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On Saturday, August 25th, 2007 at approximately 9:00 AM an unknown male wearing a bandanna and waving a large handgun entered my house through the backdoor. At gunpoint he forced me to round up my 7 and 14 year old sons and then ordered me to turn over all cash in the house. He eventually tied me up and put us in an upstairs closet so that he could search our house, saying that if he found any cash that I had not told him about, he would be back to kill us.
While I have not detailed the most heart-wrenching elements of this ordeal, it should suffice to say that it was an event that my family will not soon forget. Within minutes of its conclusion I was faced with many friends and neighbors who all appeared just as stunned as I was. While all who have contacted us since then have been well-meaning, many were speechless. Some should have remained speechless. This has inspired me to write some of my thoughts.
I should preface this by saying that as I write this, 4 full days have not yet passed since this ordeal. This is based on my opinion after my own specific set of circumstances, and it won't apply to every victim of a violent crime. In the end, none of us were hurt physically, which I'm sure is making this much easier to work through than it would have been otherwise. I reserve the right to modify my opinion as I work through this.
The biggest mistake people have made is telling me how I should have handled the situation, or how they would have handled it. No one who is traumatized is looking for advice about the past, nor do they care how you would have handled it. Offer support, offer sympathy, then shut up. I will probably always struggle with how I handled the situation. At one point I sized up the gun and the gunman and decided I probably had about a 95% chance of being able to take him. I had to weigh this against the fact that in the event that I did get control of the gun, it would certainly be traumatic for my boys to see their father shooting someone in their own home. I also had to consider that there was likely a better than 5% chance he was going to shoot us no matter what.
How do you make a decision like that? I did my best and it turned out to be the right decision, but it might not have been. I hope some day I can rest confident in my decision, but having someone who wasn’t there tell me how I should have handled it will not make that day arrive any sooner.
Another mistake I see is people talking about our situation in front of us, and not to us. If you want to gossip, please have the decency to do it out of our sight. We don't mind talking about what happened, sometimes it is helpful for someone to ask me about it as I work my way through it. I would imagine this isn't always true of someone who is traumatized, but it should be the victim's choice. Hearing others talk about it among themselves never helps.
I should also mention sometimes we've felt hurt by the people who haven't talked to us about this. If you have a friend or relative who has been traumatized by a violent crime, please don't be afraid to ask them how they are doing. They need to hear from you too.
We have had an incredible number of friends show support for us. I would say that for me personally, I will probably change just as much from the impact of the support that we have received as I will change from anything the gunman did.
I have concluded that the best things that someone can say to us is this: “I’m so sorry this happened to you", “I’m so glad you made it through this", and "You handled it well!" If you have a friend who has gone through a traumatic event like this, your friend will never get tired of hearing such statements. |
