We are really smack up against a decision point now. We know we can survive the devastating loss of Morgan; we have done so for 10+ months. The question now is we must decide if we even want to. Do we choose to LIVE again? Not just to eke out an existence but to actually embrace life? It’s hard; part of us is still numb and asleep to the rhythms and energy of a normal life. We walk a stumbling gait, with one foot in the world of the living and the other firmly planted in the land of the dead. Eventually, soon, we will have to choose and commit to one or the other.

Our friends and family cajole, and beckon, and even bully us to return to a more normal way of living. Haven’t we suffered enough yet?  The pain quota has been met. Is it time to be happy? No. There’ is still imbalance in the equation. We cannot be breathing and have suffered as much as Morgan did. How do you wall off or neutralize the too vivid imaginings of her death throes? How do you stop superimposing the hologram of Morgan’s skull on every young face you see?

This is wrong. Morgan should be at VT, settling into her apartment for her senior year, stocking the fridge and calling Dan for money and help reconciling her check book, or maybe in line at the VT bookstore waiting to buy yet another Hokie hoodie. But she is “chapwa”, finished, no more, over. We feel finished too. You know there’s not even a word for our role. It is that aberrant, that abhorrent. Children whose parents die are called orphans. Parents whose children die have no name. They are called – nothing.

That’s what we feel. That’s what we are, nothing. Trying so hard to find a way out of this wasteland and be called survivors.

241

I am enraged and amazed by the tolerance for violence and acceptance of crimes against the weaker members of our society, women and children in America. Is it really OK? Are we still just expendable goods?

Beware! I believe the numerous injured and murdered women and children are the coal mine canaries of our times; delicate creatures whose deaths indicate a lethal toxic presence in our midst. They are a barometer of evil. Take note, hear the alarm and address the underlying problem of pervasive violence. Don’t just step over the corpse of the next lifeless golden creature and say “funny another dead bird.”

If you keep doing that, ignoring sentinel events, sooner of later the lethal emanations of violence will have fingers wrapped around your throat choking your breath away - all because you didn’t listen, turned aside, couldn’t be bothered, ignored the signals because it couldn’t happen to you. The fluttering wings of coal mine canaries in their death rigors have become deafening. Can’t you hear the clamor? Please listen, take heed, there is poison here. Find another path or risk your very lives.

Mogo – 241

Is the loss of life (and lesser valued female life at that) an acceptable, statistically insignificant loss?

Our veneer of civilization is so glossy and beguiling, anything that doesn’t comply or feel compatible with it we ignore because we don’t want to factor it in and we don’t like to dwell on unpleasantness.  In “less civilized societies” if a cobra bites or a wild dog snatches a child or a human predator strikes, the village rises up en-mass and beats the brush and bushes and searches vigorously, diligently to find and eradicate the evil that poses danger to the integrity of the community.

Here we look aside, wait for the grieving family to compose themselves, make nice and show decorum, because it makes us uneasy in our thin skinned civility to contemplate predators in our midst. The price of this strategy, of allowing acceptable levels of human loss, is that the numbers will continue to increase.  Will your wife/mother/daughter/ husband/sister/niece/son have to be part of that growing number before YOU rise up and say NO MORE!!! Primitive people with little food take up sticks and demand justice.  We more civilized folks settle back in our chairs and say “too bad, pretty girl – Next” and hit the remote button.

 2 4 1

Cyber Crime

Feeling the lash today

of those who tell us “go away”,

 Seems our story’s getting sort of stale

time to hear another tale.

 They enjoyed a vicarious thriller,

chatting about your vicious killer,

but now its old hat

so enough of that.

What I thought they came to see

was how to act with dignity

when life hits its fiercest blow,

but they want a trumped up reality show

with plots and yelling

drama most compelling.

Don’t they get that this is our life, that we live every day.

Wish I could make it go away.

Morgan you’re just as dead as you were before

pity it doesn’t interest any more

Sorry the story’s lost its cachet, but its a story we must tell

to put a killer in a cell.

So if you really want to give advise

and make snarky comments that aren’t nice

Fine, and welcome to the “game” its great.

Though the admission is pricey – its somebody’s fate.

Is it your son or your daughter you’ll throw on the plate?

241

There is a sweet agony of holding secrets/special knowledge that doesn’t matter any more: like how Morgan liked her tea and how to make the perfect soft boiled eggs she loved.; just where to scratch the nape of her neck while combing out tangles; which were her favorite jeans?, and how translucent her baby eyelids were as she nursed.

All these intimacies were woven into the fine strong cloth of our lives: but now is nothing but a snarl of thread, devoid of meaning, bits of nothing.   We must pick up that tangle, unravel the knots, and weave a new cloth.  I know it can be done; but it is slow and tedious work.

It is difficult to take up such a task when we feel so slowed and hindered by sadness.  We miss you, Morgan.  Help us find the strength to somehow encapsulate this pain and find a new way, a new life. We are moving on, not without you, but carrying you inside rather than walking beside you.

2 4 1

Early on we chose to share our story, share our pain. This was therapeutic for us in some ways; like the guy who will lift up his shirt (with little encouragement) to show his puckered surgical scar. The retelling helps integrate this massive body insult into his reality. We have told the story of Morgan’s murder at the drop of a hat for some of the same reasons. In the recitation we hear ourselves and begin to accept the unfathomable – Morgan was brutally murdered.

 The intentionality of it bothers me so. How/why could anyone hurt her? On purpose?  If someone had run over her, I would be trying to give forgiveness for a terrible accident. I know Morgan was killed deliberately. I am not in a place of withholding forgiveness. I haven’t gotten that far. My mind still cannot accept, cannot conceive of a reality where someone could actually kill.

What an abomination.

Mogo 241

Suffering. There’s plenty of it to go around though it is largely ignored and perhaps undervalued. I believe that suffering provides opportunity for strengthening and transformation. As humans we all will have moments of exquisite suffering and pain. Figuring out how to deal with it is a necessary skill. Interesting that suffering isn’t even depicted in our popular culture much. As if the only responses to tragedy are rage and dysfunction, you fight it or are broken by it. Another, more challenging, option is to incorporate the pain of suffering into the matrix of your life and use it.

If we deny that suffering occurs, how do we learn to suffer with grace? Suffering perhaps exists to tire us enough to let go of our own will and be willing to surrender to the mystery of transformation; choosing willingness, not willfulness. I cannot resist the reality of this pain. It’s foolish to even try.

Suffering is like one of the rip tides at the beach in Avon N.C. If you flail against it will whisk you off and drown you. Many go that way. To survive you must keep your wits, jettison fear and do the counter intuitive thing, go with the current. Eventually you will make it ashore, not where you began or planned to end up, but further up the beach.

2 4 1

My mind fills with a cacophony of struggle:

Why Morgan? so wrong / but it is.

Not fair, why us? / It is.

She was so fine had so much yet to give / it is.

We will never see her children, we won’t feel her soft hand on our faces as we die / it is.

Surrender sucks.

Stubbornly, insistently, incessantly I want to keep crashing against the rock of WHY?

How can this horrific murder be the destiny of Morgan Harrington? / It is.

God help us!

2 4 1

It is so silly the things that get under your skin.  In cleaning cabinets today, I discarded “Morgan items”, things that no longer have any relevance to our lives – brown sugar, she was the one who loved to mix up batches of chocolate chip cookies.  We, our family, have no need for brown sugar anymore.  I was cool with that, but sprinkles – that was hard.  How ridiculous!  With everything we have had to let go of, to mourn sprinkles leaving the kitchen cabinet.  But until it’s gone you don’t fully realize the impact, the whimsy, and the fun that a daughter brings to lighten life’s gray tones.

I know it ain’t about sprinkles; it’s about the loss of joy that Morgan brought to our existence.  We have survived Morgan’s death; but we are not sure we see the rationale/value in surviving her ongoing absence.  It looks like much work, with little joy.  It is imperative that we find a way to celebrate the life we have, even in the face of pain.  The path seems so murky though – Morgan help us find a way.

2 4 1

Flat busted and tired! Some of it is emotional; but primarily I am aware that I have overspent myself physically.  We moved some of Morgan’s apartment furnishings to Alex in New York City this week.  A 14 foot truck and Manhattan rush hour is pretty scary; then if you make it there you have to unload and carry at all up numerous stairs – a challenge to be sure.  It was worth all the effort though; because settling our remaining child comfortable and safely in his environment was balm for the soul.

Soon though, somehow we have to ratchet down the pace we are keeping; it just isn’t sustainable much longer.  All three of us are running full tilt; like dogs with a string of tin cans attached to their tail.  The cacophony scaring us to run ever faster.  We approach the end of our reserves so it’s about time to slow down and reconsider.  We need to figure out why we must run so fast? In fear? Of what? The worst has already happened.  Morgan has been murdered. Why run now?

Are we fueling this frantic pace; doing it to ourselves because it distracts us from the painful void in our lives from Morgan’s death?  Is it better to run to exhaustion than turn and face the full brunt of sadness? This method of self-distraction will bring self-destruction if we don’t rein it in.  We need some quiet and stillness to reflect on our profound loss and the sorrow we feel.

I relish the little reassuring signs that signal things will be ok, eventually. I had one as we left New York in that 14 foot truck:  bumper to bumper cars into the Lincoln tunnel, horns blaring, confusing lights and traffic patterns, and cops banging on the side of the truck.  I glanced up at the back of the semi ahead of us and saw the logo “MORGAN” right in front of our windshield. It was going to be ok.  Morgan will lead us through the Lincoln tunnel.  I sat back in the seat, stopped clutching the armrest and let out my breath; thankful to realize that even in this hole underground, despite my fear, despite all appearances, we were being let into the sunlight.

 2 4 1

It is not fair!  Life is just not fair.  When I have that reaction to Morgan’s murder I remind myself that we were never promised fairness; what we were promised though is the strength and the tools needed to overcome any obstacle.

We are developing that strength because we have been able to lean heavily on so many that we move forward.  Your family, both biologic and chosen, will always back you up; and it has made the path so much easier.

Life has always been precarious. We don’t realize the myriad disasters and catastrophes we squeak by everyday. Like the haphazard steps of a toddler stumbling around the living room narrowly missing the sharp corner on the coffee table – over and over again, sooner or later, an inevitable wrong step ends with a head bump and hurt and tears.

So it is with life; you get knocked over but don’t or can’t resign yourself to stay with crawling because walking is too dangerous.  We are programmed in the fiber of our being to get back up and try again. I think of it as tropism of the soul: we keep turning towards the light. It is what we are meant to do.

I reject brokenness in our life.  I acknowledge a broken heart but am determined that shattering will only open this heart to more love.  We honor Morgan, not with withered lives, but through glorious triumphant flowering.

2 4 1  Can we do it?

Morgan, we cocooned you in love for 20years – was it enough?  Did we manage to cram a life’s worth into that short allotment?

I feel cheated and pretty pissed off that we were robbed of the joy of your presence for the rest of our lives.  It is selfish I know, we wanted you here with us until we up and died; but fate turned the tables on that scenario.  How can it be?

The vestiges of you that we rejoice in are getting fainter.  I go into your room to conjure you up and try to sniff your scent from t-shirts. Even your closet is loosing the essence of Morgan and smells disappointing, flat, sort of generic now. I guess empty is the right word.

The tangible Morgan dissipates and yet the connection persists. Selfishly, I am not content with a monologue.  Morgan give us something, anything, to break through the barrier.  We are all wishing for something, a big sign from you.  Morgan, how about putting the 2 4 1 dots on the moon for a night?  Just once!

2 4 1

Perspective sometimes flows along smoothly and other times chinks and jumps like gears on a tank. We had that little click of perspective change this week with Morgan’s car.

Until recently, seeing Morgan’s car parked in the driveway was a comfort for us; a comfort with a few barbs to be truthful. I’d drive up and the reflexive lift,” Oh, Morgan is home” was nice, but too quickly followed by the reality that no, she is not and never will be here again. Even so, it was good to see Morgan’s car here for 9 months. It gave us a sense that things were where they should be.

These are the games you play with yourself. “Its OK – everything is in its right place, oh yeah, except your daughter, but not to worry. Every other thing is exactly where it should be.” It only took 9 months, 2 jumps, and 1 battery replacement for me to get it. All right, I can let go of this too.

It makes us sad, another piece of Morgan to let go of. Now we have an empty driveway to go with the empty bedroom upstairs. Rather than sit in that sorrow we have gifted Morgan’s car in a way that will lift and transform another.

Perhaps it is evidence of healing that we are able to tune in again to the wisdom of flow and be willing to relinquish things that have served their purpose. Are we supposed to extrapolate from this some insight about Morgan and the meaning her life?  She came; she lived, and left after she had fulfilled her purpose?  A wedge to open us up and unravel our tangles and then knit us back together into new tighter more complex and intricate cloth?

241

Dearest Mokie, this was a weekend to be remembered, memories to cherish. Not the manner of celebrating your 21^st birthday that I had ever anticipated, but unexpectedly wonderful and joy filled regardless.

Erin, little Erin, masterfully orchestrated the Morgan Harrington Memorial Golf Tournament. It was fun and crazy and hot as blazes and it rained and that didn’t matter a bit. There was great food and gorillas and cake (Papa thanks you much) and a bubble machine and tears and Morgan, love permeated every moment. Papa careened around Hanging Rock Golf Course in a cart desperately searching for the turn signal and/or cruise control. I quickly gave up my co-pilot seat when I realized he wasn’t really clear that it was not a bumper car. Another new place you have taken us to.

Your memorial at the bridge in Charlottesville had balloons and more cake, and prayers and laughter and I lay on the sidewalk after and did the ugly cry and stroked the pictures of your face. Somehow that spot has the feeling of sacred ground to us now.

Our neighborhood had that sacred aspect as we looked out at the 21 luminaries around our yard that loved ones had placed in your memory. Dan crawled back into bed after a 4am Kirby pit stop and nudged me to report “Morgan’s birthday candles are still burning bright”.

And you did my little Morgan; you burned so bright and shiney. Perhaps such incandescence is only meant to last for a short while.

I don’t understand the place we live now. The tsunami of love we have received in the last few days leaves us breathless and humble.  If we can find enough faith to let this flow over us and not block it, the fact that you were, that Morgan Harrington lived, will really change the world.

An amazing meteor ride you are taking us on, as you leave Morgan.  We are holding tight. Take us where you will.  Love abides.

2 41

Today is the golf tournament to benefit the building of the Morgan Harrington Educational Wing at OMNI Village in Zambia, Africa.  Such a courageous and clever triumph over darkness to continue to wrestle good out of Morgan’s tragic death.

Because of events like this, Morgan’s life has created a legacy of goodness that continues to impact the world.  To be truthful, Morgan’s posthumous achievements may actually supersede what she was likely to accomplish if she had been allowed to live. Ironic isn’t it?

As a parent I am so grateful, so happy, that Morgan’s murderer has not been able to erase her completely from the world.  Morgan chose a profession in education and she will, in fact, be part of educating and teaching many.  Morgan Harrington will not be a poster child for rape, abduction and murder.  Instead, Morgan will be remembered as a catalyst for teaching and care given to deserving students in the United States and Africa, as well.  We are so grateful to all who have helped us snatch this treasure out of the ashes of our Morgan.

2 4 1

What is compelling about loss is that we know that everyone will at some time be challenged by its touch.  Folks are looking for a road map, not answers per se, but the suggestion of a route to take, to traverse that rough terrain when their turn inevitable comes up.

When disaster like Morgan’s murder occurs, your life is shattered.  You become addled and disoriented. Logic and experience no longer point to a direction you can follow.

That is precisely the place where you can either choose to break or surrender.  When you are so overwhelmed by grief that you throw it in and yield.  This is the point where transfiguration and grace happens.

If I have any advice or wisdom to pass along to others confronting devastating loss, it would be to surrender to this mystery of faith more easily than I have done. I have stubbornly clung to my charade of control and wrestle often with “why” and “how can it be?”

I find my bearings and comfort only when I step on the fragile tenuous platform of my faith.  Persistently returning to the knowledge that God is in this experience somewhere. Only good can come from this because God is here.  Trust that God’s plan is good. Surely the presence is in this place, love is in this place, healing is in this place; renewal and growth are in this place.

I am finding a path though I still have a long way to go.  I can sense that I have grown, not grateful for the experience yet, but finding some acceptance. Life is intended for good.  Don’t succumb to doubt and fear. God will take care of us. This may not be what we wanted but something good will come from it and has come from it.

2 4 1

Re-entry from our week at the beach has been hard. You can loose yourself in the vastness of the sea and drown the memories that fight for attention. Since returning we have all been on the skids, not sure exactly why. Could be that the cumulative grief load has finally grown into an incapacitating, crippling mass.

I have lost some of the emotional equilibrium that I had gathered and find myself again rapidly cycling several times a day. At moments I’m standing on a shaky platform of OK and then am seized by despair. Today’s trigger was walking into a store featuring back to school/decorate your dorm stuff. It took my breath away. Had to jettison my list and leave.

It’s not that I begrudge others the pleasure of this nesting and planning, rather its that it brings floods of memories of how Morgan and I planned and shopped to launch her into her “grown up” life at VT. Hopes and dreams for Morgan’s life were ended by a savage murder.

I watch young fresh faced girls and their mamas searching for the perfect set of sheets for college. My experience of that shared activity is tainted by my overlay, because my memory is of cutting Morgan’s perfect college sheets off her bed and bagging them as scent items for dogs. That thought cascade pulls me right back down again into the rabbit hole of WHY?

It’s a tough place we’ve been forced into, an ugly world of sadness /death/ DNA/ and murder. This is where Morgan’s death has taken us and so we must follow as well as we can. We are able to soldier on because  the love, support, and prayers of many holds us up. The past 9 months have been full of uncertainty and darkness but we seek to give birth to truth and to find answers, not for retribution but to protect the next girl. I’m not looking for satisfaction. What I’m after is safety, so that another precious life is not ended by this evil.

241

Back from the beach trip. It was our first vacation without Morgan.  It was hard, especially for Dan.  Both of them shared a love of the surf and waves and would stay immersed for hours.  I miss seeing them play in the waves laughing.  I miss watching freckles bloom on her nose.  I miss anointing pinked sunburned skin with Noxzema.  I miss combing out her tangled hair. I miss sand in the bed.  I miss Morgan.

As you can see my surrender and submit got up and went.  I am back, stuck in the whys and what ifs and have lost my “it is” perspective. Suffering has unmoored and set us adrift at sea; a sea of tears whose very salinity will give us the buoyancy we need to stay afloat.

I don’t love where we are but still believe that we have an opportunity to learn from the master teacher, pain, if only we can survive the lesson.

 2 4 1

The beach helps you simplify.  Each day you carry less stuff over the dunes realizing you can do without.  Dressing becomes a matter of choosing the driest tee shirt.  This simplification process forces me to let go of distractions and absorb the lessons hiding in front of me.

I thought I had gotten the beach insight already.  Several years ago when my sister was dying we were here and I wanted to bring Jackie one perfect shell from the beach she would never walk.

The Outer Banks is rough surf in the cross hairs of several opposing currents.  Finding perfect whole shells in this turbulence is rare.  So I gave up on the quest for a perfect shell for Jackie and instead saw the beauty and value in what was there; hidden in plain sight, weathered shells with holes in them.  These weathered shells started a long tradition of ankle bracelets for the beach crew.  We collect the shells that have been worn through with holes and add a bead or two and tie them on ankles all around.  I get a kick out of seeing these conservative, medical, button down types adorned so with shells and beads.  I love watching the shells we wear appear lighter as legs tan and cares lessen.

I have received that lessen but apparently I am suppose to take it even further.

There is yet another step on the way to becoming, that I see here in the surf.  Tides and waves and weather beat the shells into fragments, relentlessly pounding them until they are so broken that they are not discernable as shells at all.

That’s when it gets cool and magic happens.  Given time, the ragged shards of lives that were are ground so fine that they became the beach itself.  The sand we walk on is composed of minute fragments of shells.  It is not a graveyard but a place of stark beauty and a refuge for new lives and creatures to start their journey.  Morgan is in this mix.  We strive to see and accept the lessons and the gifts offered here.

2 4 1

Walking on the beach in North Carolina,

Blue crabs,

Snake skin seaweed,

Horseshoe crab fragments

Cicada’s split – celluloid shells,

Many things change their skin, not because the skin is worn out, or they want a different color but because of growth.  Those organisms got bigger and had to transform and accommodate for change.  It is a painful, slow, unfailingly difficult process, struggling out of your carapace. Once you wiggle out of the bonds of old skin, you are fragile, naked and soft; vulnerable to injury from even slight handling.

This is where we are.

Unsteady and unsure of our surroundings after the transformative journey we have been thrust into because of Morgan’s murder. These new skins function to hold us together well enough.  Over time they will toughen and harden and protect us as well.  Until then we must be cautious knowing that even inadvertent slight impacts can injure us in our softened weakened stage of transformation.

We are fearful and reluctant of the many changes Morgan’s death has created in our lives – but have faith and determination that we are in fact growing and will be alright, eventually.

2 4 1

We are at the beach in North Carolina, a long standing tradition; 31 years for Dan, and a chance to reconnect with family, both biologic and chosen.

It is early yet; we have only been here for 24 hours.  Our friends still feel a bit awkward with us.  They do not quite know how to interact with our triangulated family; to speak of Morgan or not?  Which action would bring the most pain?  There is no definite answer.  Both choices bring pain and so we perform a funny dance wandering around the place where our shiny golden girl would have been, lighting up the room.

We are indebted to those who love us and who loved Morgan, to enter into this sorrowful, uncomfortable place with us.  They help us find our way to a new normal, and new traditions.  Synthesis is tough. 

We want what we had, but it is no more.  We have been forced to move on; sometimes kicking and screaming, and occasionally with eager anticipation to move forward and make a life.  At least we           still have a life- unlike our precious Morgan.

2  4  1

I have spent a lot of time these last 8! months contemplating secrets. Some secrets are information intentionally withheld; other secrets are hidden by happenstance or coincidence. A tricky one is the secret we keep from ourselves because we kind of see it but know it is ugly and cannot bear to confront it – yet.

A really great way to conceal something and keep it secret is to hide it in plain sight. I did this often with Morgan and Alex’s gifts at Christmas. The kids were masters at searching out presents that I had carefully hidden and squirreled away. Eventually, I learned that the best place to hide secret things is in plain sight where they could be easily overlooked, seemingly obvious spots where they blended in and their edges were a little blurry but not fully hidden or obscured. Those definitely were the most successful hiding places.

This is just how the murderer(s) in Charlottesville are escaping detection, by hiding in plain sight. They are a little off, their edges blurred, but they are passable if you only glance quickly and then look away. When a predator is walking among you, hiding in plain sight, you cannot be so inattentive. You must be alert and aware and really evaluating everyone around you. Always have an exit strategy in place. When the hairs on your neck raise and your skin starts to crawl take note, get out, call the police, and we’ll have him.

I believe that secrets have a season, like fruit. The secret of who killed Morgan Harrington is ready to be plucked and broken open. It is so cloyingly over ripe that it is starting to smell.

2 4 1

Note to a monster:

Listen up, there is karma or fate or destiny. Evil may rule for a while, but eventually, inevitably, without fail, the pendulum swings and your reign will be over. I’m ready. Your clock is ticking down. Any time now, good will prevail.

I understand this in a visceral way, just like I understand you. We are obscenely linked opposite mirror images. I created Morgan’s life force and birthed her. You destroyed that life and murdered her. I felt her first faint fetal movements. You felt her final death rigors. I knew Morgan as an embryo. You knew her as a corpse.

That corpse will not rest. Morgan wants justice. I hear her whispering in the ears and softening the hearts of those who help you hide. They don’t like what you’ve become. Your call to violence has become a blood lust and you are a monster. They grow frightened, knowing the truth will out. A day of reckoning is coming!

Morgan 2 4 1

Morgan accomplished so much in her short life and had attained an impressive level of insight and maturity. Part of that growth occurred because Morgan had found her mentor/master teacher at VT, the elegant, talented Jane Lillian Vance.

Most of us need a mentor to inspire and guide us to order the chaotic thoughts and emotions of youth into a disciplined philosophy of living. I am so grateful that because of Ms. Vance, Morgan had experienced that quickening into maturity before she was murdered. It makes it somehow more acceptable, comforting, to me to think that Morgan had gotten what she needed and was “ready” to move on. We were not finished with her, but she was in a sense finished. A completed work, Morgan didn’t need any more lessons here.

Jane’s generosity to Morgan continues. The dedication of the film “A Gift for the Village” to the memory of Morgan Harrington is a huge tribute to our daughter; as is the transportation of Morgan’s essence on Jane’s current journey to Nepal.

It is staggering to see that Morgan’s spirit has gone as far as Zambia and now Nepal and beyond. This is a silver lining of sorts in the untimely death of a sacrificial lamb. The conceptual part of Morgan’s essence and her love persists, ever growing and disseminating, while her tangible, slaughtered, discarded body disintegrates into nothing.

Is this how love transcends and conquers all?

2 4 1

I am dancing around the realization that I have allowed the shadow of Morgan’s death to obscure much of the joy and reverence in my daily life. It is hard to dispel the darkness, but am I honoring our shiny girl with this pervasive gloom? I think not.

Every day we are alive is a gift (Just ask Morgan). Notice it, give thanks, plug back into the gratitude/positive circuit. Count the blessings as they present.

Because of the torrent of kindness and generosity we have received we remember that goodness will prevail and life is worth living. We reap such love from our community in the midst of pain that we believe and somehow continue on. Thanks to so many who carry us.

2 4 1

Mourn no mo

For Mogo

You don’t stoppa

Being a girl’s papa

Just coz she’s dead

Get that outa your head

Your daddy chore

Has expanded more

No longer tending boo boo knee

Now you’re creating legacy

Of goodness

And kindness

And strength

For the world to see

While still parenting Alex and partnering me

Bless you for all the fathering you’ve done

For our precious daughter, our precious son

Your ability

And constancy

Continue to amaze

Even in these hardest days

That I never thought would be ours to live

We must still have more to give

I promise that we’ll find a way

To resurrect joy someday

 241

 fathers day 2010

ALEX AND MORGAN’S LETTER TO DAN

So because Morgan is unable to wish you Happy Fathers Day I will do it for both of us. I know this has been the hardest year of our lives.  We have all been dealt a blow that will forever change who we are and our family dynamic.  Throughout this entire experience you have been the rock upon which we have all built some sense of normalcy.

You have been husband, protector, banker , sounding board, computer whiz, media commentator, lobbyist, doctor, and friend.  Look at all the hats that you have been forced to wear through this experience that are all an extension of FATHER.  You have allowed yourself to feel the grief of Morgan’s loss more than anyone and shown Mom and me that it is okay to let down your guard and feel this immeasurable pain.  You have been a model that in spite of or perhaps because of this aching that we all feel you can still face the world and work even harder, and do so with dignity and honor.

I want you to know that Morgan LOVED YOU more than anything. I remember Morgan coming up this summer and her raving about you after working at Carilion.  She was so proud of you and impressed by how vital you were to the company.  Morgan got to add this expereince to her understanding and respect for you that allowed her to appreciate you even more.  Morgan lived everyday of her life knowing that her poppa loved her and would do anything for her which is more than many people can say.    

She is in a better place now beyond pain and her love and spirit will continue to give you strength and help you through the difficulties left in her wake.  Even though she is gone you will always be a father of TWO children who you always did your best to understand and support.  Know that I am loving you now for the both of us and when you need the same support and understanding you have always given I am here.  

Happy Fathers Day 2010

love,

Alex and  Morgan

Dan and I went to Charlottesville yesterday to acknowledge the passing of 8 months since Morgan’s abduction/murder. We are getting so tired of beating this drum – trying to incite vigilance in the Charlottesville community where a psychopathic murder still walks.

This killer enjoys violence. He has worked his way up to the top of the predator food chain, killing humans for sport. The exhilaration and power he seeks through murder will not easily be satisfied by lesser crimes. If not caught, he will re-offend, hurt/kill someonelse’s daughter.

That belief makes me frantic for an arrest. Not a quest for justice, or closure, or even punishment, but so that some other sweet girl be spared his blood lust.

That’s a hell of a motivator. Even if we’re tired, even if people think we should get over it and go away, we persist. It is too late for Morgan, but I can’t give up on the next girl.

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All 3 of us are struggling. We know Morgan is dead as we have peered into her empty eye sockets and felt the rough dry edges of her ribs. Despite those stark memories, little wisps of fantasy or denial persist. A tiny part of me feels as if the last 8! months have been a giant farce, a macabre game of hide and seek. This can’t be real. If I count to ten on base and say “All in come free, free, free” Morgan will materialize from some ingenious hiding place and life will go back to normal. 

I know that won’t happen though, can’t happen. There is no going back. But I’m not loving the new normal. It’s too hard, so II don’t really want to move forward. I’m just stuck. What to do? I hope that time works its magic and things sort themselves out somehow. I pray for the peace to accept the unfathomable reality that someone could actually kill our Morgan. 

I wish it was me.

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Evil does exist and life can be savage at times. Despite that, I know love will persist and goodness continues. I hold fast to this truth as I stumble in sadness and fear, knowing my sight will acclimate to the darkness soon and I’ll learn to navigate this shadow land with ease.

I wish I could hurry the process along. I yearn for ease and a lightening of our burden. But grief has its own clock and doesn’t seem to care about my time frame at all. I believe healing could occur more readily if I got out of the way and allowed it to unfold.

My knee jerk is to meet a problem with strength, shoulder it, attack it, wrestle it, oppose it. Regrettably, there’s no dominating Death or her sister Grief. I want to be a force for good, but realize that force is impotent here. To process Morgan’s death in a healthy way I must develop a whole new survival skill set based on submission and surrender. Dan will confirm that those attributes are pretty foreign to my character.

Am being forced to change and grow and yield? I hope my pigheaded resistance will be short lived and I learn to stop throwing myself against the rock and instead flow around it. Intellectually, I understand, but my anguished heart still can’t stop screaming WHY?

My little Mogo, 241

Suffering is a call to change pain into wisdom and compassion; an opportunity for transformation and growth. I get that, but understanding it and living it are two different propositions. I see the way. I have to let go of my stuff; my plans and surrender. Just give it over and let it be what it will. Accept the life we have been given and find the goodness in it. I know this surrender is the only way to survive the tragedy of Morgan’s death. I think I am actually doing it at times, but the mind is tricky.

Without my even realizing it, resistance and backward thinking start to creep into my head. Internally I replay all the what ifs, why us, its so unfair, and in an instant I am right back at square one in a puddle of self pity - its indulgent and not helpful.

As a nurse, when I give an injection, I try to position the arm so the muscle is relaxed. I explain to the patient not to tense the muscle as I enter the skin to minimize pain at the injection site. This is the key; to soften to the piercing of pain. Don’t resist. Accept the pain. If you can, even embrace the pain, engulf it, and allow it to pass through you. Use it. Be opened by it, more connected and more compassionate to our shared vulnerabilities and weakness.

This is a hard lesson, but I’m motivated by knowing that the fellow who doesn’t listen and really tenses up his arm during an injection often ends up having to get stuck again.

 2 4 1

Sorrow is an untamed dog, at times fawning and at others fierce. Sorrow has sharp teeth. It likes to take up your arm with a soft mouth and then lay the pinpoints of its teeth on your skin. Barely piercing the membrane, hardly hurts at all, just to remind you that it’s there and that sorrow knows no master. Other times sorrow chews and gnaws relentlessly abrading away protective tissue. On occasion, and more often than I like, sorrow erupts like a savage beast and rips and tears at the flesh of our composure.

We bear the scars of many such encounters with sorrow and grief. I choose to see these scars as beautiful, evidence of our survival and perseverance. A scar represents the body’s phenomenal ability to heal after wounds and if you grow one it is a badge of honor and you are one of the lucky ones who have survived and transcended injury.

Morgan suffered mortal blows. No scars there. We are hurting and healing and will never rest until justice prevails and this Charlottesville killer is taken off the streets.

Survival is good. A start. Will joy ever emerge again?

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We don’t cry for the dead. We cry for ourselves, our pain, our loss, our grief. Seems like a self-indulgent activity and leaves us drained and spent. So stop it. Why cry? Instead we should cling to routine and pretense praying that it will hold us until gaps open in this wall of pain.

Hoping that eventually tiny root hairs of normal will sprout and anchor.

With luck, normalcy will grow enough to crack the immense wall of hurt. I know it will never erode into nothingness, but I’m going to try so hard to grow all over that pain. Germinate and smother it like Kudzu. Obliterating its shape and for with a dense verdant covering. Maybe then we’ll feel all right.

241

Our beautiful shiny original, out of the box girl, is now firmly in the box, on our coffee table. Our time together has ended, an ending, but not THE END. Now we have to figure out how to proceed, to move forward in a positive way. Its tricky to keep yourself open enough to recognize and allow goodness to unfold.

I had a nice burst of joy this weekend when I recognized some calling cards from Morgan. Alex and I spent a long and unsuccessful day apartment hunting. As we entered the last place on the list I noticed a string of tattered prayer flags flapping on a fence nearby, but the apartment was just dreadful. We walked away and had a conversation about how we both were waiting for a “communication or a calling card” from Morgan. Maybe the prayer flags, (which Morgan loved and hung in her space at home and at VT) meant nothing.

We walked on and watched two small children playing on the sidewalk ahead of us laughing and squealing in the sun. As we got closer we saw that their excitement centered on a small contraption at the curb that was cranking out clouds of bubbles. A bubble machine! The only other bubble machine I have ever seen was at Morgan’s funeral/celebration.

We proceeded down the block and a man came out of a realty office caring a sign: Apartments, Apartments, Apartments. We stopped. The agent took us directly to a phenomenal place and we made the deposit.

In a span of 15 minutes- prayer flags, bubble machine, rental. I get it. Thank you Morgan.

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PERSONAL AD –

MORGAN DANA

HARRINGTON

 Beautiful, smart, funny

20 year old female, single

college student.

Metallica fan, murder victim

 I.S.O. JUSTICE/ARREST/

CONVICTION

 Call VSP with information

On Morgan’s case @

434-352-3467

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We returned yesterday from out of town. It was difficult to leave the refuge of our home for several days. Being away seemed to open vulnerabilities in me. Just didn’t manage to compose myself and protect myself in the usual way, perhaps because I had less control, less predictability, or just didn’t know how to read the cues in a different environment. 

I found myself ambushed by anguish and tears at unexpected moments: at dinner, in an elevator, even at the airport. I am surprised to be falling apart in this way so many months after Morgan’s murder. Shouldn’t it be getting better?   

Ironically if was also hard to return home to Roanoke. Our sense of sanctuary here has been shattered. I guess we will never feel totally safe again anywhere. That’s one of the ways we have been changed by our encounter with evil.

That violation makes us feel more fragile and act more cautiously. I check the doors and windows more often now. I rarely open them to catch the morning breeze and I draw the blinds early against the night’s blackness. I wonder if this will improve after the arrest of Morgan’s killer(s). I hope so; I don’t want to contemplate the rest of our lives colored with fear.

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Part of the struggle with connecting to joy is the guilt, for even wanting it or considering joy a reasonable possibility or a right? How could we find pleasure when you are finished: never to feel anything again?  Somehow I must accept that it is OK for me to live, even though you are dead. That is a tough one.

It is difficult to let go of all the plans, dreams and assumptions I didn’t even know I had made about the future and you being part of it.   Morgan, I miss you my sweet girl.  We are all trying but this is so, so hard. I say the proper answer when asked, “Yes, I am OK” or even say I’m doing fine.  None of us are really fine, OK is a stretch; but we put on a mask everyday.  Hoping that, eventually pretence trickles away and it really does start to feel ok. 

We are grappling and wrestling with transformation.  What an impasse.  Reluctant to let go of the lives we were planning to live, but that no longer exist.  Unwilling to move into the lives we have been given.  Paralysis? Or is it a necessary hiatus that will allow us to grow into theses new skins?

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As a family we are taking on water. Valiantly trying, but sinking nonetheless because we have lost the joy of being.

We have the work component down in spades. We do the work to sustain each other. The work to fulfill our roles in the community. The work of our jobs. We are prodigious taskers. The work gives us direction.

But 7 months in, we are all coming up against- why bother? What does it matter?

I know a steady diet of only work won’t sustain us. We need a reason to keep moving forward. The joy of living, but we don’t really feel OK with joy right now. It is kind of like we think feeling joy is selling out on Morgan; but we know that if we don’t find it we will sell out on life itself.

Dan and I have always had an undercurrent of lightness and fun between us. We revel in our relationship. But this is such a hard, hard place. We need that little circuit of joy, however we can’t see past our poor dead Morgan. The empty room, the neatened closet, all flat. Even her car has died. (Need to call for a jump.) We all need a jump-start, Morgan’s car, Dan, Alex, and me. Get some energy flowing so we can start moving forward again.

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Maybe they are starting to get it. To listen to the clamor of voices that ask for/demand acknowledgement and justice for the crimes against them.

I love the “white ribbon campaign against violence” to be distributed at graduation at UVA this week. There must be more attention given to violence on campus, and 25 thousand white ribbons is an awful lot of stuff to sweep under the rug.

Kent State, 4 dead changed the direction of the nation. At UVA 6 dead, nothing. How can this be? Here in Virginia we literally are having kids heads placed at our feet and we do….nothing?

One factor sociologists use to evaluate the development of a culture is to assess how that group cares for its women and children. Your statistics on this don’t look good. Parents send their precious children to college to gain skills for life; not to have their lives snatched away.

A prestigious degree is nice, but we as parents need to factor into the cost of that prestigious degree, will our kid make it out alive?

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It has been seven months since Morgan was abducted, raped, and murdered. Still no resolution! We find some comfort in having recovered her body; knowing is better than not knowing and trying to “fill in the blanks”.

We are getting more frantic.  Not for answers, we have our answer – Morgan is dead.  The incidentals of how he did it, or why he did it, don’t really matter.  What DOES matter is that he is still out there.  This wasn’t his first assault against a woman.  He worked up to the crime of murder- but he is there now!  Somewhere in the back of his mind he is figuring out another dump site – like Anchorage farm – just in case.  So when the next opportunity presents itself, he is ready.

I feel him, he is smug, he got away with it – again.  Secrets don’t keep forever. So far the only breaks we have gotten are Morgan’s bones – but the truth will out, in its own time, and our time is coming, it just has to be. If he is lucky, he will only be doing time.

Charlottesville, cough up this predator, those that know need to speak before he acts again.

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The official response to violence on campus is kind of like the response of some authorities to 9/11. They were directing folks back into the buildings – unable to even conceive of a world where such an atrocity could occur. Acts of violence bigger and more lethal than had been seen before. The world has changed.

Another incident changed our assumptions about violence in schools, Columbine. The world has changed.

There has been a cluster phenomena of hideous violence in Virginia at both VT and UVA. The world has changed. You have been placed in a position where you can be prime movers on the forefront of devising an effective response strategy, or you can keep directing your students back into the burning building. Business as usual and squander more lives as well as an opportunity for greatness.

Virginians are reluctant to give up traditions, but the tradition and culture that tolerates violence in your midst must be addressed. The world has changed. 

 2 4 1

I am disturbed by the reign of indifference and the culture of complacency about violence on campus, particularly at UVA. This most recent murder of a student in Charlottesville is being attributed to a breakdown in communication. That is simply blame shifting. What has occurred, again, is a breakdown in the policy of acceptance and the system of enabling that allows violence and assaults to occur unchecked.

Over the years many students’ lives have been devastated by predatory acts on campus. It’s a new day and our world is experiencing an escalation of violence everywhere- and on campuses now lives are being lost, not just disrupted. The body count is rising. When will that number be significant enough to provoke real, substantive, thoughtful introspection and accountability, not just platitudes that support the status quo?

It is a new day. It is a time for a different response. Ugly, tragic, violent things have happened in your community to precious young lives, on your watch. It is time to do the honorable thing and NOT turn aside.

 2 4 1

I was the recipient of much extra love and support yesterday on Mother’s Day. Folks anticipated that I might have a tough time as I relinquished my role as mother to Morgan. But, I haven’t done so yet- and the day was really fine.

Mothering has always involved caring for, not just caring about my kids. The multitude of tasks I do for my family are manifestations of love and caring and I have enjoyed them as such. Brushing out tangles from Morgan’s long hair, packing lunches, hot banana bread, filling up her gas tank, mountains of laundry, these Mother’s chores are a daily, tangible, and practical demonstration of my love.

I cannot surrender my role as mom to Morgan just yet. That day will come and I know I will mourn the closing of that part of my life. But right now my job of parenting and protecting is not done, Morgan is asking for, demanding the biggest task ever: find her murderer.  I still have work to do for my little girl.

As long as this last obligation remains, I hold fiercely to my role as Morgan’s mom. When she has justice I will concede to being mother of one, but not one second before.

241

Mogo

My heart is so heavy. I am overwhelmed by the violence and negativity. What is happening to our world?  In 2010 we should be working to establish respect, or maybe cherish, between people. Yet we are stuck, still battling for basic safety- please don’t hurt me, again!

The reign of indifference and the culture of complacency that provides the breeding ground for this festering violence is a formidable obstacle to change. Not sure I have it in me to stand against such an entrenched and strong status quo. Thought I only had to take on Morgan’s killers, not the system that created them.

I pray for strength. I pray for direction. Not proud of those please, please prayers, but please. 

Mogo-241

My reserves are further stressed this week by closing out Morgan’s apartment in Blacksburg. Mine to do, I know. Both an honor and a most taxing obligation. I really liked the chance to have my hands in the mix of her life one last time. To read all Morgan’s scrawled lists and post- its everywhere. She was so busy, so many plans to do and accomplish. Smell her t-shirts. Shake my head over impossibly high-heeled shoes and tattered, ratty sneakers.

We had moved her into that apartment such a short time ago, with such hopes and plans for her future. Morgan had such a wonderful, rich, together life. Just devastating that someone could end it all, end her very life with his hate and depravity.

As I sift and sort Morgan’s things, some of my inner dialogue is ridiculous, even to me. I’m trying to figure out what to keep and what to discard. All feels precious because it has an association to Morgan, but it is overwhelming and not practical to keep it all. So I find myself asking, how many shirts does a dead girl need in her closet? What’s the rule of thumb/protocol for this aberrant reality we live in?

I realize there’s no rule. The gauge is me. How much is enough so that when I open her closet or drawer I can get a sense of her, but not so many empty things and NO Morgan that I am undone. It’s a delicate compromise to find just where the zone of comfort is for us. Where memory cues remind us of our precious daughter, but not so intensely that we are engulfed and drown in the loss once more.

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Returning from the other side of the world is always difficult. You are tired and jet lagged and regardless try to jump right back into a full schedule. I was prepared for that challenge. What I was not prepared for was being back at square one with my grief for Morgan. It was like her murder had just happened, the rawness and the pain shocking in intensity.

Before I left for Zambia I had managed to find a place of some peace and equilibrium, fragile though it was. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed, bombarded by the obscenity of our loss anew. How could someone have brutally murdered our shiny wonderful girl?  How could this have happened to her? To us?

I felt besieged, attacked. Even small things grated. Photos of Morgan that I had previously found refuge in, her sweet face all around our house, now a reproach not comfort. “Why me? You didn’t keep me safe. He walks free and I am only dust in your hands.” The unfairness and the waste of her great promise just infuriating.

I guess I need some time. Time to make all the bargains and adjustments necessary to cushion this mortal blow to our family- again. Time to relinquish all the dreams and plans, the assumptions about a future- again.

I am tired. It is tempting to give up, but I am not so flat busted that I can allow his evil to go unchecked. Will dig deep. I can find tomorrow at least, sure of that much.

241, My little Mogo.

A few days after arriving in Zambia, the OMNI team held a clinic at Kasango, a community half an hour from Ndola. Wound care is my station, but I wasn’t particularly busy, so I was asked to accompany a little 10-month baby girlnamed, Gift Pasella, to the hospital. Our pediatrician had examined Gift and found her significantly dehydrated and febrile and wanted the child admitted for IV hydration and malaria treatment. We gave a dose of Panadol for fever and I got on the bus with Gift and family.

Ten minutes into the ride the baby grew more lethargic, stopped whimpering and her breathing got erratic. Our driver is tearing over the unpaved road as fast as he can. I’m urging him to go faster as I watch terror spread over the Mama’s face and watch the baby’s tiny fingers turn dusky then white as pearls. She stopped breathing altogether several times. I was unwrapping her from the Mother’s sling and pouring water over her to cool her down. Praying “Please, please not this little one too. Oh god why?”

We did get to the hospital. The baby died shortly thereafter.

I am still working on how to process this. It does give me some perspective though. I have felt cheated to have had Morgan for only 20 years. I doubt that her Mama was even 20 and she only had her child for 10 months. A dramatic reminder that life of whatever duration should be celebrated exactly as this baby was named, a gift.

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The medical clinics are controlled chaos. So many folks come out for the only western medical care many will receive in a year. Our OMNI clinics served 500+ patients per day. We provide physicians, a full pharmacy, lab testing, and wound care. When possible we distribute rice/salt/beans during the clinics. This food distribution requires armed guards as crowd control because there is such desperation and need.

There is such a kaleidoscope of colors and faces, (and for me in wound care, legs and feet), screaming babies, noise, flies and it’s hot. The team jells quickly and becomes focused and determined to do as much as we possibly can to help these impoverished and deserving people.

Some villages are doing better than others. You look out at the triage line of about 600 people and note that half of them have shoes, that’s a good sign. You note the kids’ hair is mostly dark, not red from protein depletion or patchy with scabies infestation, another good sign. Then there are communities where almost no one has shoes, the kids are dressed in clothing tattered into ribbons and their protruding bellies are full of worms not food.

The rains were just ending so malaria is on the upswing. Bobble headed, glassy-eyed babies are limp in the arms of grandmothers. These elders now are primary caregivers because of a missing parental generation, ravaged by HIV/AIDS. So many wasted faces, young and old alike, with sunken temples and cheekbones like knife blades.   

 2 4 1

The ONMI medical team trip to Zambia was intense and transformative as it always is. We work so hard. Our team of 16 saw close to 4000 patients in 11 days! We see so many and so much that it is a bit disorienting. Then we get on a plane for a 26+ hour journey back to the USA and try to make sense of it all.

From the beginning: After arriving in Ndola, Zambia we went directly from the airport to the OMNI Village site. The 156 students at the school had been waiting to welcome us for hours in the hot sun. The kids line up, oldest to youngest, boys and girls separately. All so proudly wearing their school uniforms. They welcome us singing and chanting in Bemba and English. A particularly moving line in a song is “OMNI feeds us so we may live and shows what love is about”. And we do. The 1 meal per day that OMNI furnishes our 156 students is fundamental to their health and growth and creates a zone of safety for them that allows for focus and learning to occur. These kids are being educated to help them break out of a bare subsistence existence and become leaders in their community and their country.

The ground breaking for the Morgan Harrington Educational Wing has started. This facility will allow us to add grades 7, 8, 9 to our program. I am thrilled to have Morgan be a fundamental part of educating young people in Zambia. Morgan planned to travel with me to Zambia to see the OMNI School and the children she had heard so much about. Her murder ended those plans, BUT her work and her dream of educating children will continue. 

Morgan will make a difference in so many young lives. She is gone but her legacy lives on in a beautiful and magnificent way.

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Dearest Dan,

I hate to leave you. I see how spent you are and the dread of loss that even this short separation brings. Please know that I choose to make this journey only after much deliberation and as painful as it is, I must go, for our patients and also for me.

In the natural order of things parent’s age, and children grow up, and parents die. This normal pattern was violated by the predator that killed Morgan. I would have traded places with her gladly. My life has been full and rich because of you and what we share. Morgan’s life had just begun and she was poised to fly so high and be something really special in the world.

I feel that it is imperative to negate some of the evil that killed Morgan and accomplish something in her honor. Caring for the poor in Zambia is the most direct way I can see to do this. I realize the sacrifice it takes for me to go on this journey, financial, emotional, and physical, but know it is mine to do. You remember how you say that my greatest strength is making chicken salad out of chicken shit; well this is attempting to do just that only with worse starting ingredients.

Thank you for letting me go even if you don’t understand. I love you more than words can say. This darkness has been your finest hour.

241

Always,

Gil

Thank you for inviting me to the rally and giving me the opportunity to speak with you. Gil is sorry she cannot be here but she is helping the children of Zambia with a medical mission. She feels that since she could not save her daughter that she can save someone’s child.

 I am here to support the TBTN and stress the need for societal change in the respect for woman and men, that society must stop seeing women as prey.  I never would have thought that I would have had to deal with the death of my precious daughter, Morgan Dana Harrington.  Morgan, a junior at Virginia Tech, was murdered on October 17, 2009 here in Charlottesville by someone who likely sexually assaulted her, then killed her and left her body in a pasture on Anchorage Farm, just south of here.  Morgan’s death has catapulted us to places that we would never have thought we would go, being here tonight is now an opportunity that I would not have thought of before, we have been see many times on national media, we have been in the Halls of Congress, we have spent too many hours with LE, we have been to restaurants and rock concerts raising money for Morgan and we have cried as we held our daughter’s skeleton.

Morgan was at JPJ to attend the Metallica concert.  For unknown reasons, Morgan left the arena and was not allowed to reenter.  That was only one of a series of errors that ultimately led to her disappearance and ultimate death.  That day of the concert  Morgan and her Mother shared their last time together.  Morgan was a modest dresser, she and Gil picked out a loose tee shirt with Pantera printed on the front, a black mini skirt, back leggings and black boots.  She was totally covered up except for her beautiful face.

On the days after that tragic night, it was reported by media and by some police that Morgan was dressed provocatively, implying that Morgan tempted someone to assault and kill her.  The only thing Morgan did that night was to have her beautiful face showing and she made herself vulnerable.  She did not cause her murder, a coward who could control and lord over Morgan caused her death. It is time to stop blaming the victim!

Even over the past week, Gil and I have been assaulted by the Westboro Baptist Church who published a degrading poster implying Morgan deserved to die.  This so call church, has launched  a post mortem attack on my dead daughter and will be at Virginia Tech tomorrow to protest and advertise that Morgan deserved to die. It is time to stop blaming the victim!

Who would have ever thought Gil and I would have had to deal with the death of our child.  Our experience has given us a new appreciation for the preciousness of life.  Morgan will never graduate, have a career, marry, have a child and grow old. Morgan’s killer, who had no respect for her, walks among you in Charlottesville each day doing all the things he took away from Morgan.

We are her to work for the day that women and men respect one another, that women can be safe, and can stop feeling afraid.  We pray for the day that a young girl does not have to be at risk, is not blamed when they are the victim, and does not become a statistic.   We pray for the day when fear is not one of our nation’s operating principles. 

We need to support women men who are afraid to ask for help, afraid to press changes, and who are made to feel as if they are the problem.  We need to support women and men who are assaulted so they will seek prosecution of the perpetrators.  We need to not have organizations sweep these assaults under the rug and pretend it doesn’t happen here.

Gil and I are determined that Morgan’s life be remembered and that her death not be in vain.  We appreciate your invitation to help you Take Back the Night.

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Gil has been in Zambia since April 5, 2010.  She and the OMNI team have been busy with setting up and then taking down their clinic operation in the Zambian bush.  Gil was hoping to be able to continue to blog but Zambia is a third world country with poverty, little water, little food, and limited electricity.  The lack of modern technology makes blog transmission near impossible.

Gil has called me three times since arriving in Zambia and each phone conversation lasts about 60 seconds.  She has been able to get lost in her work and have a bit of insulation from the protest and the stress of having a murdered daughter. 

Gil wanted me to post her experience in the bush from this past Friday.  During the OMNI clinic, a young mother came with her sick female child asking for help.  The child was very ill with fever and dehydration from malaria.  Malaria is endemic to Zambia and is one of the major killers in the population.  Quickly, the severity of the child’s illness was recognized and Gil was asked to take the mother and child to a distant hospital on the only transportation available, a local bus.  

The trip was complicated by the fact that the mother did not speak English and Gil did not speak Bemba, the local native language, the bus driver spoke a little French and Gil was able to communicate with him by speaking French.  During the trip, the child became more ills and stopped breathing. Gil was screaming in French to the driver to hurry, hurry!  Gil revived the child and ultimately they arrived at the hospital with the child still clinging to life.  The child died the next day. 

Gil, crying as she tells me this story, said her trip to Zambia were a way to save other children when she could not save Morgan; but she found that she couldn’t save this little girl.  Gil sees the fragility of life in every face she see and all the work she does.

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The children that OMNI cares for in Zambia, Africa, are the ones on the wrong side of this parallel poem.   (241)

 A Prayer for the Children

 We pray for the children

who sneak popsicles before supper,

who erase holes in math workbooks,

who can never find their shoes.

 And we pray for those

who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,

who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,

who never “counted potatoes”,

who are born in places where we wouldn’t be caught dead,

who never go to the circus,

who live in an X-rated world.

 We pray for the children

who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,

who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money

 And we pray for those

who never get dessert,

who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,

who watch their parents watch them die,

who can’t find bread to steal,

who don’t have rooms to clean up,

whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser,

whose monsters are real.

 We Pray for the Children

who spend their allowance before Tuesday,

who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,

who like ghost stories,

who shove direct clothes under the bed,

who never rinse out the tub,

who get visits from the tooth fairy,

who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,

who squirm in church and scream in the phone,

whose tears we sometimes laugh at and

whose smiles can make us cry.

 And we pray for those

whose nightmares come in the daytime,

who will eat anything,

who have never seen a dentist,

who aren’t spoiled by anybody,

who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,

who live and move, but have no being

 We pray for the children

who want to be carried and for those who must,

who we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance.

We pray for those we smother ….. and for those who will grab at the hand of anybody kind enough to offer it.

 Author unknown

My perspective as the wound care nurse with OMNI in Zambia is different. I am always looking down at feet and by doing so bring incredibly lifted up.

OMNI Reverie

Squatting in the dust

the pose I must

take

to make

my way through, this dark forest.

The wounds I tend,

skin I try to mend,

on all the limbs

of hers and hims.

Catching only glimpses of the faces.

my task’s in other places.

It’s the feet I know so well.

The stories the toes can tell.

Ceaseless work since he was born

turned this farmer’s soles to horn.

Scrawny, birdlike children’s feet,

so spare of flesh,

so little to eat.

The blazing joy

in this boy

as I put

his bandaged foot

in its first shoe.

Who knew

the good we could do?

Soak and clean

coating legs with Vaseline

under African sun.

My kind of fun.

The heart sings.

What pleasure service brings.

Axe wounds and ulcers,

scrapes and burns obscene,

these are the feet I tend and clean.

And with each wound I bind,

I find,

and do amaze,

that healing flows both ways.

 2 4 1

G.M. Harrington 2009

Dear Friends,

I am in the starting blocks for departure to Africa to care for the impoverished people in the deep bush of Zambia. It is always difficult to leave my home and family, but I know that this work is mine to do.

I regret that turmoil and controversy are threatening my family and our community during my absence. I know you are strong enough and I know Dan is strong enough to meet this challenge to our core value of goodness and positive forward motion.

Strength is developed by caring heavy weights. This is just one more to shoulder and use to enhance our collective muscle mass.

If, (God willing) we have electricity, I will continue to blog from Zambia when ever possible to update you on our clinic work and the groundbreaking of the Morgan Harrington educational wing at OMNI Village, Ndola.

Thank all or you for holding us up. The journey continues to difficult, but our path is secure with so many pointing the way.

2 4 1

Hokie Nation:

I feel your sorrow as you brace for another blast of evil on Blacksburg – the Westboro Baptist group’s planned hate rally on April 9, 2010.

Please do not respond in kind to these domestic terrorists.  Instead, be strong and let your heart lights shine – hold a concurrent silent candle light vigil in support of the Virginia Tech community as a whole and Morgan Harrington, in particular.

Protest passively to protect one of your own – your Hokie sister, Morgan Harrington from this post mortem assault.  Stop evil in its tracks.  Zero tolerance for hatred!

Be safe, be silent, be dignified, no arrests (of Hokies) but passively resist the evil that has come to town.  We feel the sensation of the Hokie Nation and its love, love is greater than hate. Eradicate the darkness and hate of the WBC with your light.

2 4 1

Dearest Morgan:

At times I am angry but never so angry as to forget how much love we have shared and the joy we had as a family.  My heart will hold fast to that love until despair is turned away.

Love and goodness is what it is all about.  People turn towards love like plants turn towards the light and are renewed. It is important to reinforce this positive outlook tonight as negative factors gather in the periphery of our lives to feed like vultures upon the event of your demise. That mindset is so foreign to me that I really cannot comprehend it.  It is probably a mistake to waste time analyzing evil anyway – detracts from our goal of forward positive motion.

We are making it and finding a way forward despite many challenges. Like I really have been mired down with what your death involved – why such a terribly brutal ending for my sweet girl?  But it was an ending – not THE END- your being will still have meaning and impact through good works we do in your name. The suffering I manage by recalling the quote “The soul leaves the body quickly and with joy – like a child leaps from the schoolyard gate”.

Leap and fly high my little one, dragon dancer, we are OK alone here.

2 4 1

Paradoxically, as the weather gets lighter and improves, our moods seem to have gotten somewhat darker, more desperate and thick. It could just be a combination of fatigue from the many months of worry and the many months of grief over Morgan’s death.

I want her. I miss her. I miss the warm lump she was in the bed when I shook her awake. I miss brushing out her long hair after a shower. I miss her smile, her voice. Afraid I’m already forgetting her voice. All I have is her cell phone away message to hold her tones in my mind.

Healing is not going back to what was, but accepting what is here now. I still struggle to wrap my mind around this new reality. I have saved articles and information to have on hand so that when the fog lifts, I can process all that has happened since 10/17/09, but how can you ever make sense of such an irrational barbaric act as rape and murder?

Tonight I’m stuck back on WHY? Why did she have to suffer? Why did so many dreams have to end? Genes have to end? Who will make nanny rolls when I’m dead? I realize the sadness is OK, even necessary, to feel. The trick is to feel it and be a conduit, acknowledge the pain and let it roll through you, not let it get you mired down and stuck in sorrow.

Have to stop clutching at what was and open to what is and see new possibilities. I know that this is the task in a nutshell- but tonight I am too pigheaded to soften into surrender. Will work on it.

2 4 1

Thursday, Dan and I traveled to Blacksburg to speak at the VT Take Back the Night Rally. This message of safety for women and children has always been important to us, but now in the face of Morgan’s murder it is pivotal to our belief structure. Somehow we have tacitly given acceptance that it’s OK in America for men to prey upon half of the population. Our exaggerated culture of self has reintroduced a primitive Darwinian way of life – survival of the fittest, each one for himself. Most civilized societies pride themselves on their level of integration and complexity of connections, NOT how an individual can place his own needs and urges paramount.

I am not a great mind to really understand and dissect how this has come to pass, only know it must stop and no longer be tolerated. Part of the change process is awareness and repudiation of social mores that encourage the continued violence and predition against women. The Take Back the Night Rally focuses attention on the problem and encourages change to occur.

Morgan Harrington should have been safe in the JPJ parking lot. She was NOT asking for it. She was NOT provocatively dressed, no cleavage and nothing tight. In fact the only skin she had hanging out was her beautiful face. Do we need to become a burka society here? Or can men learn not to vanquish women as disposable objects? I believe that they can and should. A campaign to limit violence is really basic, the lowest common denominator. Our mandate should be respect, cherish. But it is a beginning, so lets start here.

2 4 1

I strive to be open-minded enough to allow and recognize the good that is trying to unfold from Morgan’s death. My tendency is always try to enhance things, take remnants and craft something new.  The minefield of memories and emotions we now live with makes it difficult to maintain a positive, forward moving attitude.  It is vital to me, Morgan, that your existence not be wasted.  I will not allow your essence to drain away.  Somehow we will find a way to use the water of your life to nourish seeds and create growth.

I recognize that seeds sprout and grow best on clear and open soil. Our old lives have been plowed under and we have been tilled, ripped open.  Can we be wise to accept and germinate new seeds?  I believe we can. We will be creative and diligent and clever enough to allow growth to occur.  I promise you this, Morgan. 

We will do the work you were not allowed to finish; we will feed and teach children, educate young people and keep girls safe – for you in your name, so that you were here matters to the world and your being taken from us has impact and meaning in your community at large.

No “fade to close” for your young life – your essence and your motivation must continue to flourish and you will NOT be forgotten!

2 4 1

The basic assumptions we held about our life are wrong now and must be remade and adjusted. Like we have no daughter anymore. It is painful and hard to reconfigure our reality. I have to watch myself and not let that pain turn me bitter and sour. I started to go that way working in the yard the other day cleaning up some of the debris and twigs from a very long winter.

Usually this task is fun for me. I enjoy seeing the greening of the earth and feeling the burgeoning life that spring brings forth. This year I didn’t allow that quickening of joy in myself. Instead my internal dialogue was “ the very dirt is coming alive today, but that box of ashes on the coffee table is as dead and inert as it was a week ago, and as dead as it’ll be a year from now. It isn’t right.” Not a good direction for my thoughts. The pit falls and pity parties are everywhere.

Our new life is devoid of much joy- perhaps we will find it sometime in the future. We are still working on survival. The caring and love of others pulls me from despair the path to survival. Once we have mastered survival we can encourage the blossoming of joy again. Someday.

2 4 1

I am leaving in 2 weeks on my medical mission to Africa and I find that I am reluctant to leave for the first time. I am reluctant to leave because there is still evil afoot in this town, and I think foolishly that if I am here in some way I can stop HIM and he must be stopped. There is a man/monster in Charlottesville Virginia who likes to hunt and kill young girls like prey, makes sport out of killing.

Most hunters have the integrity to kill in a humane and quick fashion. This man doesn’t work like that. He enjoys the hunting part of a kill and chooses to kill in a savage and brutal way. This Charlottesville man hurt Morgan Harrington enough to break her bones before he murdered her. I cannot get the image of Morgan’s shattered bones out of my mind, nor the jagged feel of the fractures from my fingers – a violent, sadistic, and dangerous man.

As a mother, I beg the young women in this town to be prudent, look after each other. I ask the community to be a community, be involved and be vigilant and find this monster in your midst and protect your young. He must be found. This is not his first crime and he has upped his game in a significant and disturbing way.

2 4 1

The nights can be difficult. When you are between sleep and wake your defenses dip and then unwanted thoughts and images come roaring in. I try not to think of how scared you were, the terror you felt. I try not to think of how much pain you were in as you were slaughtered.

Were you still alive when they brought you to Anchorage Farm? To be hunted like a deer running frantically over the hay stubble in the field desperate to escape, trying to survive, crying, screaming, I see it. I hear it. Or, were you brought there already dead, like a slab of meat, carrion to be discarded and dumped in the field to rot – just another carcass in the hunting preserve.

These images haunt me at night. During the day I can usually shake them off and focus on our job, trying to find your murderer. Other girls are in danger while this sadistic monster walks free. We will never rest until he is put away. Morgan will you help us, in what ever way you can to remove his evil from the world?

2 4 1

“Tat Attack “

Morgan you are pulling us in your wake to places we’ve never imagined ourselves to be. Last week you took Alex and me to a tattoo studio. Never thought I’d do that – but it seemed important to make some indelible manifestation on my body to commemorate the ending of your life. Your death is etched on my heart, my mind, my soul, but curiously, though a bit more haggard, my outside looks the same as when you were alive.

It’s funny where people find meaning and comfort. I have no need of a gravestone or marker, but this personal, physical tribute is important to me this time. Alex and I were a little scared initially. (He made me go first.) The process was really pretty easy, minimal pain or fuss. We both got the 241 dots on our inner wrist, where we would catch sight of it throughout our day.

Morgan, your murder has cut such a wide swathe through our lives that it seemed appropriate to have some physical sign of the impact on our bodies also. Alex and I are both happy with the symbols we now wear. It feels right, gives some kind of congruency that the outer is marked and changed as irrevocably as the inside has been. Dan is accepting, but made me promise that this would NOT be the beginning of a sleeve!

2 4 1

March 12, 2010

I know we will be OK. That in no way diminishes the pain this murderer has inflicted on us, but rather is a testimonial to the closeness and love that we share. I see only three options and only one of them that I can embrace:

1. Crash and burn – I won’t let him kill us too.

2. Paralysis – I won’t let him damage us, nor compound the loss of Morgan’s potential with the loss of our potential.         

3. Soldier on – we will continue to move forward, haltingly, even stumbling, even crawling – forward. We will take what has been dealt us and be open-minded and creative and fashion new lives. This is undoubtedly the hardest task, but the only way I see some chance of salvation/reconciliation/peace.

I believe this. I know it to be true, and STILL I feel the rage. Why? I have many parallel emotions.

The anger is extinguished by the knowing – it is; the irrevocable primal knowing – the feel of the dry husks of your ribs. I cannot rage against such steadfast reality. To do so is wasted effort, foolish like raging against a mountain or a rock. It is what it is and will not change. Morgan is dead – Gil accept this truth.

2 4 1

March 10, 2010

We are so fragile, raw, more fear based, which is not our typical state. We find ourselves locking up and checking up more at home. Dan gets anxious if he calls me more than 3 times and I don’t answer – afraid that I’ve been taken too. Baseline, I am sloppy about the cell phone. I leave it in the car, or at home, or don’t turn it on, or neglect to recharge it consistently. Seeing the fear in his eyes, I resolve to change my behavior.

Normally, I consider myself to be fairly strong and grounded. After Morgan was abducted and killed, I find I am not so sure of myself and easily overwhelmed. Regular stuff is more difficult. Even dropping the dog off at the vet is traumatic in a way. Ever since our girl didn’t come back, all leave-takings are pain filled.

Every single task I put my hand to reminds me of Morgan. I cook broccoli and start to reflexively put a portion aside for her. Morgan liked margarine, not butter like the rest of the family. These numerous meaningless incidentals in the course of my day invoke Morgan and pull me up short with a blast of grief and loss. It’s like ripping the scab off a wound over and over and over. Will this ever heal?

2 4 1

March 8, 2010

Death is a stark harsh landscape – like a desert- and like a desert has its own beauty.  Stripping the extraneous nonessentials away from something often exposes an innate and poignant beauty.  Death reveals the incandescent spirit housed in a body.  I do realize though that the dying process isn’t easy, or even often very pretty.  Much like birth, death provokes intrinsic, genuine and fundamental emotions.  I want those feelings – every shred of them.

I am not sure if I am just wired strangely, but like a dog, I want to roll in it.  I want to experience every single aspect of Morgan’s murder and death- feel her bones, wear her shoes, and sniff her clothes.  I am not sure if I am trying to imprint the last of her indelibly in my mind, or if I indulge in such intimacies to try to have the reality of her absence penetrate my disbelief.  It was my privilege to watch Morgan come into this world; somehow it is also my duty to contemplate her death.  I will try to witness the end of Morgan’s life with the same clarity and anticipation as I saw at her birth on July 24, 1989.

I will cherish and acknowledge Morgan’s spirit now that she is dead to the same degree I did when she had a body.  How could I do otherwise?

2 4 1

March 5, 2010

I honestly do not understand the death avoidance in our society.  Some folks, even ones who know me well, can barely make eye contact or mumble out a few words now that I have this new unasked for, unwanted role as mother to a murdered girl.

Open dialogue about death is rare.  We utilize euphemistic platitudes to try to soften the reality.  I prefer plain speaking with clear words.  Morgan has not “passed on” or “been called to heaven” she was murdered and is DEAD.  I don’t like that fact one bit, but I can acclimate to the harsh reality over time.  If folks only allow me the platitudes that they feel comfortable with, I will never learn to accommodate this loss and will be left forever floundering in a quagmire of well intentioned fluff.

It flabbergasts me that we watch graphic even clinical scenarios on TV, but any practical talk of death is inconceivable, taboo!

The truth is, death is really ok, it can even be heart wrenchingly beautiful.  Witnessing death strips us of pretense and forces us to consider our most fundamental core beliefs.  That frank contemplation of death is necessary, even healthy, for each of us to do.  Coming to terms with the rough spots is where you glean the bedrock pieces of your faith.  Every single one of us will have at least one up close and personal experience with death.  It is pivotal to come to some acceptance and understanding of that process.

2 4 1

March 3, 2010

Several of us from the OMNI team have started packing the 3,500 pounds of medical supplies we will take to Zambia, Africa on our April medical trip. Anticipating the trip has me both excited and anxious.  The separation from Dan is always painful, even more so this year because Morgan’s death has left both of us vulnerable and raw.  Despite the challenges that being apart will bring, I am more resolute than ever to make my journey to Africa.  I was not able to save my precious child, but know that I will be able save other children’s lives in Africa.  Every bobble headed baby with malaria we rehydrate and every burn we clean and dress negates some of the EVIL that is afloat in our world.

My pain will be les sharp knowing I have made a practical and direct difference in our patient’s and our students’ chances for survival. This brings me much comfort.  I keep trying to do my best to tip the scale in the direction of love.  I do believe love is greater than hate and love will win in the end if we do our part to help it along.

2 4 1

March 1, 2010

I took some baby steps this week and started the breakdown of Morgan’s apartment at Virginia Tech.  It is a painful process to dismantle your child’s life, especially when I recall all the joy and expectation we had when we moved her in only 18 months ago.

Morgan’s apartment was great; comfortable, quirky and fun.  She was the girl who had everything: a great apartment, friends, intelligence and beauty.  The only thing she had in limited supply was life – what a short life.  What a tremendous waste.

Even thinking of that waste makes my breath choppy – I am only taking baby steps because it is so very difficult and also because I want to go slowly and savor this dismembering of the home Morgan had made.  You can learn a lot about someone when you see the environment they create and how they live in it.  It makes me happy and proud to see just how on top of things and how together Morgan’s way of living was.

I take my time; enjoy these glimpses of the person she was becoming.  Morgan was pretty special at the young age of 20, given the chance to actually grow up she was going to be absolutely phenomenal.  Why couldn’t it be?

2 4 1

February 26, 2010

Ashes in a cigar box.  Morgan we have your ashes setting on our coffee table.  They are stored in one of you granddad’s JGW cigar boxes.  It seemed the right choice.  We have several of them and use these boxes every day.  Dad keeps change and keys and such on his dresser in a JGW cigar box.  I store my tea and sweetener in a JGW cigar box on the kitchen counter and open it up every day.  Alex has his filled with letters and photos.  Predictably, you have used your JGW cigar box to store an assortment of funky jewelry.

Alex even found a photo of you as a baby playing with jewelry in a JGW cigar box.  Never could I have imagined a reality where you would be inside the box – waiting for the right day to be sprinkled outside and returned to the earth.

I was starting to spiral into the vortex of grief and loss thinking. “we have only ashes left”.  How can we snatch meaning from Morgan’s ashes?- but remembered that ashes can be used to make cinderblocks which can be used to build strong foundations – for good – for education here at VTC and in Africa with OMNI School and who knows what else.  We will pledge your ashes, mix and use your ashes as well as we can, to create some substantive good from this tragedy and in so doing honor the light that was Morgan Dana Harrington.

241

February 24, 2010

People tell me that since Morgan’s body has been found I can have closure.  I don’t think that is realistic or reasonable or even what I am looking for.  This kind of abrupt fundamental loss is like having a traumatic severing of your arm.  You don’t get closure with an amputation.  You are always aware of and wishing for your missing limb.  BUT- you do have a choice – to be crippled OR to learn to write with your non-dominant hand or with a prosthesis or stick a pen in your mouth and go for it. (Who knows your penmanship may improve!).  So you accommodate and learn to incorporate the injury into your reality.  But the loss is ever present and apparent to self and others.

We don’t know how to make this new life fabric yet.  Often it looks like a tangled snarl that can never be sorted out – but sometimes I catch glimpses of something like a spider’s web –delicate, intricate and having tremendous tensile strength.  We are not there yet – but see a direction to aim for.

241

February 22, 2010

I loved it that our friend/neighbor/funeral director personally retrieved Morgan’s remains from the Medical Examiner in Richmond.  He told me that when they had arrived in Roanoke, he drove to our home and parked outside and opened the vehicle’s windows to let Morgan’s spirit return home.  I was very moved by this story.

Our community has been so supportive, our neighborhood has been festooned with a semaphore of support with ribbons: first yellow to bring Morgan home and keep hope alive and once it was clear she was not alive changing to black.  Now that she is here and honored, I have taken those ribbons down and left one spring-colored green ribbon on our tree to show that we are capable of, and intend to grow through this experience.

Formula for survival = Love more than you fear or hurt and eventually love will prevail.

241

Morgan, Music Fan

Our girl wanted to go out and dance

Didn’t know she took such a chance

Just wanted to be part of the scene

Didn’t know people could be so damn mean

That anyone would want to hurt her

He was checking the scene planning a murder

EVIL lurking, around the periphery

To kill and vanquish her beauty

EVIL like killed Lennon, King, JFK

Decided to take out a girl on that day

And threw her like refuse in a field of hay

Now I have felt the heft of her skull in my palm

An abomination for any mom

Your crime and your EVIL fill me with rage

Will not rest till you’re locked in a cage

We will catch you, I know that we can

We’re after you – me and Dan

So other girls will be safe on the street

To follow the music

To follow the beat

241

February 17, 2010

My obscenity riddled to-do list has included words like victim, scent item, fingerprints, DNA, skeletonized, cadaver dog, medical examiner, now I add view remains. And that’s just what Morgan has been reduced to – calcified fragments.

All he left us with was her bones – but they are precious to us.  It is a primal emotion to get the body back to mourn and to honor the life that was lost.

We honored Morgan to the best of our abilities with a moving funeral Mass and a celebration of Morgan’s brief life.

We mourned Morgan to the best of our abilities by viewing with clarity her cast off bones.  Holding her in our own hands in this form as part of our leave-taking.  Holding the last remnants of our girl, to try and let the enormity and finality of her death penetrate somehow past the barriers in our minds that still scream “how can this be – it isn’t happening”.  Peering into Morgan’s empty orbital sockets the mind protests- but must concede, it is.  Not an exercise in reality I ever want again to come to me.

241

Just Say No

 Won’t participate

 In a storm of hate

 With such negativity

 I become the same as he

 Who caused this atrocity

 Instead, I’ll focus on love and not stop

 Coz in the end I know love’ll come out on the top

 241

From Me To You

Then From You To Me

Jewelry

 They gave me your bracelet back

 Tarnished now, rusty and black

 It’s the one I had as a girl

 The one you wore as you left this world

 The one that witnessed mortal harm

 I’m wearing now on my arm

 And I do so with sorrow and with pride

 Having seen your dessicated flesh inside

 Knowing you wore it as you died

 I have scrubbed it out repeatedly

 Since it was returned to me

 But still I can tell

 It harbors a smell

 Of old flesh and of rot

 But it’s all I have got

 And as long as it smells you can’t be forgot.

 241

January 31, 2009

Clouds were mottled, purple bruises over the Blue Ridge as we drove over Afton Mountain to reclaim the skelontinized remains of our precious daughter, Morgan Dana Harrington.

We had tried to prepare ourselves for this eventuality for three months, but the reality of it is sharp and disorienting.  How could someone have erased so much of what Morgan was and reduced her to a jumbled heap of bones?  What a waste, what a desecration, a gross injustice.

Who would ever have thought it would be mine to see every image of Morgan’s life – from her first faint shadows on fetal ultrasound to the gaping orbital hollows in her skull? An abomination to witness this ending.

And yet there is growing peace. We realize Morgan has been dead for some time.  Perhaps even since the day of the concert, October 17, 2009.  Morgan Dana Harrington has been at peace, beyond pain and suffering, knowing that brings us some peace also.

Once her body is restored to us and put to rest, we can finally begin the hard work of grieving and growing strong as a triangulated family.  Bless all of you who have held us up on this journey.  My Darling Morgan!

2 4 1

  **

****

   *

January 24, 2010

3 months!  Despite the length of time Morgan has been gone I remain hopeful.  Part of me is waiting to be surprised.  Waiting for God to pull the rabbit out of the hat and bring Morgan home.

 I remember that the light always returns, it cannot help but return.  Wil the light of my life return soon?  I cannot imagine that all the water of Morgan’s potential is to run down the drain and be wasted.  Can it really play out like that?

 Come home soon baby.  2 4 1

January 23, 2010

I am concerned about the complacency in Charlottesville.  I am feeling a tendency to downplay Morgan’s abduction, to protect the idyllic reputation of the city.  I bought into that idyllic image until my daughter was stolen there.  I understand the reluctance to be associated with this crime.  I myself would prefer not to be known as the Mom of a missing girl.  Charlottesville would prefer not to be recognized as the location of abduction.  But there is no going back.  These roles have been thrust upon us.  I don’t think it is correct to downplay Morgan’s abduction to the community.  To explain that this abduction occurred because Morgan made herself vulnerable – so not to worry – Vulnerable to what?  To the PREDATOR who was there on October 17, 2009 and was still there in November.  A bad event happened in Charlottesville – be known as the place where this act was NOT tolerated, not dismissed, be relentless, be clever, be resourceful, and find Morgan.  Protect people rather than reputations, they are infinitely more precious.

January 18, 2010

The benefit concert in Richmond was great.  Morgan has a longstanding passion for music and for her to be honored in that way was particularly fitting.  I loved the energy of it.  These folks saw an unfortunate event and didn’t say “too bad” and turn their backs – instead they brought their gifts of music to the table to use them to make a difference.  It was wonderful to see the caring evident in these talented people.

We don’t need more of the rule of law – we got that and it ain’t working.  What we do need is a code of personal integrity and responsibility, like that displayed at the concert for Morgan by all participants.  It is precisely that attitude of caring plus responding to create change that will be the savings of us all.  That energy can move mountains; it can change outcomes, and perhaps even bring my girl back home.

2 4 1

January 12, 2010

What a difficult journey this is.  It is hard to explain what we feel.  The typical words are inadequate – even wrong.  Like using the word “abduction” to describe this event – it is soft language.  Abduction means to move away from – that is a passive euphemism for what has occurred here.  Morgan was not “moved away” from us – she was ripped away, severed from us!  She was amputated from her life.  The person who did this robbed her from us.  I even think the posters could better reflect what has been inflicted on our family – Morgan is not missing – like my frequently misplaced reading glasses – SHE was stolen!!

Anger and frustration mount as the days add up.  I remind myself that this is not in my hands and that the truth cannot be hidden forever – it will out.  I pray that the truth of this crime shows itself while Morgan is still alive.  I have no interest in recovering a body. I would rather not know and always have some morsel of hope.

January 9, 2010

Dearest Morgan – it feels heavier for us now – your being gone.  It is 2010 and I know you haven’t been gone a year – it only feels like it.  We are sort of confused and can’t quite figure out how to switch our gait from a full sprint into a more measured steadfast pace.  We will have to learn this to continue searching for you in this endurance phase of our quest to FIND MORGAN.

Life draws you back from the abyss of grief and pain.  Eventually, you must participate in life and answer its call.  We will answer and will move forward and still maintain our search for you.  That we must do.  It is imperative we keep hoping, loving, seeking to FIND MORGAN.  In life you are defined by your relationships, your loves – I don’t know how to exist without you.  Use the love that we have together Morgan. 

            **

          ****

             *

Connect the dots, 2 4 1, and fashion a bridge over the darkness and come home.  Don’t be afraid – we can carry you.  Just start the motion and we will be holding you up.

January 5, 2010

It is disorienting to travel to a big city like NYC; so much stimulation and busyness to contend with.  Because Morgan is missing, there is also an aspect of discomfort when I am reminded just how big the world is – how can we find a needle in this huge haystack?  Somehow we must.  I cannot contemplate a world without her.

Many times each day my heart leaps reflexively at glimpses of pretty blond girls on the street – could it be Morgan?  Then they turn their head and the face is different.  I cannot help looking at them with hunger.

Being apart from Dan on this trip has also been hard for both of us.  We rely on the assurance and constancy of our relationship for sustenance.  I feel unmoored without Dan near me.  The sacrifice of this separation was necessary though to shore up our remaining child.  We always have, and will continue to sacrifice whatever is necessary, to help both Morgan and Alex.

Alex has been hit just as hard as we have and doesn’t have a foundational relationship to draw on like Dan and I have together. Still, the devotion of a parent towards a child is phenomenally strong and provides a core of certainty that can be drawn on when life proves difficult.  Morgan, you have our unending devotion – draw from this strength to create a way home.

January 4, 2010

I traveled to New York City with Alex to shore him up a bit.  This is a tough, cold, hard city to survive in when you have your full vigor; but when you are shattered with grief it is absolutely overwhelming.  I am determined that Alex does more than just survive – that he does more than eke out an existence in this city.  I will do whatever is necessary to ensure his success.  I won’t allow the person who abducted Morgan to derail Alex’s future.  I won’t allow him to derail our marriage.  I won’t tolerate the destruction of Morgan’s friends. No collateral damage, Basta!  I will not accept any more injury from Morgan’s abductor.

We will find Morgan and build our family anew.  I have to remain strong because she will need us when that reunion happens.  We must stay grounded in our relationships and love/ Love is greater than fear and will prevail – even in this place.

December 31, 2009

Alex and I went to Charlottesville on Monday to meet with Virginia State Police and go to the Copeley Bridge.  Morgan, knocking chunks of ice and snow off your flowers was a pretty bleak and disheartening task – tolerable only because it was something we did for you.

I didn’t know we were supposed to cram an entire lifetime of loving and living into the 20 short years we have spent with you.  I hope that is not true, but our fear grows daily.

This time around, grieving has been very different for us. Interesting to see how each of us goes about it in such distinct ways.  Dan and I have really pulled in – staying close to home.  Needing the solitude and refuge it offers to keep ourselves intact.  Alex, here visiting, is going crazy with our coping style – because he has managed by staying extremely busy and not having time to think or process the magnitude of Morgan’s abduction.  Alex has been helpful in getting us to re-engage with life and activities outside our home.  In turn, we have shown Alex the value and necessity of some stillness and downtime.  Slowly, we are learning from each other the skills necessary to help us survive this horrific loss – despite our moments of fear and weaknesses.

December 30, 2009

You never know when you will get blindsided by the intense memory of Morgan and it will almost knock you over.  She is everywhere for us.  Dan, tearful tonight, while we were making tacos for dinner, because he knew Morgan would have liked this meal. I was hit by the memories while gathering the plates and found myself reflexively picking up 4 plates, rather than 3. 

Morgan is not here and we feel the lack acutely, her likes and dislikes, her personality, her aspirations, her quickness, all integral part of the very fabric of our lives.  Without Morgan there are huge gaps, holes in our existence.  We are trying not to be swallowed into the void, the emptiness of those holes.  Attempting to keep hope alive, we pray we will someday be reunited with our precious daughter, Morgan 2 4 1.

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Our pain was sharpened by expectations for this holiday season. I found Christmas compromises that were acceptable to me. It was challenging to have a new, different tradition that acknowledges Christmas, and still honors our missing Morgan.

Our décor was pretty muted, but what has been done is genuine and celebratory of love and caring. It’s tricky though, to find that path. Every time I go into our closet, Morgan’s Christmas gifts reproach me from the top shelf. And then despair almost takes me out.

There have been a couple of smiles that I refer back to, to lift myself. Thinking today about our friend who put masking tape all over his Corvette to drive it in the Christmas Parade as the Find Morgan entry. What a selfless kindness that was. I like to think about things like that and remember that despite everything, we are so blessed.

Not sure how Dan continues to function at such a high level. He processes so
much information and stays so calm and strong while collapsing inside. The
crisis of Morgan’s abduction has been so hard on both of us. You brace
yourself for possible, inevitable life events so as to better withstand the
impact, but we never saw this one coming, never had a chance to brace
ourselves. We try to hold each other up, damage control is vital.

I want to limit the injury and hurt that Morgan’s abduction has caused. So
many lives have been impacted-our family, of course-and many, many beyond
that. I will try to pull as many as I can under my umbrella and protect them,
try to lessen the pain for all.

It’s been more than two months since Morgan was abducted. That is a difficult number to contemplate. It encompasses a lot of days, a lot of anguish.

I washed and repacked the change of clothes that Dan carries for Morgan in his car today. Handling her clothing and doing such a typical chore as laundry was nice in a way, but I realized that your things, Morgan—they didn’t really need to be rewashed. I needed to feel like I was doing something for you… to try and conjure you up as I fold your t-shirt and pair your socks. I couldn’t really fool myself though.

Yesterday, I visited Morgan’s Blacksburg apartment. Her life there was so full, so together. I wonder how long it will take us to put Morgan back together again once we find her. I pray we get the chance to figure that one out.

Please God, soon.

We managed Christmas.  Somehow, by resting in the love of our friends, we were supported and carried over the roughest spots.  It wasn’t our usual celebration, but I am proud of us that we were able to acknowledge the day and to create some memories of this special holiday in the aftermath of Morgan’s abduction.

Folks have been so kind – I didn’t think we would have a tree – we don’t – we have 3!  All smaller – more muted and perfect to honor the season, as well as Morgan.

This is our 2^nd holiday without Morgan – we didn’t cry as much as at Thanksgiving.  Not sure if we are coping better or if the tear ducts have just run dry. 2 4 1

We traveled to Charlottesville to meet with the Virginia State Police. That was a bit tense – everyone involved just desperate for some break that will bring Morgan home. It is difficult for all of us to be forced to wait for some development. We want more active roles –after all, our quest is to FIND MORGAN not wait for Morgan, but it seems that just now, that is what we must do.

So much snow we weren’t even able to get out at the bridge. We stopped our car in the middle of the road and tossed a pine wreath up on the giant snow bank that covered the place on Copley Bridge where Morgan was last seen. Driving away it looked more a funeral than I anticipated.

The snow worries me. Is she cold? Is her abductor snowed out – or even worse is he snowed in with her? Cannot go there. I pray for strength to come to all of us. 2 4 1

The snowfall is beautiful but still disturbing – melancholy.  Wonder if Morgan is cold – is snow falling on her face – or is her face covered by leaves in a shallow grave being hidden by the snow.  I glance out the window and see the crimson blaze of a cardinal at the bird feeder – my heart leaps for a second at the beauty – then I think its feathers look like blood in the snow.  Is that what Morgan’s blood looks like in the snow?  See how the pitfalls are everywhere – even at the bird feeder.

I try very hard to remain positive and hopeful to see Morgan coming home.  I envision our reunion – feel her body as I hug her tightly.  I imagine Dan’s delight as we put her in the car to bring her back home.  At times, I can see it so clearly it almost feels real.  Other times I consider that Morgan might be loaded on a gurney – not our car and brought back to Roanoke – not to our home but to the Medical Examiners Lab here.

I pray that is not the end to this crisis.  Morgan 2 4 1

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I thought the yellow ribbons in the yard and in the neighborhood were sad in the rain – in the snow they are heartbreaking.

Being transparent in this crisis has at times been painful, but has increased our sense of connection with many.  Separation is really an illusion after all.  That point was apparent to us today as we attempted to dig out of the 18 inches of snow that has gridlocked our area.  We have been pretty overwhelmed with things even before the complications of a major snow storm.

We shoveled out the driveway three times – both Dan and I were exhausted.  Dan had fallen twice shoveling and the snow had socked us in again. Faster than we could clear, it piled up. We had quit and given up when some of our neighbors drove up – folks of all ages piled out – shovels were lifted and in short order our drive was clear. The culture of caring in our community really sustains us.  This type of kindnesses shores me up when we are despondent – renews my belief in goodness and gives me strength to keep hoping that we will find Morgan.

Morgan, sometimes I get by pretending you’re just away at school. Happy at Blacksburg and attending classes at Tech… But I never really fool myself. You never call to check in and I know you are not there.

Yet, I still believe that you are– you exist somewhere, still alive. We just have to find you, wherever you are being held.

We have loved you completely, full on, your whole life. I just hope that the reservoir of love is deep enough to give you adequate courage and strength to sustain you during this ultimate challenge. I know you are very clever and resourceful.

Find your way, darling. We are waiting, trying to guide you back to the rest of your life. 2 4 1.

I have realized that both of us are grieving Morgan’s abduction in atypical ways. I am usually the more extroverted, expressive person in our relationship and Dan is a bit more shy and reserved. That has been a consistent pattern for almost 30 years, yet in this unbelievable place we find ourselves today…our roles are changing.

I find myself clamming up, looking inward, seeking answers inside. At the same time, I see Dan expressing more, reaching out, more extroverted in his attempts to make sense of our new reality. Maybe this is the growth we are meant to find here. I’m not sure, but I know it adds another layer of discomfort to our feeling of being out of our control.

If Morgan’s abduction is an event meant to teach us to grow, I think I’m about as big as I can be, or want to be. It is so difficult.

We walk softly around each other, aware that any misstep can break the delicate composure we have built and expose raw emotions underneath. Despite that care, you still get blindsided easily.

Getting dressed today, I was looking for a particular pair of shoes to wear with some slacks of mine. Of course they aren’t here, Morgan has them at school. And so, I started my day already overwhelmed with the loss of, the missing of, the mourning of our Morgan. 2 4 1.

We walked last night with the forgotten kids—the forgotten victim’s kids from the Mental Health Association — and the Find Morgan Car in the Roanoke Christmas Parade.

We were reluctant to participate—not sure we could hold onto our fragile sense of coping with all the stimulation of a parade, but we did all right.

So many faces and eyes, it was difficult to process it all. But many prayers and blessings called out. I kept thinking, “We can do this, stand up and be counted and recognized as parents of a missing child, despite the discomfort of being visible.”

I saw every mother and father’s face on the route and I read the “thank God I’m not them” look in their eyes. But this was not a turn aside moment for us. This role was thrust onto us. We did not choose it, nor do we embrace it. But I can certainly find it in me to stand up in the space to be counted and to honor Morgan.

I was struck by the rightness and circularity in walking the parade route in downtown Roanoke. Morgan has walked nearly the same exact route many times, participating in the annual fundraising event for the Roanoke Mental Health Association. Now, some kids who received those services are walking it for Morgan.

As I think of this, I realize it is indeed so fitting. Morgan is now actually one of them—a subject of violence, a weaker being, preyed upon by someone who has run amuck, I believe.

I am grateful for the opportunity to walk the route for Morgan; happy we dug deep and found the strength. It was important to participate.

A friend who works with the Mental Health Organization reinforced my growing insight on how to cope. Watching her during the parade, her family has just recently been given a difficult cancer diagnosis. And yet, in this time of her own despair, she shows up– hopping up and down with the cold– to bring attention to the ongoing search for Morgan. To lessen the load of despair in our family rather than to stagnate in her own challenge. That is courage and that is how you not just survive, but transcend tragedy. I’ve learned to use my pain, not succumb to it. And use it to help an ever-widening circle. Extend your parameters of self to include all– cherish, protect, help all. It will be our salvation.

I keep ruminating on the concept of giving. We have been given so much during these eight weeks since Morgan’s disappearance, to an overwhelming and humbling degree. This is different than gifting. Gifting is usually a type of transaction with expectations of getting something in return. Giving is more open handed and spontaneous it seems, and does not seek reimbursement. Its sole purpose is for contribution and to enhance the richness of connection.

I believe that the practice of giving and generosity is the greatest wealth found in healthy, unified communities.  We are so grateful to have received this blessing from our community.

I find myself several times a day anxious with my breath choppy, caught in my throat. It’s a different place for me. Generally, I see myself as being fairly strong and have never experienced episodes of anxiety before. Then I also begin to wonder, if this is a kind of referred feeling… a mother instinct if you will… from Morgan. Is someone choking her and holding back her air? Mentally, I can only touch lightly on the possibilities that Morgan has gone through or is being subjected to now. It is too difficult to consider for long.

We plan on going to the send-off of the Roanoke Christmas parade to see the Find Morgan Car entry tomorrow night. It’s the first big gathering that we will be part of since Morgan was taken. Our grasp on stability is a bit tenuous right now, and I hope we don’t get too rattled by the crowd and the parade. We can do it and be strong, I know, just as we are asking Morgan to be strong– strong enough to hold on and to come back home to us. 2 4 1.

To view the letter, please click on the link below!

http://www.findmorgan.com/letter1.pdf

Morgan Dana Harrington. We gave you this name “Morgan” because it sounded strong, as we wished you to be and to grow to be. It is a name meaning “morning” in German. Beginning, newness of light, dawning of something.

Morgan, my morning girl, we are mourning you. In our darkness, we need your light. Rays of Morgan to dispel this gloom and fear. Find your strength and wisdom and follow the beacon of our love back home. 2 4 1.