{ Motherless Daughters } uniting those experiencing motherloss

Our Stories

Karen's Story

I'll Always Miss Her

Ruth was the maid at our family run motel. It was September 21, 1976 and my sisters and I were at her house eating lemon cookies and looking at pictures of snakes in the encyclopedia, trying to identify the one we saw on our last vacation, when I learned that my mom was never coming home. I was 9 years old. I think my sisters already knew what minutes later would be said out loud but I was the youngest and didn't understand what was happening. My mother had been brutally murdered in our home while my sisters and I were at school and my dad was at work. We came home from school that afternoon with police cars, ambulances and yellow POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape all over the area. We were told my mom had been hurt and oddly enough she had recently been in the hospital because she had been burned by spilling hot coffee on her legs. I was convinced silly mommy had spilled coffee again. With my dad still not home from work we were shuttled off to the nearest friends house, Ruth, the actual person who had found my mothers dead body a short time ago. How that woman found the strength I'll never know.

When I choose to relive that day it happens in different ways, sometimes it's like a movie in fast motion being played in my head, everything going by so quickly like I want to rush through the memory so it doesn't hurt so much, almost like, okay, I let you in now hurry up and get out. Other times I let the memories of her and that day come in and stay for a while until I feel all used up and self-pitying and sad and angry and left with a childlike feeling of wanting my mommy. I sometimes hold onto that feeling.

My father loved my mother so much so that dealing with her death was too painful to even acknowledge her so instead we pretended she never existed. On those rare occasions when she was mentioned someone would immediately start tearing up (usually my dad or me) and the conversation would abruptly end with the offender leaving the room. We had so much pain we didn't know where to put it, how to handle it, how to talk about it, it was just too overwhelming. It was easier to just pretend like we forgot her. My dad remarried a short time later (six months to be exact). It's unbelievable to me that they are still married, she was just a fix, someone to help raise his kids because he didn't know how to do it and wanted to run away from it. I don't believe at the time there was any love there..how could there be when he loved my mother completely just 6 months earlier? How could he marry her so soon but how could he go on alone?

It's been 28 years since her death and at the time the police knew who killed her but couldn't prove it so the case went cold. In 1999 I contacted the police asking if we could reopen the investigation. Due to the advancements in Forensics and DNA testing I thought it would be worth a shot. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my two older sisters had paid them a similar visit the previous year. After much persuasion on my part, a task force was assigned and within two years the man responsible was tried and eventually convicted with a sentence of 500-1000. Prior to his arrest my sisters and I had decided not to tell my dad about the investigation being reopened until we had something concrete. The reasons are two-fold, we didn't want to get his hopes up and we also still didn't want to talk to him about her. The time came when they traced the killer to Kansas City and had him in custody, they just had to extradite him back to Illinois, now was the time to tell daddy. We decided to do it all together and on a conference call, a united front! He was shocked and glad and proud of his daughters for taking this on but also feet guilty for not doing it himself. Guilt is something he still lives with on a daily basis, guilt that we had the motel in such a bad neighborhood, guilt that he didn't have a better security door put in place, guilt that he ran away from the pain and us, guilt that he got married so quickly after her death and the list goes on and on. Now, after all these years he's starting to say things to me like "Gosh I miss your mother" and "I wish things would have been different for you girls". It's hard to hear that and I'm always glad it's over the phone so he can't see my tears.

I thought things would be easier once the person responsible was caught but things only changed for a short time. I was able to talk about her, mention her name, think about her without crying (sometimes) but I think It was because I was numb from being saturated with memories of her before, during and after the trial. Now, it's back to the same...I don't think I will ever be able to think of her fondly, it's always the bad, the murder, the WHY US? and not the good. I always wonder how my life would be different if she were here...I think it would be better if I still had my mommy.

Š Karen

Ť back