The Real Victim

Dear Mr. Ed,

I'm the type of person who gives money to those guys at the highway exits holding up signs "Will work for food." I know they may very well spend it on alcohol, but I figure it's not my business to judge them. I'm the kind of person who brings the excess bounty of my garden to the food pantry instead of putting it out for sale at the curb, because I know that people going to the food pantry don't get fresh tomatoes; they get canned tomatoes, and if I've got more than I need, well, how better than to make someone's day -- someone who is going through tough times -- than to give them some fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes? I feed stray cats and sometimes even take one in to foster until he finds a forever home. Basically, I'm a softie.

I also am more inclined to trust people than to be suspicious. You are the father of my son's friend. They go to the same school and same daycare. I don't know you really well, but enough to say hello and ask how Orion is doing when I see you. When I saw you shoveling your boss's driveway back in December, I stopped the car, rolled down the window and told you that we would bring our snowblower over and take care of it so you didn't have to move all that heavy snow that had piled up. That's the kind of person I am. I saw you doing hard, back-breaking work, and I offered to help you.

You came into my home last month took a handful of my jewelry, quick before I even knew you'd been in and out of my bedroom, and sold it to a guy who looks the other way when you come in the door despite the countless times you've shown up to sell your "dead Grandma's" jewelry, and he sells it for scrap.

Let me tell you what you stole, Mr. Ed. You took some things I bought for not a whole lot of money at a garage sale. You took a pendant that my husband gave me while we were dating. My husband can buy me more jewelry -- maybe someday. These things I'm not happy about, but I can get past them.

But the wedding ring that came to me from my ex-husband's grandmother? That originally belonged to her friend across the street? A woman who died with no heirs and no known family? There was no one left to remember her, but I did every time I wore, or even looked at, her ring. It was engraved with the initials of her husband and her, and the date of their wedding. I was entrusted with remembering their tender love for each other. And now it's been melted down for the scrap value. I sobbed for having not been able to keep that trust.

Even worse, the amethyst pinkie ring that belonged to my great-grandmother, a woman born in 1851, more than 100 years before my arrival, who was described as being one who loved to sing while working around the house, which probably explains my constant warbling and raucous singing to the car radio. A woman I was going to be named after, until my father decided I should have a German name -- so I have the German version of her name. A ring that made miraculously made it through my divorce, despite my ex-husband's determination to keep everything of mine that was of sentimental value. And now it's gone, sold for the value of the gold, melted down to nothing. You took away not only a touchstone to my family's past, but my ability to pass it down to future generations.

Mr. Ed, you took my stuff so you could try to buy your kid's love. A custody battle between you and your child's mother started at the same time you started your little side business of stealing jewelry and selling it to supplement your income. Not so you could pay child support -- no, you turned down a salaried job that would have paid you 30 dollars an hour because you didn't want to have to pay "that bitch" child support. I've got news for you, Mr. Ed. Child support is for the welfare of the child, not for your ex.

So your kid got to play hockey while mine, who wants to, can't -- because I don't have $800 for the participation fee. And the day after you sold my stuff and got $190, your kid showed up at the ice rink with a brand new $200 hockey stick. So you stole from someone who can't even afford to let her kid play hockey -- and he would by far and away be the best player on the team, no question -- in order to buy your kid a new stick.

I've got news for you, Mr. Ed. You can't buy a kid's love. Not in the long run. Maybe right now, at this age, he thought you were the coolest thing, and since Mom wasn't getting child support, she couldn't afford to wow him with things like $200 hockey sticks, so if your goal in winning the custody battle was to make your kid like you better because you bought him cool stuff, maybe that would have worked for a while. But eventually he would have figured you out.

And now, Mr. Ed, here's the final cut. You stole from me, and you stole things that meant more to me than their material value and it is a kick in the teeth to think of them being melted down for the gold. I called your dealer and he confirmed that they're gone. And I have cried, and I have lost sleep, and I am depressed. But I've dealt before with having my stuff taken, and eventually I'll mostly get over it, although I'll be more jaded and suspicious of everyone, but I learned during my divorce that in the end, stuff is stuff.

The worst thing you stole is your son's childhood. Orion had to watch you being arrested and he knows his father is in jail and he will internalize that somehow he too is bad because his father did something bad and now he can't see his father anymore, and not being able to see a parent just tears a kid up inside -- creates a gaping wound that just doesn't ever heal. And he will internalize the shame of having had his friends watch his father get arrested, and knowing that his friends know that his father is in jail. I can't even imagine the pain that child is going through.

You were trying to buy Orion's love by stealing from me, and you ended up stealing his childhood. And that, Mr. Ed, is irreplaceable.