Sacramento, California.
March, 1997
"Save the otters!" my mom shouted, holding up her sign. "Their homes are just as important as yours!"
This is what I loved about Mom. She always stood up for what she believed in. Sure, she could donate tons of money to her animal organizations, but she loved spreading the word.
"Thank you for your donation, sir," I said to the man who had just dropped a fifty in my tin box. Mom winked at me, that awesome smile on her face.
Gil sat beside me, playing with a Voltron action figure. He was still a little young to pay attention to this kind of stuff, but me, I was sixteen and ready to work for my mom. I wanted to be a veterinarian like her. Maybe not quite to this extreme, but something along the lines. Gil just wanted to work with plants. Donny…well, who knew what Donny wanted to do.
Dad never came to these rallies, but he supported Mom's charities with donations and the occasional appearance at a benefit for Mom's practice.
Later that evening, while the sun was setting, I was carrying posters back to the car when I heard the loud screech of car wheels. "Give me the money!" a loud voice yelled. I ran back to my mom, leaving Gil in the car. A man held my mother at gunpoint, the tin box of donation's I'd held in my lap all day in her hands. "Did you hear me, bitch? Give me the money!"
My mom tried to reason with the gunman, and she was so soft spoken, I couldn't hear her from my distance. The next thing I heard was a pop. My mother's body fell to the ground and the gunman stood there, staring at her body for a few seconds. The he grabbed the tin box and disappeared. I ran back to the car.
"What was that noise?" Gil asked from the backseat, half asleep.
One week later
"You look like hell, Lady," Gran said from the kitchen doorway.
"Thanks," I said sarcastically, dipping my spoon back into the chocolate pudding.
"No, I mean it. Stop stuffing your face and get up off that floor." She walked over and yanked the bowl out of my hands, set it on the counter and pulled me up off the floor. It scared me sometimes, how strong she was despite her old-lady bones. "There are people out there that want to give their condolences."
"I don't care about their condolences—,"
"I know, Lady. I don't much care for them either. But you wanna know a secret?"
"I'm not really in the mood for—,"
"Whenever someone close to you dies, no one ever knows what to say. So they say that they're sorry because human empathy is a virtue. They say they're sorry because they want to make you feel better and they don't know how. Unfortunately for us, that means comforting them, more than they comfort us. Do you understand, Lady?"
"You're gonna make me go back out there and listen to people tell me how sorry they are that she died, even though I don't want their sympathy?"
"People in your life are gonna die. There's nothing you can do to stop it. But you have to let people say they're sorry. You'll never know exactly how the dead person has touched their life. You have to be the responsible one."