Things that suck: Having your face rubbed in your tragedy

Imagine the following scenario:

You're a 9-year old kid from Boston named Tom Holmes. Love baseball. You've got 2 brothers and a sister, and a loving Mom & Dad. Dad's a detective for the BPD. You love your Dad. One day, you come home from school to find out that your Dad's been shot and killed in a jewelry store heist, leaving your family without its patriarch. Your life is forever changed; ruined.

11 years later, your oldest brother gets killed in a car accident. Your mother dies later that year. In 1991, your older brother gets stabbed to death and has his throat slashed on Valentine’s Day. Seven years later, at the young age of 44, you find out you need a heart transplant.

Then, in 2003, in a cruel twist of fate, the state fails you by letting one of your Dad's killers out of jail on a technicality. He walks free into the Fresh air of Post Office Square, a 5-minute walk from where he was partially responsible for the 6 bullets that ripped through your fathers body, leaving him dead in the street.

Yesterday, in what can accurately define the phrase "Adding insult to injury," the Boston Globe runs a piece in which they try to make that man, your father's killer, a sympathetic figure in an article about prison reform. What a slap in the face.

It's one thing to watch Shawshank Redemption, and feel good that Morgan Freeman escaped the horrible confines of the corrupt prison environment. After all, he feels absolute remorse for his actions. But it's fiction. It didn't erase a lifetime of happy memories for an entire family.

You can say that this particular family's series of unfortunate events is just that - bad luck. I think it was induced by one tragic event, and because of that, that the people responsible should never see the light of day again. It wasn't an accident.

So, to the Boston Globe, I say, shove this article up your ass, and don't let it see the light of day ever again, either.

A quote from today's Herald by Thomas R. Holmes, now 49:

"From the time it happened it destroyed our family,” he said. “He wasn’t supposed to get out. He was never supposed to get out of jail.”