Bittersweet

I've always known that journalists have hearts. We just try to conceal it so we can do our jobs.

There have been so many stories that touched my heart through my years as a daily reporter. I remember the sheer utter sorrow in the face of a mother whose teenage son did something stupid and died in a dammed up fishing hole. Or the sorrow and anger in the parents of another stupid teenager who died after being hit by a train in a rainstorm.

But, the ones that hit me the hardest were the ones involving the murder of children. Sweet 10-year-old Julianne. I used to have dreams about her face. She would come see me in my dreams. She didn't want to be forgotten, she would tell me. She was raped and murdered by a neighbor and stuffed in a laundry hamper. To this day, I can't use a hamper like that one. I tried, but it haunted and disturbed me. I finally threw it away. Sweet little Danydia. She was in kindergarten or first grade, I can't recall. She was kidnapped from the playground at school. They found her eight days later in a garbage bag in the boonies. Police said she knew her abductor by the way she willingly left with him. They suspected it was a revenge killing against her mom for something tied to drugs.

I watched grown women become basket cases while covering the tornado that wiped out Jarrell, Texas. One girl, it was her first catastrophe to cover and she came unglued. For weeks after, if it even rained she would start to shake and get scared. The other woman was a former soldier with two little kids. She was more like me in that she would get the job done, then retreat to her home and sob like a baby. It happens. I could crack jokes with the best of them, but once the case was done, I would go home and weep and weep.

For all of their faults, journalists aren't villians.