Seeing son’s killer go free opens old wounds for family

DEAR ABBY: My son was murdered four years ago by a supposed friend. Despite a 10-year sentence, the murderer was released from prison this month.
The perpetrator and my son had some mutual friends. When I go onto the convicted manslaughterer’s Facebook page, he has many people congratulating and welcoming him home.
The murderer has not once apologized or shown remorse. He was on home incarceration for six months before he was sentenced for manslaughter, and during that time, he impregnated his girlfriend instead of thinking about the devastation he’s caused my family. My son will NEVER have a family.
Instead of announcing to his Facebook friends and family that he’s on his way home and that he is home, I feel he should keep his mouth shut and live a quiet life. I cannot believe that murderers and rapists receive respect and congratulations once they reenter society. Do people not recognize the devastation that has been caused to surviving family members of the victim? Or do they no longer care until something like this affects them and their families?
HURT AGAIN IN KENTUCKY

DEAR HURT AGAIN: Please accept my sympathy for the tragic loss of your son. Nothing can take away the pain of losing a child, let alone at the hand of another person. The family and friends of the person who killed your son appear to have lost sight of the reason for his incarceration. But viewed from another perspective, they are happy to have their loved one back with them, which is why they are posting welcome messages.
A resource that might help you is the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children Inc. You can find it by going to pomc.com. I hope you will give it a try. My heart goes out to you.

DEAR ABBY: Sometimes the simplest situations make me wonder the most. Recently we needed to use the local ATM. When we drove by, we could see it was being filled by an armored truck. My husband said I should get in line. I looked around and saw other people waiting in their cars, so I thought I would do the same. My husband repeated that I should get out and get in line. Faced with the choice of standing in line or being nagged by my husband, I chose the former and was the first person to form a line.
After 20 minutes standing there and reading the news on my phone, the ATM guards seemed to be finished. That’s when a woman approached me and said she had been waiting longer than me, albeit in her car, and I would have to go to the end of the line. I ignored her.
Soon, a guard motioned to me that the ATM was available. As I was making my withdrawal, I could hear the woman say to the others now lined up behind her that I had jumped the line and she called me an expletive, which two others in line repeated. Was I wrong to have stood my ground, or should I have moved to the back?
WAITING IN TEXAS

DEAR WAITING: If you were the first person to stand at the ATM while others chose to wait in the comfort of their vehicles, you owed no one an apology. The person who was out of line (literally) was the woman who called you an expletive, and you were right to ignore her.
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