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She Was a Free Spirit
Clara Rose
In 1979, Wendy Rose was ten years old. She and her brother lived
in Los Gatos with their mother, Clara, who was completing a degree
in journalism from San Jose State. The children spent weekends with
their dad, from whom Clara was separated. One Sunday afternoon when
he brought them home, uniformed policemen met them at the door.
Their father was arrested, questioned, then released, and the children
went home with him. That night, he told her that her mother was
dead.
"We never went back to our house," Wendy told the listeners
at the Vigil. "We never went back to say goodbye to our friends,
never even went back to Los Gatos." Suddenly they had a new
life, a new home, a new family, a new school. Wendy was profoundly
angry but no one noticed. She had dreams of revenge, as well as
vivid dreams that her mother was still alive, "and I hated
to wake up." She felt completely alienated from all the children
at her school, whose lives were so different.
One day when the recess bell rang, Wendy suddenly felt as if she
was floating above all the other kids on the playground, looking
down on them. From that day, she deliberately repressed every memory
of her mother and the crime and didn’t speak about either for
ten years. She went to school, started a family, and was well on
her way in life, until she learned that the police had a suspect
in her mother’s murder.
In fact they had always had a suspect, someone she knew, although
it is very unlikely that he will ever be brought to justice. After
Wendy learned the horrible details of the crime and began to think
about it again, she began to fall apart. "I thought I was going
crazy," she said. She began having nightmares and fits of rage
so severe that she had to quit her job. Finally she knew she needed
help and got in touch with Survivors of Violent Loss for counseling
and group therapy.
To her relief, she found that everyone in her group had experienced
the same feelings. In talking with them and hearing their stories,
she realized that the problems she had were universal among homicide
survivors and began the slow process of restoring her equilibrium
and her mother’s memory. "Now I can think about my mother
the way she was in life, not obsess over the way she died."
Recently Wendy visited her maternal uncle for the first time in
twenty years and learned things she had never known about her mother.
Clara Rose was energetic and active. She made her own clothes in
high school and had been extremely excited about buying her first
car, a red convertible. "They tell me she was a free spirit,"
Wendy said with a proud smile.
Wendy can now also remember how much her mother loved her. She edited
the PTA newsletter, coached Wendy’s soccer team and encouraged
her to study piano, violin, and singing. She was teaching her daughter
how to sew at the time she was murdered, all the time attending
school as a single parent.
After what she has gone through, Wendy knows that immediate counseling
for children in such situations is crucial, and is now studying
psychology at SDSU, planning to become a therapist and work with
children who have suffered severe trauma. "If I hadn’t
repressed things so deeply, I might have named my daughter after
my mother."
The following is my dedication to Mom:
The wretched tears of grief
I will come to know
as the fiend builds with us his home
through his obscurity
we cant see
that he hides within a healers coat
the serpent that is he
from a crown of bloody slivers
his putrid soul was framed
the slivers pierce and gouge his skin
still, he hides well
the secret from within
but soon
my wretched tears of grief
will turn to acid
on his open skin
and all who worship him will know
for whom he is a kin
not a healer at all
but satins heinous angel
of callous death is him
For my mother who was murdered in 1979
When I was only 10
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