Wisteria Lane

I always thought Wisteria Lane was a huge dramatization, exaggerated for entertainment and shock value. Now I’m not so sure.

On Friday, I left work early because I had a killer headache and wasn’t sure if I was getting a cold or just had allergies. At any rate, I figured I wasn’t too busy and might as well try to sleep it off. I got home about 1:00, ate lunch and practically passed out on the couch after taking cold medicine and pain killers. About 5:00, I woke up feeling a little better, took a shower and left for my friend’s birthday dinner.

I started pulling down my street, but there was police tape blocking it off. Figuring there must have been some super-sized wreck on my fairly narrow suburbia street, I backed out onto the cross street and took the long way out of my neighborhood to hit I-4. However, when I returned after 11 p.m., the tape was still there. So were more cops than I knew our small suburb employed, all the news trucks and a huge Crime Scene Investigation RV.

A little frazzled, I got in to catch the end of the 11:00 news—the weather and the sports. Not helpful. Becoming more panicked, wondering WHAT was going on only a few houses down from me, I checked all our local news and couldn’t find a thing. Finally Google produced a small story with a huge punch.

Double homicide. One block down.

My neighbor apparently killed his wife, then chased his 11-year-old son across the street with a machete. As the son hollered for help to neighbors outside, the dad murdered him on the lawn across the street (two days before Father’s Day). A neighbor tried to save the little boy, but it was too late.

Thankfully, they caught the man. I supposed they had to block off both sides of the street for DNA evidence that stretched across the neighborhood.

I’ve never met this disabled Army veteran, who according to news reports has tried to commit suicide before. But now, 24-hours later, our middle-class sleepy little neighborhood where you often see people walking after dark, hanging out in their garages or kids playing in their yards, is still surrounded by cops, the family’s house is still encompassed by police tape and news crews continue to lurk. I even had a cop come ring my doorbell (that’s not disconcerting) to let those in the neighborhood know there would be a grief counseling session tomorrow.

How do you wrap your mind around that? Every time I go out now, get away from the tragedy for a moment, I am welcomed back to my house by cops waving me through and WFTV vans lurking around for a story.

I suppose I should feel safer than ever before with so much police surveillance … but I don’t. I don’t want to go outside. This whole scenario sounds like a bad Lifetime movie, not my block.

I don’t like seeing my street’s name on the top story on all three news stations two nights in a row. I don’t like helicopter shots of my house on the news. My heart completely breaks for this fifth-graders classmates and neighborhood friends. How do you begin to explain that to your kid? That the last thing this child knew on this earth was that his dad killed his mom and then came after him.

I can only pray for those kids and neighborhood families, that they’ll find God. I don’t know why this would happen. I know it wasn’t a surprise to Him. I know that God didn’t cause this to happen, but it’s part of living in a fallen world. But it still hurts and it still doesn’t make sense.

I can only think of the story of Lazarus … Jesus wept. He’s crying with us. In the midst of pain and chaos that makes no sense, sometimes that’s the only comforting thing someone can offer.