June 12, 2024
On being a statistic …
I swore I wouldn’t write about this.
Enough people have listened to the Jeanne’s-house-was-hit story already.
I’ve talked so much about the horrible experience of finding that someone has been inside your home, rummaging through your possessions and taking things precious to you that I’m nearly talked out.
Suffice it to say, it’s a sickening feeling.
Now to the aftermath.
Once you, the victim, come to grips with the fact that you’ll probably never again see some of those cherished items like Grandmother’s engagement ring and childhood memory-laden charm bracelets, you have to deal with some pretty strong emotions.
And that’s the part that hangs around the longest.
First, and as far as I’m concerned foremost, is the anger.
Pure and simple rage.
The kind of anger that penetrates to the core, where you’ve never felt such strong feelings of violence. If the perpetrator of the burglary of my home had been brought in to face me during the initial hours of the shock, I can honestly say I wouldn’t have been responsible for what I did. There was hot fury in my heart. And it hasn’t cooled a lot in the seventy-two hours since I discovered the crime.
Friends who have had the same experience tell me it takes a long time to fade away.
The second emotion is sadness. A deep-down feeling of betrayal and violation that is really hard to put into words.
Sure, I’ve read about how victims of crime feel sullied, feel that their rights, indeed their fundamental rights to privacy and ownership have been violated, but it was impossible to truly comprehend until it happened to me.
This is my home. These are my things. This is where I live with my children!
How dare anyone intrude?
Now, whenever I open a drawer or a closet, whenever I dust over where a precious object once stood, I remember that some calloused criminal was there too.
It makes me ill to think of the things I’ve cared for and loved being tossed, like so much junky merchandise, into a grab bag for quick resale.
It makes me shudder to think I might actually know the person or persons responsible.
It makes me furious to contemplate the possibility that someone carefully planned to deprive me of things that are of value only to me.
It helps me to understand all those people whose personal horror stories I’ve listened to without fully comprehending the sense of loss, of devastation, of sadness.
Like too many before me and many who are still to experience this tragedy, I’m imagining my grandmother’s engagement ring, my stepfather’s high school class ring, my locket from Dad that was a Christmas, 1945 gift …. Those things that were part of me, melted down to provide a day’s worth of drugs for someone with no conscience, no conception of right or wrong.
Like so many before me and many who are still to come, I lie awake at night wondering how could put someone else through this kind of personal hell … for money!
And like too many before me, I’ve learned something that those who could still become victims might benefit from if they’d take heed … even though I never did.
Those valuable little things you so casually leave at home (after all it is your home!) could very easily be gone sometime when you open the front door, so for the sake of having something to bequeath to your children, keep them carefully and cleverly hidden.
You may, as I did, look at some of the things you own and think, “No one will ever take this … it’s worthless to anyone but me!”
Wrong.
Even the worthless things, the insignificant things, get swept into the loot bag when the top of a dresser is cleaned off.
Even if those things are really important only to you, the lawless members of our society couldn’t care less. They’ll be gone along with everything that can be sold.
Our homes don’t really shelter us anymore.
We’re vulnerable to those to whom one’s privacy or ownership is meaningless.
We are surrounded by people that our system is powerless to control.
Being a statistic has taught me all of this very quickly. It’s been equivalent to all the civics lessons a school could dream up.
It’s left me knowing that the law abiding are at the mercy of the lawless.
It’s left me sad and fearful.
Most of all, it’s made me angry.
All that … nothing more than the price of membership in a growing club of crime statistics.
No comments:
Post a Comment