act of terror in itself - one that has terrorized the community anyway - but as he says (or one of his high paid speech writers anyways) , if you let these acts defeat you, throw you into a resigned state of pessimistic fear and let it trample on your faith, they have won. Despite the intentions of the rhetoric used - maybe to add in more funds to this stupid fucking war in Iraq (GO OBAMA!!!) - excuse me - but anyways - there is something to be said. All the same, at moments like last night, where I think one twisted act that ended in a disturbed mind's temporary satisfaction - possibly even an orgasm - one moment where the demons running around in his head let him rest for a moment - one where he felt a calm peace after reaching his climax - at what price did this reward come? He felt good for a second, but now he is going to spend the rest of his life on the run, looking over his shoulder, plagued by nightmares of his own. I don't entirely blame him - his demons got the better of him - I don't even necessarily know if lethal injection or execution is necessarily the answer here - although I definitely want him off the streets so that this doesn't happen again. There is good and evil in every one of us - my own demons once told me to hurt myself and cut myself, sometimes they still come back, but I have enough of a foundation to hold my ground against them. Obviously this man does not have that and he has lost, they have won. But for him the rest of his life is either a sentence - on the run for the law - or finally when he is caught (if not killed) waiting for the justice system to decide his fate.
As for her - this is it - one horrific instance where she was beaten, raped, and strangled - and there is no more of her life for her. It is over. She had her whole life ahead of her in one moment, and now she is done. Hopefully her spirit lives on - she is in heaven or some place like it, she is at rest and now the nightmare is over. But think - what her life could have been if she had gone on to become a child counselor. In some ways it is easier for her, it is all over now. But as a fellow parent, the people I really feel for are her parents - the people who invested day after day, maybe sleepless nights - difficult times - working hard, sacrificing themselves to raise her and provide her so that she could make something of herself - they appeared to be doing a pretty good job based on how she turned out - all that effort and toil for this, the opportunity to see her in an early funeral that was never planned for or ever thought of in their wildest dreams. The shock, the disbelief, the realization that they will never see her again and the image of this tragedy haunting them night after night, for the rest of their lives, as they are powerless to go back in time and turn back the clock for even one more chance to see her again, hold her again, talk to her again - the shocking and absolute finality - this is it - never more.
What brings it home to a person who has never met this young woman, is seeing my daughter at age 9 - knowing how much I love her - my only child - the child who is my future - and I cannot even begin to comprehend what it would be like to go through that experience. At 42, I am old enough to be Brianna's father and somehow I feel like she is - as she has now become a daughter of the entire community according to the family's statement released to the press. It is one thing to die in the later part of life, in your 50's, 60's, or later when you at least have lived a certain part of your life already. At 42 I am now approaching the age where diseases are more likely to come into play. But at 19 - with it all in front of you - as the way it is for young soldiers who never come back home - something about it seems unfair. Nobody ever said life is fair, and this is the part where the cynical atheists can come out with where was their God to protect them when they died. What is the answer to why this happens? The only honest answer - is there is no way to explain it. It is a helpless I don't know because there is no G0d-damn answer. These things just happen. Where is God where they happen? I don't know. How can God exist in a place where these things happen all the time? I don't know. What kind of a world is it we live in where these things do happen, where a crazy man bursts into gunfire at an Illinois college and all we can think of is - oh no - not this again..what kind of world is that?
Again - maybe somebody out there has the answer to this. I don't. I do know this - these tragedies must be remembered - just like every genocide present and ongoing - has to be remembered. Like I wrote last week, if humanity can evolve from its present state to a place where these acts are a rarity, or don't even happen at all - maybe there is hope for humanity. Evolution of consciousness is our only hope, without it we are doomed. We have evolved to a point, but mentally and spiritually we are still living in the caves to a certain degree. All I know - despite my heavy heart and exhausted head-ache filled head - in feeling these things is hope must remain - even in the face of apparent hopelessness - hope is all we have. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family, to all of us - for experiencing what appears to be such a pointless and senseless tragedy.
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