My eleven year old wanted to see the photograph of the kids, the kids of the mom who was killed here in Dallas in May. She knew I was writing about the murder. (mckinneymurder0012) Yesterday, the story came out and at first, she only wanted to see the pictures of the girls. But then, she began to ask what happened, how it happened, where it happened, why the police couldn’t prevent it. Whether she died at the scene or the hospital. I told her that the man who killed her, her ex-husband and the children’s father, was emotionally unstable, and became violent once his wife divorced him.
“I would have stayed with him, just so he wouldn’t do what he did,” she said.
I told her to pick well, so it wouldn’t ever get to that decision. Make sure you trust your instincts, because they are usually right. If you think something funny is going on, it probably is. If you feel uncomfortable in a group of people, get up and leave. If something looks odd on the sidewalk in front of you, cross the street. If your brain rests on some thing, some remark, some behavior, and it sits there, don’t ignore it.
“What will the kids do if the Grandma dies?” she asked.
She’d not dying, I told her. She nodded. It felt right.
Pamela Gwyn Kripke 