I was just reading a news story about Patty Porter, the grieving mother of Jesse Davis and her unborn granddaughter. I find this woman’s insight simply remarkable. Ms. Porter’s daughter was murdered by her boy friend and father of her son Blake, and her unborn child. Bobby Cutts Jr. was also a police officer in Canton, Ohio. He killed Jesse in front of 2 and ½ year old Blake and then rolled her body up in a comforter and dumped it in a remote area of a near by park. In the days that followed Blake kept repeating that his Mommy was crying, that she had broke the table and that she was in the rug. At first, Cutts denied any knowledge of Jesse’s disappearance and had joined the search. Days later he finally lead police to her body.
Can you imagine? The grief? The anger? As the mother of an adult daughter who was in an abusive relationship I can only speculate, but I’m fairly certain I wouldn’t be able to find it in my heart to forgive, but Patty Porter did. Porter had taken responsibility for Blake, the son that Cutts had fathered with her daughter. In raising him she decided that she must forgive her daughter’s murderer. What she said really made me stop and think.
“I didn’t think I could raise my grandson to be any kind of a man if I was full of hate and anger,” Porter said later. “My daughter would have never wanted that either.” “My forgiving [Cutts] didn’t change anything as far as what was going to happen to him,” but it changed me. It’s almost like it gave me the freedom to mourn my daughter’s loss and not feel that awful rage that happens to you when you choose not to forgive people. I was not going to let this destroy me as well.”
I struggle with this all the time. I have a grandson the same age as Blake and if his father had succeeded in his efforts to kill his mother I would be the one raising him. He didn’t succeed and I still can’t forgive him for what he tried to do. I’m just not that big of person, even though I know Patty Porter is right. Don’t get me wrong, I never speak ill of the son of a bitch in front of his child. I love my grandson more than I ever imagined possible, and he will always come before my anger, but it always there, just under the surface. And I wait, knowing that some day his father will break his heart, because I know he will.
And now I sit and ponder how a woman who lost her daughter can find it in her heart to forgive, when I, who didn’t, can’t. Is it simply that she is a much better person? More forgiving, more spiritual, more loving? Or maybe, if I’m not quite so hard on myself, it’s just the simple fact that my nightmare’s monster roams free – for now. To further hurt the people who love him and any unsuspecting people who come into contact with him in the future. I felt a certain satisfaction and a sense of safety when he was in prison that was lost when he was released. So maybe I have justifiable reason’s for the way I feel or maybe I’m just justifying my feelings in a self serving way. I would like to forgive, even though know I could never forget. But he’s roaming free to visit my waking nightmares and I just can’t.
(((((Dus)))))