Opportunities Missed

My sons are watching an action show. In action shows people burst into doors and spray the room with bullets and people die.

This happens in real life too. I’ve seen the photos, the blood splattered against the wall where the bullet hit an artery, and the body slumped open-eyed at the bottom of the stairs. Eighteen casings from a AK 47 strewn across the house.

And in the mess photographed by the police to document the crime scene, a book lying on the floor, The Purpose Driven Life. A few years back, like many others, our church participated in this book and series. Unlike many churches who followed the program, we probably had some folks reading that book that could have lived in a house like these victims, who were raising pit bulls (illegal in my city) and marijuana (illegal anywhere in our country).

Who gave these two young men that book? Did they read it? Might it have mattered?

During the trial a woman I am confident is the mother of the deceased man sat and cried as she saw her son’s photograph used for identification. She left before the gory pictures, I was glad.

I can only imagine her going through his belongings after his death, and seeing that book on the floor, and if by any chance she had given it to him, wondering, what if?

It’s so easy to not feel responsible for other people. And in the end, we can only do so much. Someone tried to reach these two guys. But if they had, if their attempt had succeeded, their lives might have been so different, the one still alive. And the survivor, what happened to him? Has he changed? Has he cleaned up his act, gotten out of the drug business? He’s currently facing charges on the drug count. Did he read the book? Would he now?

I wrote these musings after seeing that photograph. The next day, that survivor sat in the witness stand. He told the story of the events, and how he seized an opportunity and ran. He tried to call the police to help his roommate, but heard a volley of shots before help arrived.

When he reached the part of the narration where he related that his roommate was killed, he cried. Two years later. A strong, macho male, in front of a courtroom of people. The prosecutor quietly walked to a desk and placed some Kleenex in front of him. Even the defense attorney was moved by this moment of raw emotion, a young man remembering the horror of his friend's death, and reliving his own guilt, because the grow operation in the house was his own. His friend died, he survived, but the drugs were his.

We also learned that the upstairs bedroom was the survivor's. That photograph captured the book The Purpose Driven Life, also the book 1984, and a handgun. What a capsule of that young man's life. When he retrieved his belongings, did he keep the book? Has he read it since? Do I ask?