Passive Fist: Part II

When I think of the word pacifist I can’t help picturing myself standing passively by inside the bathroom door, holding a weapon in my fist while I watch my wife get murdered. Passive-fist is all I can hear now when that word is spoken. And I regret, many times a day, my blasted pacifism in that moment.

When you lose a spouse to murder, it ushers you into a club that nobody wants to be in. There are very few people in grief groups who can identify with that particular brand of grief, so people like us are drawn to one another. I knew three others in the grief network, and I was the lucky one. Frederick Johnson was found, tried and sentenced. The other three were old cases where the perpetrator was never caught.

Although I felt for them, for their lack of closure, the pronouncement of “guilty” was anticlimactic. It changed things to a degree, but the hollow spot inside of me simply took on a different shape. It never filled in.

I can’t tell you now many times I’ve imagined bludgeoning Frederick Johnson to death with that pipe wrench. There is the allurement of gratification, but after the scene has played out in my head, I’m no more satiated than at the start of the daydream. So it was with anticipation that I welcomed the Victim Emotional Normalization Trauma program (VENT), which the Department of Corrections initiated that year.

Back in the 90s, if you murdered a pregnant woman in Tennessee, you could get the death penalty. Frederick Johnson had two prior felony convictions, so the judge sentenced him to death by electrocution. VENT was a program that permitted survivors of murdered family members to actually throw the switch. Now, I was under no illusions. I’m certain that the actual executioner was someone else who was signaled to throw the real switch by some sort of faux switch I’d be flicking. But I relished the idea that I would be somehow connected to the person killing Frederick. If I couldn’t be the one to bludgeon him with a pipe wrench, at least I could grip the hand of the person bludgeoning him.

The execution date took a year to set. Then there were the invariable delays. But I bided my time, all the while nursing my bloodlust. There was a new image to fixate upon. Me flipping a switch as I watched Frederick convulsing just beyond the glass barrier where he would be strapped to that glorious chair.

When the day finally arrived there were groups of protesters outside the facility where he was to be killed. “Funny,” I thought. “Not long ago I might have considered joining a group like this, raising my voice and waiving my sign calling for the abolition of the death penalty.” But these protesters were naïve children to me now. If they only knew what it felt like to lose a wife so incredible like Mattie to person so twisted like Frederick. For her to be gone and for him to be alive was a profound injustice

I was ushered into a lonely waiting room. Mattie’s mom and dad were there, along with her sister. We embraced and wept as we had at the conclusion of the trial. Then a guard guided me over to a table and chair next to a window that looked upon another lonely room with a lonely chair. He gave me some brief instructions and we waited. I looked over at Mattie’s family but didn’t know what to say. It’s not the kind of setting one can make small talk very easily.

Finally, Frederick Johnson was brought into the execution chamber, and when I saw him my stomach lurched. I had not seen him since the trail over a year ago and my hatred was just as fresh. He’d grow pudgy on cheap prison food and his head was shaved bald, but I knew him from picturing him every day. They strapped him in, and I brought my finger and thumb up to the switch on the table in front of me.

He looked scared, and I felt a thrill at what I imagined must have been an overwhelming sense of doom. There was a priest of some sort in there with Frederick, bending to his ear and speaking to him, Finally, the priest left the room. It was just Frederick, sitting there, waiting for me. I was in control of the moment of his death. Such a feeling of power over Frederick after feeling so powerless in this whole tragedy for so long.

I looked at the guard beside me.

“Whenever you are ready, Mr. Stearn.” He said.

Part of me wanted to wait all day so that Frederick would experience the agony of dread for as long as possible, and the other part wanted to throw the switch the second he was strapped down.

I looked directly at him through the glass and whispered, “Die, you son of a bitch,” and I threw the switch.