Making Peace with My Broken Pieces

Making Peace with My Broken Pieces

It was a drizzling rainy November 12, 1992. The acrid smell of gunpowder filled the atmosphere. It reminded me of hot metal being melted in metal shop class in high school. The shrilling sound of my mother’s cries when she saw two dead bodies in her house echoes throughout my head. Police cars, ambulances, and neighbors lined the street. Yellow crime scene tape pendulously decorated the modest two-bedroom cape cod style home my mother was buying for her two boys. I ruefully sat in the backseat of a police car looking at the carnage I created. Her home was now a murder crime scene. My mother was being consoled by her oldest brother with a distant and distraught look on her face. A look I'd never witnessed before but a look my actions had regrettably produced. A police officer stood nearby asking questions. She knew nothing. Before she arrived, the shots had rung out. My victims had taken their last breath in the place she slept, laughed, and invited family for dinner because she loved to cook. Her head as if on a swivel motioned left to right unable to provide answers to the officer pressing her. She shrugged her shoulders while gazing at her house. I could only imagine the thoughts that rampantly filled her mind.