09/15/2013

   As I said before, the days during this second week without my son all blurred together. All the terrible things we'd endured during that turbulent first week are indelibly burned into my memory, but once we got through all that, things become hazy in my mind. As I search my memory of those days now to try to make some kind of coherent chronology for this blog, I find it impossible to do. At the time, several people had suggested that I journal about what was happening to us so there would be some kind of record of all that we were going through in case we needed to recall things later. There was absolutely no way I was in any shape emotionally to do such a thing, nor did I have any interest in doing so. I was having enough trouble trying to breathe in and out and put one foot in front of the other to take care of all the things that had to be done. There was no energy left to write about something I was pretty sure I was going to try very hard to forget had ever happened at all. I do know that some things were already in motion to help us deal with the legal issues we would be facing in trying to ensure that the man responsible received some kind of punishment. We had dozens of thank you notes to get out to all the people who had been so wonderfully supportive of us since that night of February 15, 2001. We needed to seek out counseling services for ourselves and our surviving children to help us begin to somehow deal with this new reality we were suddenly facing in the present and the now uncertain and frightening future. I had to begin thinking about when, if, or how I would ever be able to go back to teaching at my school where Curtis had once been a student and where I would see memories of his days there all around me. I had to begin the process of learning how or if I would be able to adapt to the most horrible change in my life I'd ever faced. Mostly, though, we had already begun thinking about ways that we could turn this tragedy into something positive-ways to bring forth some kind of good out of all this heartbreak. Curtis had always loved life and lived his to the fullest. He was a positive, joyful, loving person who always tried to see the good in other people and situations. He would want us to somehow find ways to turn the anger, grief, and loss we were feeling into something that would help others and honor his memory. That would bring a smile to his face. Curtis's 15th birthday would have been just short of three weeks to the day after his death. We decided that, although it would not be a huge, breaking news story, we would use that day to start down the path of finding ways to honor our son's memory.