A Grief Like No Other

INTRODUCTION

DO YOU KNOW where your son is?”

It was a police detective calling from Steubenville, Ohio.

I clenched the phone, tried to speak. Finally, I heard my voice saying that I had just spoken to Aaron the previous day. When I had talked to him, I told the detective, Aaron was in Steubenville, safe in the house he was renting for the summer with two friends and classmates.

The officer already knew a few details—Aaron’s address, the fact that he had just finished his sophomore year at Franciscan University, and, obviously, my telephone number. When it came my turn to ask some questions, the detective s replies were brief. Aaron was missing. Missing? How could he be missing?

I put down the phone. I felt tears running down my face; I couldn’t speak; everything was moving and changing. Terror gripped me. My world had changed. It felt as if my life was shattering into a thousand pieces. As I was to learn, this is the nature of violence: Often, it is unexpected, unpredictable, chaotic, and above all, horrifying. It can strike at any time, any place. And, of course, it can happen to anyone. It could be the death of someone we love or a friend or colleague. It can be a violent act of murder, robbery, rape, suicide, drug overdose, hate crime, domestic violence, terrorist attack, or vehicular homicide. Violence causes not only that person s death, but a catastrophic loss in our own lives. The world we once knew changes in a matter of moments into a new place: shocking, terrifying, uncharted. For me, it began with that phone call. This was the first step on a journey I did not want to take but, like all of us who are left behind in the wake of violence, I was forced to set out in a small boat in a turbulent ocean I had never even known existed.

The day was Monday, Memorial Day 1999. People were getting ready for barbecues. On streets all over America, there were parades for fallen heroes. We gathered in my living room: my friend Robert; my daughter Anna, then eighteen; and my youngest son Michael, who was fourteen. Years before, I had been divorced from my children’s father, Howard. Howard and I had remained close even after the divorce, but in 1992 he had died suddenly from a heart attack, a loss that profoundly affected my children and me.

Now we were being plunged into another world of trauma. A new story had begun—a story of unutterable grief, transformation, death, and life. It was a story I would tell many times in the coming years. In fact, this very experience of telling my story would become the foundation for the first stage in the Seven-Stage Journey you will find in this book.

Outside, the sun glared. In the shaded living room, Robert, Anna, Michael, and I sat together, trying to make sense of what little we knew: Aaron and his housemate Brian were both missing. Andrew, the third student in their rental, was now with the police. Perhaps even as we sat there, wondering, he was telling the police that all was well. But if so, wouldn’t they call us at once? It was gut-wrenching to be in the dark. When would we know what was going on?

I’d talked to Aaron the day before. It was a normal conversation, like the ones we always had. “Hi, mom,” he had said. “I got an A in statistics!” I’d laughed, knowing that although Aaron was very intelligent, he didn’t always apply himself to academics, “That’s great, son—I wish you had come home for Memorial Day.” He’d then promised me he would come home as soon as the summer session was over. As I tried to make sense of what the detective had told me, I found myself going over and over in my head, that last conversation with Aaron. There had been nothing unusual about it at all. He’d said that he was going to go to Mass and would be meeting up with Brian later on. I remember saying, “Okay, son, I’ll see you soon, love you,” and hanging up the phone. Was there something I had missed in that conversation? Something he wasn’t telling me? No, I knew there wasn’t—I knew my son.

Now, sitting in my living room, I questioned his siblings to get more information, but there was precious little that any of us knew. Where were Aaron and Brian’s friends? What did they know about his disappearance? How could I get in touch with them, as most of them had gone home for the summer? Franciscan University, a small, tightly knit community of faculty and young people, is a Catholic college. The kids that go there want to live “the life,” as they call it. What they mean by that—what drew Aaron there—is a commitment to helping others. Faith is a crucial part of that community. So is the fellowship and close interrelationship of people committed to a common faith and principles. Aaron belonged to a close network of friends there.

Finally, late in the afternoon, the calls started coming in. Now the network was buzzing. Everyone was trying to figure out what had happened to Brian and my son. As the phone calls continued and became more prolonged, we began to piece together a chronology. Aaron’s friends had seen him 6:00 p.m. at Mass the evening before. We learned that Brian had driven from his home in Columbus, Ohio, in his mother’s black Chevy Blazer, meeting up with Aaron sometime in the evening.

As the day drew to a close, I began making calls to the police. Detective John Lelliss was in charge of the case. It was he who had called to ask where Aaron was. Now he let me know what the police had learned from Aaron and Brian’s housemate.

Andrew had stayed up late the previous night, sitting on the porch, talking to a friend. Sometime after midnight, he went to his room. As he passed through the living room and headed upstairs, he saw Brian asleep on the couch. Andrew noticed that the door to Aaron’s room was closed, and assumed that he was asleep. He didn’t know, however, whether Aaron was actually in the room.

Lelliss now told me that the police had found blood on the wall and bed of Aaron’s room.

“How much blood?” I wanted to know. My detached voice did not match what I was feeling. I told myself, maybe it’s not Aaron’s blood, maybe he wasn’t there. After all, Andrew only thought Aaron had been in his room.

Lelliss had no way of knowing at that time how much blood there was or whether the blood was Aaron’s. The investigation would continue. That was all he could tell me.

With every detail, my shock increased. I was shutting down. Terror was forcing my old life out of me, and I felt like I was suspended in the middle, between the world I had known and a shattered, out-of-control universe. I was trying to hold on to anything I could. I watched the rational, reasonable side of me answer questions, make assumptions, calculate options, but my emotional self was swirling down a drain into a dark hole.

Already, I wondered whether I would be able to survive this. Was it something I could endure or would it destroy me? Would my inner resources serve me as they had in the past or would they just not work? And the worst question of all: if Aaron was gone, could I live?

At that time, my immediate inner resources were prayer and meditation, faith, courage, hope, fortitude, and an unshakable belief that no matter what happens, life goes on.

We suffer because we are human, I told myself. We hope for the grace to shoulder our burdens. We face what life gives to us, whether it is unfair or not. We struggle to go on, when everything inside screams that we cannot. I know all that, I could say to myself. But would that be enough? Surely, this would be my greatest test.

The Franciscan network yielded bits and pieces of information, mostly about Aaron and Brian’s whereabouts the night before. Still, I couldn’t get the information I desperately wanted. The police knew more than they were telling me—I was certain of that. Why wouldn’t they tell me everything?

At the same time, my denial was insistent. I told myself that Aaron would call any minute to explain the mixup. He had gotten up early and gone to a friend s house. Any moment, he would call to say, “Mom, geez, I only went out to visit a friend. Why all the drama?” I could almost convince myself this would happen shortly and there was nothing to worry about.

During this period of uncertainty, my children and I stuck close to one another and tried to support each other as much as we were able. I had the strong support of my family, close and extended, and the wonderful friends I had made through the years, especially my friend Judy, who lived nearby.

In addition, many people came to Franciscan from all over the country to be with us and offer whatever they could to support us. Rachel Muha, Brian’s mother, and her family arrived in Steubenville and were remarkable people of faith and strength.

Franciscan University conducted three prayer services a day. I met many of Aaron’s college friends, who were to become close friends of mine through the years. I was surrounded by many, many people who held vigil with us. They searched, prayed, and struggled; we became united in one effort.

EARLY TUESDAY MORNING, Robert came to pick up Anna, Michael, and me. He was driving us to Steubenville; we were going to look for Aaron. As we drove up the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I looked out on the beauty of the rolling green hills. I found it hard to reconcile this tranquil scene with what I was about to face.

Detective Lelliss was a tall, earnest man who tried his best to help us understand what was going on. He told me that the house Aaron, Brian, and Andrew shared had been broken into early the previous morning. Andrew had woken up, hearing a commotion downstairs. He’d known something was wrong. Jumping out his bedroom window, he had dropped to the ground outside, calling for Aaron and Brian. Peering in the living-room window, he had seen a man with a white handkerchief around his face. Upon hearing Andrew, the man had whirled around.

“Oh, fuck, there’s another one!” Andrew had heard the man yell.

Andrew had raced to the nearest neighbor he knew, to call the police. By the time he’d returned, the house was empty. Brian’s Chevy Blazer was gone.

Later, the police had spotted two men driving the Blazer in downtown Steubenville. When officers stopped the car, two men fled. One got away. The young man the police apprehended called himself Michael Poole. His real name was Terrell Yarbrough.

The Blazer was being searched. There was blood in the car.

Detective Lelliss held up a plastic bag. In the bright fluorescent light, against the background of yellow walls, I saw a blue plastic rosary, its crucifix broken. “Do you recognize this?”

I felt sick. Why was he showing me the rosary? Why was the cross broken? It was the kind of rosary given out at any service. Was it Aaron’s? I had no way of knowing. My son had one, but so did practically everyone on campus.

Back at our hotel, I felt as though the world was closing in on me. Fear and anxiety gripped me; I wasn’t going to be able to do this. I wanted to run away and pretend nothing had happened. Waves of hysteria started to overwhelm me. I went into the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. I wanted to rinse all this off me. I was trying to get some kind of grip. What could I hold on to?

Afterward, I went out to the courtyard outside my room. It was a still, warm evening. There was a lovely big tree in the center of the courtyard. Suddenly, two tiny birds flew out of the tree around and around my head. They were chattering, singing, and weaving through the air. I stopped and listened to them, I felt it was a message from Aaron and Brian. I watched as they flew high in the sky, singing. I looked up and saw the evening star at twilight. Is that where they were? I knew it would be all right, that they were all right, no matter where they were. I felt peace, which I hadn t felt since the awful phone call. I turned to go inside the room, calm and ready.