Dead Heat In the Death House:
Timothy McVeigh's Last Day
It was Sunday afternoon and Timothy McVeigh had but ten more hours to live. Many of you felt that his execution was justified and took comfort in the knowledge that he was to meet with the executioner and last. Up to three hundred victims and survivors watched as three powerful drugs were administered to McVeigh, whereupon, he was on his way to a relatively painless death. I've already posted here the instances, few as they've been, of the lethal injection causing many distressing events before a condemned prisoner finally slips into unconsciousness and the live spectical of his famed, or in many of us, infamous, death. Were people be happy after witnessing what McVeigh has called a "state-assisted suicide." I sit here at my computer and wonder what would have been a fitting epitaph for Timothy James McVeigh, and, if his body was to be moved to a funeral parlour for a service, would there be gut-wrenching eulegies. Well, as it turned ot, he was promptly cremated and therefore, there was likely little or no service at all.
His family was devastated, just as the bombing survivors were on April 19, 1995. But that doesn't make capital punishment any more ruthless, unGodly or humane than it is. I fear for the future of my little nieces and nephew and what legacy we are leaving all children in the world today. I stare blankly at the mirror and see someone with high cheekbones and intense blue eye looking back at me with an obviously pained look. Tim and I could be brother and sister. Everything about this execution is terrible---there are no winners in this ghoulish game. Nobody will hit an emotional jolt of excitement and/or happiness. Perhaps that's the very worse and tragic reality of this whole heartbreaking mess.
I wonder what Tim was going through during his last hours on earth. He was been moved to the death house as of yesterday to a stark and depressing eight by ten inch cell--the cell with which I refer to as "the slaghtering room" in any given grocery stores that store frozen flanks, torsos and hang them up as if to indicate that those cows, pigs and lambs aren't anything even remotely close to the meat which will be hacked to death with a menacing meat clever. Tim, of course, was not a frozen rack of pig ribs and of course, he was certainly not housed in a place where he's forced to live in sub-zero temperatures, but the similarities are somewhat startling and not a tiny bit frighening. Tim had no television in the big house, to help him get his mind off the upcoming execution. One would think it wouldn't be very humane to deprive Tim of the only morsel of escape he had.
Last Thursday, I printed out twenty-two pages of this website, to assure him that there are a growing number of us who feel that, in certain ways, he really is a martyr. Now before you stop reading and go right to the guest book to tell me off (Actually, I appreciate anyone's posts, for it means they are thinking about both sides of this melancholy situation. The woman at the post office told me that the package had to be at its destination by Saturday at the latest. I was sending it by Purolator Express and asked the employee to try and get it moved to Terre Haute's Federal Penitentiary as soon as possible. The truck picked up my papers about which I was nervous just a scant hour later---talk about luck! I had a letter enclosed where the last sentence was: "Godspeed, Timothy James McVeigh. Soon you'll be with your beloved grandfather once more. Jesus loves you, my dear friend. Love, jane.
I've been working on my manuscript a great deal and even moreso when I heard the grim and shocking decisions Tim made last December----giving up any remaining appeals and asking for a speedy execution. My heart dropped into my shoes and all colour drained from my face. "This can't be true!" I sobbed to my friend, "Why would Tim do that???" Thus, I began writing. The letters were all between five and six typed pages and told him that there were many of us who cared for him. The last news I brought myself to watch said that Tim keeps up correspondance to the faithful and forgiving. He has not written to me per se, but in various interviews I've read, he has expressed positive statements that centre around the mail he receives and that it keeps him together in what must be the single most agonizing wait. The execution itself may be painless, but the psychological pain of waiting and being moved to a solitary bulding is just plane cruel and unsusual punishemt.
I hope all of you reading this know that Tim McVeigh has finally expressed a great deal of remorse for what he did. Something must have worked, for it was as if God had intervened and had given Tim a few extra weeks to tell everyone, including the victim and survivors of his cruel act and request that a spiritual adviser to come into the death chamber with him!! This cheers me no end and I had been praying since May 16th that Tim would atone for what he did and apologize, no matter how flimsy that would sound to many in your country, not to mention redeeming himself in the eyes of God by finally letting his shut down heart and soul into his heart. Praise Jesus! My prayers and the prayers of everyone else moved mountains that day. How can I ever make non-believers see the light? I'm working on it via my site and manuscript.
I cannot imagine that Tim will order much of anything for his last meal. He has a poor appetite these days and recently lost a great deal of weight. David Hammer said starving himself down to one hundred fifty-seven pounds was all accomplished by design. Tim wants desperately to feel in control of this morbid situtation. In all the letters I've written, I implored Tim to say a few words to the Lord--I knew he was raised Catholic and has always maintained that there was a God. Tim, the fresh-faced, if not gaunt, holograph, a holograph showing a young boy crawling into his beloved grandfather, after running across a snowy, icy field with socks instead of boots and crying almost hysterically as the elder man stroked his distraught grandson as best he could. The seeds of loneliness, rage, despair and hopelessness were then planted in a garden of marble. They'd grow over the years and become twistd and gnarled until the finished project, the project that oould wither, turned brown and died a wasted death. Tim flourished as a tree of maginficant cherry blossoms, flowers here one day and gone the next. Everything is transient. Tim's journey was fraught with choking weeds and scavenging squirrels. They munched happily, for deep down, those healthy plants eagerly awaited death and oblivion.
"Tim, you have us fighting to finish your story. You, unfortunately, will not be around to see my work come to fruition, but it's online as I speak. Your biggest fault lies in the manner by which you push your feelings and emotions do far down into dark, forboding chasms. But this latest news regarding your tremendous remorse and your reaching out to a Lord who used test your patience.
