By Pam Luedtke

Something happened recently that really threw me for a loop. It was a Monday evening and my husband and I were watching the local evening news as we usually do. Out of the blue, we heard the names of some long-time friends of ours mentioned in a report about a homicide.

As the story unfolded, we were stunned and shocked to learn that our friend Warren (not his real name) pulled a gun on his wife Rose (not her real name) and shot her multiple times at close range. She died. He was arrested and charged with 1^st degree intentional homicide. We saw Warren’s mug shot in his orange jumpsuit, his face skewed up in a tangle of distortions. He appears only partially recognizable. We didn’t see the friend we knew was in there.

Hey wait. . . stuff like this happens to other people. . . someone else “out there” in the rest of the world. . . never so close to home. My husband and I were left in a state of sadness and utter disbelief. How could something like this happen?

Warren and Rose were friends of ours for many years and we knew them pretty well. We did a lot of things together and never saw any suggestion of hostility between them. They were living a pretty regular suburban kind of life with grown children and grandchildren, a house and garden, hobbies and interests. Rose was a retired teacher who was devoted to her family and did lots of volunteer work. Warren was a bit of a teddy bear type with a few rough edges from his career as a criminal investigator. They were college sweethearts and had been married for almost 60 years.

What in the world could have happened here? What could explain it?

I took out a photo of the four of us taken several years ago in happier times. I kept it out on the kitchen counter and shared it with others. It seemed to help offset some of the heaviness of the situation and reminded me who these friends really were before the darkness settled on them in this horrific moment.

Then I started searching for some answers of what could have happened. I needed to find a way to understand this, at least to some degree.

We know very little at this point about what led up to this incident and we may never know the full story. Clearly, there was some kind of mental break, where Warren’s ability to think and reason was overtaken by some other mechanism firing off in his system.

We know that Warren had some physical health problems that may have contributed and had very recently started to develop dementia.

We also know that Warren had worked in a career that brought him in touch with unsavory people, threatening situations and the carrying of a gun.

Sometimes he would get pretty “fired up” when recounting stories about his days on the job. It was clear that his job had been a source of pride and excitement for him. Is it possible that it was also a source of hidden negative emotions from what he had experienced? Emotions related to anger and aggression that he had suppressed, believing he had them under control?It is commonly understood that a person can carry deeply repressed emotions related to past “bad” experiences. When younger and healthier, a person can keep these emotions under control and under wraps, unaware that they are a potential problem. But when the person is older and has been weakened in some way, they may not be able to keep these emotions at bay. And if they have been suppressed and repressed for a long time, these emotions can gain in intensity and strength to become seething hot at times. They will come out in some way, at some time.

What if one day down the road, something triggers the past bad memory, triggers the past paranoia and triggers this cauldron of emotion to explode? The person becomes flooded and overwhelmed, unable to think or reason. They simply react, erupting in a violet outburst. The situation before them is not of this time and place, but something from the past. It is like an emotional bomb they’ve been carrying has inexplicably detonated.

Is it possible that this is what happened to our friend Warren? And his wife Rose just happened to be in the way? I believe this is entirely possible. It makes the most sense to me. I’m convinced that when Warren pulled the trigger that day, he was firing on something else from his past, not Rose. He was not himself and to him, she was not herself.

When strong emotions get loose, they can overwhelm the mind, especially when paranoia and survival instincts are triggered. Warren was reacting to something he had no control over. He wasn’t in his right mind.

This perspective has helped me reconcile myself to what happened. This is a moment for compassion, not condemnation. I still care about Warren. He is a fellow Soul. I choose to think of Warren and Rose as the good people we knew them to be. What happened at the end is not an accurate reflection of who they were in this life. They were so much more than this. This was about something else.

We seem to understand so little about ourselves and the way we truly work as humans. We all have our repressed emotions and vulnerabilities to some degree, but for some people, they become too much to handle. Sadly, we see this play out in our current society almost every day.

It is my hope that in the new age we will open the way to learning more about all this and work to better understand how to keep our emotional nature healthy and free flowing.