Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

“I’d kill the bastard, if it was one of my kids.” I’ve heard that so many times over the past few years since my son was stabbed through the brain. I can understand it; that is precisely what I would have thought too, until it happened to one of my kids, and yet, oddly enough, that thought never entered my mind. “You’re in denial,” “It’s just the shock,” “Wait till the anger sets in…” These were a litany of comments I became used to hearing until it became, “It isn’t normal not to be angry.”

Well, normality is overrated. The truth is that when something like this happens you react to the events in your own individual way… and that may be utterly and completely different from anything you might have ever imagined.

For me, the truth seemed to be that I was too busy dealing with what was to…