It was May, almost, but not quite, Mother’s day. The weather was perfect, with telltale signs of good weather to come. It finally seemed as if spring was around the corner. That day, a 13 year old girl and her 11 year old brother were playing, their mother’s watchful presence nearby.

We got a phone call in the middle of that night. My parents hurriedly rushed out of the house and drove out to Pennsylvania with me in tow. I was too young to understand anything, I immediately drifted off to sleep.

It felt like I was only asleep for a few seconds when my parents gently shook me awake. I walked out of the car and saw the looming structure of a hospital in front of me. I remember worriedly wondering if my parents were sick. Luckily, they weren’t.

We walked into the hospital. The walls were eerily white, plain and devoid of any color, cleverly hiding the death in these rooms. People who looked important in scrubs and doctor’s uniforms walked purposefully around. I wondered why we were there. I glanced at my parent’s faces. Both were drawn and carefully composed.

We entered a room in which a single girl was sleeping. Blissfully unaware of her surroundings. There were tubes everywhere, a machine that carefully measured her heart rate. She looked fine, I thought, can we leave now? I tugged at my parents but to no avail. I glanced up and was surprised to see tears on their faces.

I was too little to understand what had happened. I almost didn’t even know who the girl was. They were so young.

Only through bits of information gathered through the following years was I able to figure out what had happened to the girl. She had been amazingly brave, and she had survived.

Even now, I can barely comprehend the monstrosity of the man’s actions. They had hired him, had taken him in, had even let him live with them for a few weeks. And this is what had happened. The worst part was that there was no rhyme or reason for what he had done. He didn’t even have the guts to face himself. He could not live with what he had done. Did he care about the girl? No. He was so selfish he could not live with himself, he had no guts to face his own actions and ended his own life as well.

The man had broken into the small apartment. The boy had gone first, the mother next. They were innocent. They were helpless. They were much, much too young. Finally, the girl. She felt the knife, too. But she called for help. She was so young, too young to have experienced what will be seared into her memory for the rest of her life.

The man ended two lives. Two lives that deserved to live. He snuffed out a mother and child’s life without a second thought. What’s worse? The girl saw everything. She saw her mother and little brother pass away.
Mother’s day came and went.