King Solomon: Justice will only be achieved when those who are not injured by crime feel as indignant as those who are.
Written by Bekah probably on July 17 or 18 2001 (she was killed on 07-19-01 when a car speeding without headlights on the wrong side of the road ran over her and dragged her down the street, leaving her body in a huge pool of blood that was still visible over three months after her death. The driver then drove home and went to sleep.
Rebekah-Marie Bales Zask,
© 1980-2001 all rights reserved
Hi Bekah, I musta slept for at least five or ten minutes. Carolyn called to deliver your messages. But I am skeptical. More than I should be too I’ve no doubt. The word: tell Lizzy it’s okay to love Paul. Eek I’m going to word the next one wrong, but essentially you advise me to do the same thing I was telling Carolyn and that I try and cannot seem to: be still. You added, "and listen." I will try sweetheart, I promise.
Your love and your loss is so widespread Bekah. One of my correspondents even called you a "martyr." I know I would rather have you back baby being a person again. Even the person you were was so special.
It is difficult even to know how to be. Just even how to be. I perceive that my entry into the mother’s desert of despair has left more than a couple of people at a loss as to how they can talk to me.
Sometimes I try to comfort them, not by pretending to a comfort I do not get from their words, but by acknowledging the comfort I do get from their willingness to be near me while I am essentially elsewhere.
Which must be why I wrote the poem, which I think is not bad. The message is: it’s ALL RIGHT – all right that I now move in a different dimension, one that is defined by grief, all right that you are helpless to hurry me through there or break me out o there…
What is not all right Bekah is that you are dead. That you got dead by murder. That your murderer does not apparently care about you. These things are immutably inarguably wrong. Nothing can change it either. I’m here, on earth, where I feel so certain you should still be, and if Aunt Carolyn insists that you are happy about going there before you got to fulfill a third of your life – if you did indeed go see her and tell her that last night – and especially if you mean that – you know what’s next. Bekah I know you do.
So you know. I promise to try for silence. Imagine it will be comparable to the fourth month of pregnancy. I would lay down on my back and wait for signs of life. In those days my reward was the slightest ripple from inside out, so slight though it was undeniable to me it was still imperceptible from the outside.
And then the joy, the wonder, the flood of love. I would remain still, basking, glorious, love, my baby moves. In those days too I would get up from those first positive signs of the life within me and walk, to the beach to the store, wherever. And my mind was swamped with wonder, miracles, mysteries – I embodied all of nature. I would be thinking, "I am two in one," how cant that be and it was. Nobody could tell yet but me – but I was even a walking talking miracle. Two in one.
I walked that walk four times and the wonder never changed. The love inspired by just the knowledge of conception was so large it turned earth into heaven and every child I ever had has owned all of that love and all of that wonder and has validated and multiplied it many times over. Three times boys; one time a girl. Remember how much we wanted Rory to be a girl? You got your girl with Sara; I had to be content with you.
Could Nature, Fate, Destiny, or any kind of cognizant god really ask me to be content without you? Even if they could I doubt I could comply. Carolyn said you smiled radiantly; sorry baby, I don’t believe it. I would be quicker to believe it if you hadn’t figured out yet "What the hell could this be." But most convinced that it is as Lizzy and I thought – "How RUDE! I am so bitter. That bitch just killed me!" I can see your indignant face.
We went through rough times. I have found reading straight through the pages where you hated me too difficult to accomplish at one sitting. In large part because I was guilty, selfish, immature. In small part because you were too – and apparently blind to the struggle or why I consented to struggle as hard as I did to keep you and Andy with me. What I can and do celebrate is that we both grew up enough to relate well to each other and demonstrate our love for each other before that bitch murdered you – oh Bekah I cannot begin to express how thankful I am for that. You were so beautiful. Loving. Vibrant, alive. You were so focused and plainly pleased with the direction of your life. You knew your own worth and defended it even when your heart was broken. You were way better off than I was even at twice your age.
And yes I will take some credit for that. Lots and lots of comfort, all it will afford me. In the final analysis the scales tipped my way – I could not be that bad a mother and raised you. All the factors that went into you do not by any means stop at your mother – but a mother certainly has the power to fuck up her kids. My daughter was one of the least screwed up 21-year-olds I have ever even known. Oh thank you thank you Bekah for coming back to me. Letting you go then I thought my heart had been taken out of my body – I grieved then and thought it constituted "a little daily death" to not be near you every day.
You forced me to gather every iota of wisdom I could muster, to fuel my progress with the pain that after all had nowhere else to go. I let you go on advice of friends who promised me a daughter always comes back. If you thought I was patient and appreciated that I don’t know. I just know that every chance I got all I wanted to tell you is how much I loved you, love you, always will. Missed you then and got you back to where you even missed me. Maybe that return was predestined by virtue of our relationship; maybe I got more worthy than I had been before. Maybe you grew up and realized that your mother’s love was unconditional and necessary still. Maybe all of the above.
You stole my diary – maybe one hundred pages of it. I never knew it either. Judging by the pages it was about one and one-half years ago. I always imagined my diary being a treasure for you after I died. Always trusted that my privacy in that respect was understood by all of you to be inviolate and was respected accordingly. And I promise you now I extended the same respect to you. But you did want to know me through my writing, and you did not want to wait until I died. We have been closer in the last couple years than in the five or six or seven before that – how can I be mad at you? I am glad you did it, since it appears from my perspective that reading it did help rather than hinder our relationship. Exactly what motivated you to do something that I know you knew was "wrong" is a question for when we are back together again – but it is also fodder for the "Bekah knew she was going to die" theory.
I do wonder if you knew you were going to die, but I resist believing it. Resist with all I am just about. I’ve come to believe that you probably did get feelings or messages that were unequivocal in their meaning – that last most spooky poem having been produced pursuant to one of those episodes. At the same time such feelings come over a lot of people especially during their teens/adolescence, so I also believe that you did not believe your psychic visions of early death. and I hope they were not frequent and did not terrify or sadden you. If so you kept that to yourself.
Unless you tell me otherwise Bekah – and I do mean a major visitation from my girl from beyond her grave – I will never believe that you wanted to die, that you were supposed to die, or that you expected to die when you did. It is too much to ask of a bereaved mother of a murder victim that she embrace the concept of predestiny and apply it to the circumstances of your death. Not. Too horrible, bloody, gruesome. Your killer’s fate as well as your own was decided on July 19 – and both were decided by her. The inhumane actions of this – monster –her indifference to the magnitude of her crime, as well as to any information about her victim! tell me this is a true murderer.
Amen and I love you Bekah as much
as one soul can love
© Barbara Bales 2001-2009 all rights reserved
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