When You Just Have to Do Something

Any father knows there is a great bond of love between a father and his daughter. It is pure unconditional love. A dad sees his innocent little girl snuggle into his lap in total security. He looks into her eyes with pure joy. He wipes her tears and picks her up when she falls. He answers her questions about life. She trusts him for her care and security. She holds his hand on her first day of school. He comforts her when her friends tease her. He eats her roughly made cookies that she lovingly cooked for him, and plays formal tea party with her holding his cup and saucer delicately to please her.

A father feels his duty is to shelter and protect his daughter, and no matter if she's fully grown, that responsibility is never diminished. So the other day a father had to face the barbarian who murdered and dismembered his daughter and stuffed her into trash bags like last week's garbage.

I will never know what that father truly felt and I never want to know. But I can empathize with him. I get nauseous at the very idea that this man had to face this inhuman beast that would do such a thing to his daughter. He had to do it, to try to articulate his loss to the court. Maybe he wasn't that good with words. I mean how do you even begin? But he gave it a try. He had to for his daughter, whose face I'm sure he's haunted by every night as he imagines her horror and helplessness as she faced her last moments, surely crying out for her father.

I can only imagine his pain as he remembers this little precious love of his life pleading with him to give her another horsey back ride and he gladly does it despite his aching back. Now he tries to let the judge know in some way how this criminal has ruined his existence, and the emptiness he will feel over his daughter being ripped from life, and the guilt he will suffer for the rest of his life over not being able to save her.

And then as he gathers his words he glances toward the criminal who did this and sees him smirking as if it were all a joke. In a flash, he is taken away from his senses as he feels white hot hatred course through his veins demanding he do something. So he lunges at the criminal but is foiled and restrained. The offender leaves unharmed under a sentence of death that may never be carried out.

But in the dark fantasies of every man I know and respect, the human garbage that did this to my daughter will never die a natural death. Long before his death he will pass out dozens of times in excruciating pain praying to die and not again be awakened to the indescribable pain he will be subjected to. He will finally die begging for death to ease his depthless suffering. And the last thing he will see as his bloody lips spit out his final breath is a smirk on my face.