Remember

I remember waking up feeling flustered, tears running down my face, scared, sadness. “Mummy. I want my mummy.” I was six years old trying to figure out if I was trapped in a nightmare or if the sound of my mother’s screaming really happened. My room door flies open, but it’s not my mom, it’s my mom’s best friend. She comes in, holds me in her arms, and cries. I can feel her sorrow and I know it was not a nightmare. My mom’s oldest sister has just been murdered. The sound of my mom screaming on the phone was real.

I was very close with this aunt of mine. I remember spending days at a time with her. Playing with my cousins, and now she was no longer there. She has now become a shadow in the darkness of my dreams. Twenty-seven years later, my hurt and anger toward the man who killed her has turned to bittersweet forgiveness because in my learning to forgive him, I am seeing his karma.

I forget, not because I want to, but because I choose to, things that exist in the outside world. Out of sight, out of mind is how I think of it. I have a very long sentence time and learning to let go of things out there, forget about things, allows me to not miss them so much. If some thing is non-existent in my mind, physically, how can it exist or be missed.

I want to forget April 10th, 2012. The day that changed my life forever. The events of that day that has brought me here. I want to forget August 27th, 2014. The day my verdict came in. And I definitely want to forget October 28th, 2014. The day I was sentenced to prison. The day the judge gave me a thirty year split sentence.

-Rosemarie