Ultimately, it's the long-term effects. .
. . . It’s never knowing, yet fearing that I know all too well, what those final moments must have been like.

. . . It’s constantly visualizing myself in his place that night, moment by excruciating moment.

. . . It’s realizing that I will never ever get the chance to talk to my brother.

. . . It’s living the rest of my life with the fact that my brother suffered one of the most horrifying deaths possible.

. . . It’s waking in the morning with the realization I had only dreamed James was alive and here.

. . . It’s the inexplicable sense of embarrassment when I tell someone that my brother was murdered -- that sense of guilt from injecting ugliness into their lives.

. . . It’s the constant need to bring James into conversations yet knowing others would prefer I don’t.


And last but not least……

. . . It’s knowing that this is only the beginning and the worst is yet to come.

. . . The haunting images.

. . . The emptiness.

. . . The loneliness.

. . . The sickening sense that life ended some time ago, and that I am but biding time.

Of course, the sun will come up again, but it will never come up again for the real victim of this crime. If I had any wish, any wish in the world, it would be that no one ever again would have to go through what my brother experienced on that night in August, what my family has endured since, and must carry with us the rest of our lives.

Life can never return to the trust filled innocence that I once lived. I no longer take for granted that I will live to an old age of retirement because I may not. We all just have to make the most of our days. Daily life can be the toughest.

I can say that some days I feel obsessed with doing anything and everything that I can for my brother and all the memories.

So as a survivor, I write my inner most feelings and thoughts’ hoping that I may help another whom finds themselves a victim yet knowing there is nothing anyone can say or do to help.

This was written by a murder survivor. but reflects exactly what I feel. All I did was change Russell to James. I think all murder victims family members feel the same excruciating pain. Let's be here for each other.