Remembering...

Yesterday I watched the movie based on the Zodiac killings which took place in California in the '60s and '70s. About half way into the film, they began discussing the possible connection to an unsolved murder in Riverside, my own home town. Then suddenly there flashed on the screen the actual senior class photo of the victim, my friend, Cheri Bates. And just like THAT, 40 years disappeared, and I found myself right back where I was on that Halloween weekend in 1966. Her death sent our entire high school -- our entire TOWN -- into a hurricane.

Keep in mind, 1966 was a tough year on the young men and women of America. The Viet Nam war was in full swing, and several of the kids from our class and the classes ahead of ours were in danger of losing their lives (many did). We were forced to learn to deal with the deaths of our classmates. But this? A horrible, brutal murder. How could this happen in peaceful little Riverside? How could this happen to one of our own?

Riverside was, and is, a small town at heart. For 10 years, the local newspaper published Cheri's photo every year on the anniversary of her death. Then every 5 years, then not at all. Now here it was again. I wanted to look away; I wanted to turn off the movie and find something to take my mind far, far away. But I couldn't. The maturity I have gained with those years has caused me to reflect on Cheri's murder in a new way. My spirituality, too, has altered the way I think about it.

As I watched the rest of this movie, wearing a sizable lump in my throat, the reality of that series of events, and the way it affected and changed the lives of each of us was as real to me as it had been then. Whoever murdered Cheri ripped the innocence away from a lovely little Southern California town, and we have never been the same.