Before I sleep

It doesn't get any easier. I wrote several friends, some people I know and pastor who asked me to check in with him afterward.

"If it is this hard for me, a relatively disinterested party, how hard must it be for Christopher Scott Emmett? For his family? For John F. Langley's family? For everyone who knows those involved?"

What about the victims of all the men and women who are on death row? Who remembers them? Going back to my original post, where I talk about looking in Emmett's eyes, it occurs to me again and again - how do you look in the victim's eyes? It's a heck of a job I have - not just on this story, but on them all.

How do we do it? How do we look into the eyes of the mother who's burying a son or daughter killed in Iraq? How do we look into the eyes of a family who's just lost someone to a drunk driver or a drive-by shooting? How do we look into the eyes of a welfare mother whose children were playing with matches and burned their house down? What is it about this job that we spend so much time looking into the eyes of tragedy?