Morgan’s happy walls…all 4 walls were full of lots of color, and wonderful memories 

Packing away Morgan’s belongings began last night, and today I continued.  Her lifetime of memories and prized possessions, along with most all of the necessities for her life right here in one room, just missing one important piece – Morgan.  Morgan’s walls were her “happy walls”, covered with pictures and cards, and every image of things she had cherished in her life.  Each and every one with a story of its own, dress up day at grade school, a hike with friends, miniature golf with dad, or a real pirate ship with mom and dad catching the sunset, even if it was on a lake.  Her paintings, a string of Christmas lights with a cartoon character for each light, postcards, inspirational photos and sayings – so, so many memories of happy times for Morgan.

Today I started to pick the pieces of her enormous collage off the walls.  One memory after the other – and so many that we had shared together.  At first a tear came with each, then it was sobs.  How could this have happened!  I demanded from the empty room.  Why was Morgan taken from us?  I ached for an answer, and would call Steve to share how I felt, wondering if there was any way to speed up the process.  Even though I knew the answer already, we had been told it would be weeks before the last results would come in.

We were also told by the detectives that the Forensic Pathologist was really good, very thorough.  He would have answers, and I trusted every assurance I had been given.  It’s really quite impossible to think your youngest baby has been trusted to the hands of anyone, but the best.  So I filled my waiting with sharing the memories she chose to find as happy ones with every piece I removed from her wall.  After all the close moments Morgan and I had together here was quite a different moment.  Putting anything into a proper perspective was so impossible.

Steve joined me at some time and we worked independently but together and shared in the grief.  I am not sure if it was then or at some moment in the near future that we resolved to move as soon as we could.  Morgan never bursting into the house with her latest excitement was indelibly etched into the front door of this house, and walking past it knowing that would never again happen was so terribly difficult.

After a few days now of sorting her room it still had not yet begun to show any signs of being emptied, but the stack of boxes in the entry sure grew.  We had to go really slow and inspect everything.  Then we had decided there was no sense putting them anywhere else, because soon they would be packed onto a moving van.  Over the following weeks our house became boxes destined for another place, and I found some comfort in that.

Steve and I were so very grateful for the years we had Morgan in our lives and for this entire nightmare to become part of our past could not happen soon enough.

We were told that for the stalker, or the responsible party in the invasion of Morgan’s privacy, or whoever he, she or they were there would be an urge to return at some point soon after her death, and that urge may be strong.  We should be alert for the possibility.  But we were no longer wanting to be hyper-vigilant any longer, now we were just numb.   We listened to advice like this, but found it very difficult to maintain anything close to the same vigilance we had when Morgan was still alive.

Other’s were helping us by watching the neighborhood for this sort of possibility, and they did see some curious events.  But, as with Morgan’s stalking it was more a glimpse of uncertainty instead of staring right at an answer.

The truth never changes, and it was my firm belief in that fact that helped us through this time.  There was a truth out there, and while it might not come as soon as I wished, it would eventually arrive and it would not change – the truth is always the truth no matter how much others might want it to go away.  It would always remain there, waiting to be fully exposed.

I remember sometime during the packing up of Morgan’s room I began to think of the things that were not being done.  Like no one was calling me for a list of Morgan’s doctors, especially the specialists she had seen.  They held such knowledge of Morgan.  The question grew until I called the detectives to ask if I should put together a contact list for someone.  But I was assured that as far as they knew they already had everything they needed.  I remember wondering how, but not asking why.

Life was a delicate balance then, engaging enough to keep moving, but not too much.  Too much seemed to bring a wave of realization and instant sorrow.  I felt guilty at times, feeling that Morgan had been the one who suffered and paid the ultimate price, not me.  Allowing myself to grieve was at times unstoppable, and at other times an incredibly difficult challenge.

As Steve and I made headway in her room there had been no further questionable discoveries.  In the first days there had been quite a few, but now as we dug deeper into drawers and corners of closets there were only Morgan’s things as they had been.

Besides that which we had found had not generated much, but we were used to that.  Investigations seen on TV, with teams spending entire days searching was obviously just a fantasy because compared with the real life we had come to expect nothing even remotely close to that was happening.  As far as law enforcement and the Coroner’s office went, Morgan was only allowed so much time, and it certainly had not increased with her death.

It seemed as if all were waiting for the, “Tox report.”  So naturally I worried, what if there was nothing found?  Would they have to go back and start over?  But by then we had cleared a good percentage of her room, and packed it all away.  The detectives had assured me it was fine, and it was so hard to know I was doing the right thing no matter what I did.

Steve had a plan that at the time seemed so perfect.  He had a banker box marked evidence and a box of baggies.  Every time we would find a memory chip, jump drive, roll of film, and anything else that we surmised could be evidence someday, not even knowing if a crime had been committed, it would be placed in a baggie and marked with a sharpie as to where it was found.

At least this way if Morgan’s death turned out to be nefarious, all would not be lost.  And for the next week it seemed that all possibilities were still in play.