Category: This is Me

As most of you know (through facebook posts and shares over the last week), the court trial for the man who murdered my father-in-law was held over the past week and a half.

We are exhausted. And frazzled. And exhausted.

Sam Clark was found guilty of Murder in the 1st Degree and Murder in the 2nd Degree – we looked on as this verdict was handed down yesterday afternoon, and soon after the news was announced I began receiving a wave of ‘congratulations’ messages. “Such good news!” some of them said… along with “so happy you got what you were looking for”, “thank god”, and many others of the same sentiment.

Though I’m overwhelmed by and grateful for all of the people who support our family, I can’t help but have conflicted feelings about all of this. Since we left that courthouse yesterday afternoon, I’ve been trapped in a bubble of sad. I can’t bring myself to smile about ANY of this.

Two years ago, if someone had told me a man would kill my father, my feelings would most certainly have reflected an urgent hunger for revenge. I would have wanted that evil sonofabitch to rot in prison/hell for the rest of his life and beyond…

But then someone DID kill my father, and I felt none of that. What I felt was sorrow, and protective of my husband’s heart. Sadness, knowing that Dirk wouldn’t meet my daughter. Lost. Empty. Angry… but never vengeful.

Much of that was tempered with time, but this trial has caused all of those feelings to resurface. I don’t know what I went into all of this hoping for – justice? Closure? Do I even give a damn about justice? Did I really need closure in the first place?

Really, I can’t even answer those questions. I’m more preoccupied with knowing that along with the fact that I lost someone I loved, I just witnessed another man lose his life with a guilty verdict. The man that killed Dirk has no life left – the sentencing is not until November, but a Murder 1 conviction for a 40-year old man basically will put him in jail forever. I can’t bring myself to feel good about this.

I’m struggling because I feel a duty to my family to be angry, and now glad that “justice has been served”… but I don’t feel those things. Yes, we “won”, but what the hell does that even mean? Did we really “win”? Nothing has changed. Dirk is still gone, and I’m still hurting.

Although the killer’s lawyer in this trial argued self defense, everyone in that courtroom recognized that Sam Clark was ill. We heard the tape recordings. We know the truth – he is sick, mentally. There is without a doubt no other explanation. I took explicit notes during the trial with the intent of sharing everything, but now I almost feel like it would be cold of me to publish evidence of a man’s serious illness and what was most certainly the worst day of his life. Listening to those recordings made it even more difficult for me to feel anger towards this man – someone who I now believe wasn’t capable of rational thought. Yes, he knew that guns kill and that when he pulled the trigger Dirk would die… but what brought him to the point of pulling that trigger was pure delusion.

On the flip side of this, however, I know I would still have an empty pit in my stomach had the jury’s verdict gone the other way. I guess I just want none of this to ever have even happened, because it’s impossible to process in a black-and-white way.

So here I am… facing conflict with myself and my feelings. My heart can’t decide which way to lean. My wounds are wide open once again, and this trial didn’t heal anything. I feel silently obligated by my family to be angry, yet compelled by my God to forgive – especially in light of my feelings that there is true remorse here, and a tremendous mental instability.

I normally don’t write posts here until an event (or some funny shenanigan a la Adam) has concluded – I like giving you all the full story, not the developing story… but for this post I have no conclusion. I’ve been walking around for the past 24hours feeling the need to spill some words onto a page lest I burst… so this is what you get.

I’m not sorry that I don’t feel relieved, happy, or “justiced” after this trial. I also carry absolutely no judgement for those of you who do feel any of these things – we all handle our grief and loss differently. I do want to say thank you again to everyone for your amazing outpourings of love and support for my husband, myself and our family – and please, continue to smile for Dirk on a daily basis. Because I have no real conclusion here, I’ll end with a facebook post I shared yesterday morning – I still feel this way, and I hope you all do too: