Ive got to help others., I could not define Conor by that one moment, Kate says, because if I defined Conor by that one moment, then I was defining Ann by that moment as well. When the group returned to the circle, Conor continued. Conor said he didnt think he should have a say. Later, Andy told me that he had fantasized or hoped that maybe it had been an accident, maybe Conors finger had slipped that he would hear something unexpected to help him make sense of his daughters death. And I gave him the message that Andy had given me and that was that he loved him and forgave him. Four days later, after her condition did not improve, her parents removed her from life support. Theyve spoken about it to church groups and prayer breakfasts around Tallahassee and plan to do more talks. That night, Andy Grosmaire, Anns father, stood beside his daughters bed in the intensive-care unit of Tallahassee Memorial Hospital. She told of how Ann had a lazy eye and wore a patch as a little girl. Grosmaire was known as the empathetic listener of her group, the one in whom others would confide their problems, though she didnt often reveal her own. . What Campbell didnt realize was that the Grosmaires didnt want Conor to spend his life in prison. And it allows victims, who often feel shut out of the prosecutorial process, a way to be heard and participate. The truth is that many people don't forgive because it is not time to forgiveand taking the time to proceed at their own pace can be empowering, intelligent, and worthy. Conor was frustrated, exhausted and angry and not thinking straight at all., He pointed the gun at her, thinking, he says, that he could scare her so that maybe she would snap out of it., Is this what you want? he yelled. Sitting cross-legged on an easy chair in her home in Berkeley, Calif., last winter, she described the experience as a complete relinquishment of anger, hatred and the desire for retribution and revenge.. Permissions. Forgiveness for me was self-preservation., Still, their forgiveness affected Conor, too, and not only in the obvious way of reducing his sentence. Baliga laid out the ground rules: Campbell would read the charges and summarize the police and sheriffs reports; next the Grosmaires would speak; then Conor; then the McBrides; and finally Foley, representing the community. To call slavery a "cruel war against human nature itself" may have accurately reflected the values of many of the founders, but it also underscored the paradox between what they said and what .
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