A Death of Possiblity

I was recently watching something where a mother and father were talking about their daughter who had been murdered. She had been only 15, and from her parents description a sweet, caring, young woman with lots of plans for the future. Which is sad enough. But what I really thought about was what they had all lost when she had died just on the brink of adulthood.

I guess I was in my early 20s when my relationship with my parents changed from adult/child to adult/adult. I’ll always be their child, of course. My mom is always going to worry that I do the right thing. And I’ll always worry that she thinks I’m doing the right thing. My dad is always probably always going to blink a little when he suddenly looks at me and remembers that I’m not 3 feet tall. And to me he’s always going to be my big, strong Dad.

But there’s also the way that our relationship deepened when I could understand them as human beings. When I had faced some of the same challenges of adulthood on my own, and could understand more about how they had made decisions. And when they could relax more. Not worry about what they said, or having to take all the burden of situations themselves. There’s a way that you can laugh together, or discuss a problem, or even just talk about what was on the news, that’s just different; more comfortable. Not peers. But equals in a way. When I was a kid, my parents were always my parents. But now, as weird as it feels to say, they actually can be my friends too. It’s something they earned with years of parenting. Raising me to be an actual adult, and not an overgrown child. We can be easy around each other.

And that’s something that family that I saw on TV will never have. Another reason why murder is a crime that never ends.