What Is It Like to Have Lunch with a Person, Knowing That They're a Murderer?

My father's sister killed a woman in a crime of passion as they call it. She caught the woman in flagrante delicto and shot her. She attempted to kill her husband as well but only wounded him.

As she told the court, "he was moving too fast for me to get a good bead on him." I visited her many times at her home after she was released early due to health problems and advanced age. She described her life in prison - she was forced to become the butch in a relationship with her cellmate because she was strong enough to protect them both.

In exchange, her cellmate was the domestic. She declined to reveal more intimate information about prison. She furthered her education in prison, becoming an avid reader for the first time in her life.

As for her experience, she suggested that I read "Black Widow: The True Story of the Hilley Poisonings" by R. Robin McDonald. She gave me her copy to read and keep.

A decent detective novel, it details the killer's poor Southern rural background and her sense of hopelessness in the face of the male-centered power paradigm of her time and place.As for 'knowing they're a murderer', as you put the question, I have several thoughts. I assume that the question is more about my internal landscape than my aunt's.

I do not fear her (but then again, I have never had cause to fall asleep around her, either).I find her action horrible. I find the repercussions for her children sad- most of them moved away from their hometown.

I find the repercussions for her grandchildren sad- all of them were born while she was in prison, so their earliest memories of her are of visiting her there.I find that I cannot forgive such a heinous act; such forgiveness is beyond the ability of one human soul to process, let alone produce, if you follow me.I find that I cannot condemn such a heinous act, either; such condemnation is rightly beyond the power of one human soul to mete out, albeit the existence of the unfortunate natural human inclination to do so.

And so the previous two bullets leave me hanging, so to speak. Humans want resolution, they want categorization, they want pigeonholes, they want boxes. The truth is there is no true resolution in life, just our perception of resolution.

Life is, we are taught, a two-man conversation with Self and Other, turn-take, wait your turn. The reality is, more often than not, that the Other goes off on a lacuna, a tirade, a jag, a lull, a non sequitur, or completely changes the subject on you. The important thing is what you do when the world gives you lemons.

I will let my aunt have the final say:"I did it. I know I did it. I remember doing it.

But for the life of me, I can't tell you what made me do it. He was there and she was there and there I was, with a shotgun. I don't even know where it came from.

People ask me how I can live with myself. I can't kill myself over it. It's bad enough that I have one life on my soul.

I don't need two. "Would I do it again? No, I don't imagine I would.

Does it ever bother me? Why, yes, every day, and that is something I will have to live with and carry alone for the rest of my days. That woman is the last thing I see when I lay my head on my pillow at night and the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning.

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· Other Questions

Is the Narendra Modi led BJP Govt. fooling us as the number of Coronavirus cases are increasing much more now, 8000 daily, but they are relaxing the lockdown? Is the lockdown proving ineffective just like demonetization?

The Lockdown is a failure. Has been a failure. There is no doubt about it.

However blaming the Prime Minister for this failure would be unfair. Blaming the Chief Ministers for the failure would also be unfair.If you have to blame anyone - the blame has to lie with two guilty parties - THE MEDIA and THE PEOPLE OF INDIALets first start with the People of India - The Sheer and Utter indiscipline was visible even in the days of the first lockdown.

Good people like a 32 year old man buying milk or a 47 year old banker going to work were beaten by the cops and killed while Dozens and Dozens of others ignored the law and went to mosques, and conducted political speeches (MP CM Chouhan) and Briefings and Migrants flocked stations and bus stands without a minutes care for wearing a mask.The Westerner thinks u201cIf i have COVID 19, I better not pass it to othersu201d, The Indian (And the Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan) thinks u201cI have the COVID 19, others should get it toou201dMajority of the lower middle class blatantly ignored the repeated warnings and wandered without masks, crowded in every possible place including the vegetable markets of Koyambedu, the meat shops etc. Hundreds of Muslims happily went to mosques and Migrants- who lived in crowded hovels and slums - the biggest petri dish for the virus - ended up creating rampage for everyone with their indiscipline.

Even when they were transported - they ditched their buses, ditched quarantine, escaped to other places and caused a lot of havocHad we been China or NK - we could have had laws that shot any such offender but sadly we are a democracy so we do not.Now lets start with the Media - They take the Lions share. Not just the regular media but the Social Media.

The ones who keep sending fake rumours daily through Whatsapp, The ones who keep giving bogus information on a daily basis.The Media knew there would be big risks by Migrant movements but while they were Warned by Virologists from AIIMS and ICMR ,they went on portraying the plight of the migrants, showing the migrant families starving, showing the migrant children starving (Despite many states having parted with over 30% of their rations), demanding more money for the migrants.A Stronger govt like China would have arrested a thousand journalists, five hundred producers and cut off all satellite feeds for 6 weeks but sadly again we are a democracy.

Tough leaders could have ignored the media but sadly all our leaders are men of straw - and they immediately kowtowed and got the migrants to go to their homes and now the same migrants want to come back and except Yeddy no one has spine to say u201cSorry. You cant return. You wanted to go home.

You drained a lot of resources. You spread the Diseases due to sheer indiscipline. Now die in your homesu201dSo in India -the biggest culprit is this unfair freedom of Media.

They can report anything they want and they dont care about what is right or wrong.The PM OF INDIAHe made the rules. However the rules could be enforced only by the states.

Sure he bungled with the economy but other than that he is not responsible for the number of cases or the failure of the lockdown. THE CMS of the StatesThe CMS did their best. They asked the cops to keep control and they happily beat the migrants whenever they could (Luckily Migrants are not voters in the state).

Blame them for lower testing, poor quarantine facilities, bad PPE equipment, Bureaucracy, Kowtowing to bogus figures etc and i will agree politicians have a lions share but when it comes to the Rising number of cases, the only people i will squarely blame are The People for their Indiscipline (Maybe due to lack of Awareness) , the Media due to its biased and utterly one sided narrative without concentrating on the nature of spread and finally the Migrants who have given the biggest headaches to the country.

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Have you experienced a tragedy which ultimately led to a better life for you?

I was working at a Staffing Agency and I really loved my job but the owners of the company were alcoholics who had become abusive over time.

We were a small company, only 5 people in our office. My co-workers saw what was going on and urged me to quit, but I stayed because I felt it was worth the effort given the amount of experience I was gaining as a result and the given very close relationship and friendships that had developed as a result of working there. At the time I was also dating a drug user.

I was unaware that he was a drug user because I was constantly working and never home.My brother and sister had been driving me to and picking me up from work everyday for about 6 months because my drug user boyfriend crashed my car and I was saving up to buy a new one. Well, my brother got together with my Dad and they bought me a Nissan Rogue, surprised me.

I was driving it home from the dealership with my sister the following day when we received the worst phone I have every received in my life. My brother, 33 years old, was found dead in his apartment. Time stopped, as you can imagine.

The world stopped spinning, my heart stopped beating, time stopped moving forward my life was over in that moment.He had just started a major charity organization, we were all very excited about it and proud of him. This news was most unexpected.

Long story short, my brothers death caused me to have a nervous breakdown. I walked off my job the following week after my boss had another one of her drunken episodes and came home to find my boyfriend with needle marks and blood running down his arm.I got him the help he needed, as soon as he got clean he broke up with me, told me he didnt want to be in a relationship anymorepreferred to be single and felt he would be happier that way.

Good for him.One thing after another, I thought that I had just been dealt a bad hand in life and when I thought things couldnt get worse, we found out my sister, who has a spinal cord injury, was now suffering from a condition called dysautonomia as a result of her injury. Shortly thereafter, my mother had a heart attack.

The dark clouds cleared, however.I got a job working at a company that really respects and appreciates my abilities, I met a person who makes me want to be a better person makes me strive for better, my Mother is now seeing a different cardiologist as we learnt from her heart attack that her previous doctor was completely full of shit and my sister won her lawsuit against the doctor who gave her the injury which means she now has the money to seek out alternative treatments for her injury and the resulting conditions.My family went through a lot and waited a long time for the coming of the dawn, but it finally came.

We can not bring my brother back. the one event that in a way may have catalyzed all of the resulting bad and then good that happened, but it makes me believe that everything happens for a reason.My life is better in a lot of ways, but there was a price to pay.

To this day, I dont know if it was worth it. If my brother hadnt died, would I still be with a drug addict? Would my sister have lost her case?

Would my mother have had another heart attack and died? Would some other tragedy have befallen our family from which we could not recover?I dont know.

Im just grateful that with everything bad that happened, something good was waiting on the other side