Imagine the Unimaginable

It was parents weekend. Michelle and her folks had spent a wonderful day. They had dinner and then Michelle left to spend the evening with her friends. The plan was to have a family breakfast the next morning. Only there was no next day for Michelle. She was kidnapped, beaten, sexually assaulted and murdered by some sick twisted pervert. Somehow she got separated from her friends and needed to borrow a cell phone. It was late. He was a stranger and I suppose he must have seemed nice enough. She made a terrible last decision.

We went to a memorial service for Michelle Gardner-Quinn this afternoon. It was a church service held at HB Woodlawn, the high school Michelle and Jordan Burnett attended. The murder was the elephant in the room. We wondered how they would talk about it. The Reverend said that Michelle suffered a horrific death but that she was a strong person and he was confident that while the horror was happening to her, she would have found a way to go deep inside herself to prevent the hurt to her soul. It was not exactly comforting, but it was a way to think about her death without thinking about how petrified and painful the end must have been.

There were the usual prayers but that was it for usual. After all, how can the brutal death of a wonderful young person be usual? Her sister and brother gave very moving accounts of the person they knew. And then they opened the mike to anyone who had something to say. That is always dangerous because, as was the case here, some nut is likely to show up. In this case it was a Cambodian refugee who didn’t know Michelle but she opined that Michelle’s death had touched her so deeply that she wanted to take pictures of things that were relevant. It was a totally inappropriate appearance but it didn’t go on too long so they never had to drag her off the stage. But then the young people who knew Michelle took the mike. The two remembrances I found most moving were by a young man, who had clearly been a high school geek. He remembered that Michele was so kind “she even smiled and said hello to me”. The other was a girl for whom Michelle babysat. She recounted a few stories and then ended by saying that she had been working on a project which she e-mailed to Michelle last week. But then she learned that Michelle couldn’t answer. David and I cried from the beginning until the end. We cried for Michelle, her parents and a world in which this kind of thing can happen—even in Vermont to a kid who was savvy and aware of the horrors of the world.

After the service there was a reception in the cafeteria. Lots of HB faculty and parents attended without their kids because the kids were away at school. But like Jordan, they wanted their folks to go in their stead. Once you are an HB parent, you are always an HB parent. It is a small community of people who have had a special relationship with their children’s education and one another. Some didn’t even know Michelle but it didn’t matter because she was all our children. If it could happen to her...

We stayed for a while, saw all Jordans friends and teachers and then we were just too sad to hang around anymore. We never saw Michelle’s parents. We didn’t need to. They saw the community of people who came to express their love and sorrow, and individual condolences were unnecessary. When we walked away we wanted to feel better but we couldn’t. We are still too angry. There are still too many unanswered questions. There is still no resolution. And we are still too frightened to imagine the unimaginable. It could happen to anyone anywhere. We’re just sayin....