spoonie
Proud Member
Ok I can look at this in a slightly different way. I think a lot of people assume that should Murray get convicted then they will get closure and can finally be at peace. But from experience, I do not think this will happen, and I am afraid people may be expecting to feel better once it is all over, and that is unlikely.
I want to share with you something personal to me that although I do not like to talk about much I feel may help me explain my fears. My best friend from childhood and her little boy (aged 4) were murdered in late 2007. There was no doubt about it, it was murder. The guy who did it (her partner) did try to plead manslaughter so he was not convicted or sentenced (due to a pending trial) until a year and a half later (early 2009) which at the time myself and others felt was what was stopping us from moving on.
Myself and a couple of my other friends were called as witnesses and spent a long time (18 months) preparing to "fight for justice". At the very last minute - the day before the trial was due to start - the guy decided to change his plea to guilty and was sentenced the next day to life in prison. So you would assume we all felt better and were able to move on? Not the case.
We had to deal with a mountain of press releases giving graphic details of the state her body had been when she was found, re-enactments of the little boy being killed in a sick ritual, and most of all we felt like his sentence wasn't enough. We had been prepared to fight, the way we were was kind of similar to what I see here with all the justice for Michael things. But we didn't fight in the end and in a lot of ways we felt cheated. Had he not plead guilty we would have had the chance to tell the world exactly what this guy was like, that he had acted inappropriately towards a whole group of us when we were kids (this guy had been a lot older than my friend, she was a teenager when they got together, he was in his 60's), that he had groomed her from when she was just 14 and taken everything that made her who she was and turned her into this shell of a girl. The chance to look him in the eye and let him see how much we hated him. But we never got the chance.
Sure, maybe by all this fighting for justice you may feel like you had that chance that we didn't have, but will it ever really be enough? Will you be able to rest should Murray only get a manslaughter charge? Would life in prison even be enough? I hope it in someway makes everyone feel better but I have to share this; once it's over it will still hurt. Getting justice will not make it all go away. And most of all it will not bring Michael back.
I guess what I am trying to say is that whilst I understand all this fighting for justice I am worried about the comedown. You won't have anything to fight for anymore. All the while you feel like you're fighting for Michael, it probably feels better in some ways as it feels like you are doing something, but in reality there is nothing we can do that will bring him back. Sometimes the anger that comes from fighting for what you believe in temporarily masks the pain of grief.
Someday, this will all be over. Maybe the result you wanted will happen, maybe it won't. Either way the grief will still be there. The only way anyone can move on from what happened to Michael is through acceptance, and that is not easy when there are things like court proceedings longing it out. In regard to accepting my friend was gone, that took time. There are still times I cry or think "why?" and the truth is I will NEVER get an answer to that as the only people who can answer that are either not here on earth anymore or someone who would never give an honest answer (the murderer). And the same applies for Michael, I still cry and think "why?" but I am not going to rely on a court case to give me all the answers as I don't think it truly can tell me everything.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, if Murray is not convicted, or the end result is not the best it could be then I will do my best to accept it all the same. Because acceptance is a part of grief. I am trying to accept that Michael is not coming back, and whatever happens to Murray that is not going to change that fact, and that is what is hurting me; Michael being gone.
I want to share with you something personal to me that although I do not like to talk about much I feel may help me explain my fears. My best friend from childhood and her little boy (aged 4) were murdered in late 2007. There was no doubt about it, it was murder. The guy who did it (her partner) did try to plead manslaughter so he was not convicted or sentenced (due to a pending trial) until a year and a half later (early 2009) which at the time myself and others felt was what was stopping us from moving on.
Myself and a couple of my other friends were called as witnesses and spent a long time (18 months) preparing to "fight for justice". At the very last minute - the day before the trial was due to start - the guy decided to change his plea to guilty and was sentenced the next day to life in prison. So you would assume we all felt better and were able to move on? Not the case.
We had to deal with a mountain of press releases giving graphic details of the state her body had been when she was found, re-enactments of the little boy being killed in a sick ritual, and most of all we felt like his sentence wasn't enough. We had been prepared to fight, the way we were was kind of similar to what I see here with all the justice for Michael things. But we didn't fight in the end and in a lot of ways we felt cheated. Had he not plead guilty we would have had the chance to tell the world exactly what this guy was like, that he had acted inappropriately towards a whole group of us when we were kids (this guy had been a lot older than my friend, she was a teenager when they got together, he was in his 60's), that he had groomed her from when she was just 14 and taken everything that made her who she was and turned her into this shell of a girl. The chance to look him in the eye and let him see how much we hated him. But we never got the chance.
Sure, maybe by all this fighting for justice you may feel like you had that chance that we didn't have, but will it ever really be enough? Will you be able to rest should Murray only get a manslaughter charge? Would life in prison even be enough? I hope it in someway makes everyone feel better but I have to share this; once it's over it will still hurt. Getting justice will not make it all go away. And most of all it will not bring Michael back.
I guess what I am trying to say is that whilst I understand all this fighting for justice I am worried about the comedown. You won't have anything to fight for anymore. All the while you feel like you're fighting for Michael, it probably feels better in some ways as it feels like you are doing something, but in reality there is nothing we can do that will bring him back. Sometimes the anger that comes from fighting for what you believe in temporarily masks the pain of grief.
Someday, this will all be over. Maybe the result you wanted will happen, maybe it won't. Either way the grief will still be there. The only way anyone can move on from what happened to Michael is through acceptance, and that is not easy when there are things like court proceedings longing it out. In regard to accepting my friend was gone, that took time. There are still times I cry or think "why?" and the truth is I will NEVER get an answer to that as the only people who can answer that are either not here on earth anymore or someone who would never give an honest answer (the murderer). And the same applies for Michael, I still cry and think "why?" but I am not going to rely on a court case to give me all the answers as I don't think it truly can tell me everything.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, if Murray is not convicted, or the end result is not the best it could be then I will do my best to accept it all the same. Because acceptance is a part of grief. I am trying to accept that Michael is not coming back, and whatever happens to Murray that is not going to change that fact, and that is what is hurting me; Michael being gone.