I'm at an age when memory seems a lot like the weather: it does pretty much what it wants, blowing "where it listeth." Ecstatic moments break upon the mind unsummoned, and so do the sad ones, and the moments of regret for the things I ought, and ought not, to have done. Most of the happy moments seem to focus on the infancy and childhood of my girls, as though I might fix and freeze those years of delight, restore the resolution, dispel the haze of time fogging the lens. Basically, you want to stem the bleeding. The sequel never lives up to the original. I've often wondered if, in heaven, we get to have these moments back in all their vivid, living and breathing, splendor. Please tell me it's true. (Girls, by the way, are different. They are special. They are what men will die for. You can argue with me if you want, but you'll still be wrong.) And what causes memory to behave in this unpredictable way? I have a one-word theory: mortality. You're not going senile; you're just facing the facts. You're not losing your mind; you're just letting it look around. You're delving into every nook and cranny and ransacking every dusty corner and locked trunk in the attic trying to save everything you love, and to remember the things you know you'll have to answer for. We do the first because we're afraid the stage might not extend beyond the dark curtain of death, and the latter because we're afraid it does.

I hope mightily for the latter, and it is a wish not entirely selfish, because last week one of the sad moments came to me, and served as a reminder that among the reasons for "the faith that is in us" is not only a lust for life, but for justice. We know that in the general run of sinfulness, both venial and mortal, some of us will have time to do in the next life. But for a transgression that parts the veil drawn over most private sin and reveals the hideous countenance of public crime, we want to see justice meted out in this life, not the next. For many, it will not be so, perhaps for most. I am speaking of the victims of such crimes, and what I mean by 'most' will be explained later.

In the late 70's (that haze again), shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court had returned discretionary use of the death penalty to the states, I was called to jury duty in the case of the State of Florida vs. Joe Abbott. Mr. Abbott played football for the University of Florida, a defensive back, I think. He was accused, along with another man who had fled the state and could not be located, of the murder of Cathy Leland. She was a nurse who worked at Alachua General Hospital, where my children were born. She was found about two weeks after her death when a neighbor walking by her apartment in The Village apartment complex got wind of a foul odor and called police. The neighbor hadn't seen her in awhile and had begun to wonder. Cathy was found with her hands tied behind her back, naked from the waist down, strangulation marks around her neck, and several wounds on her body squirming with maggots. The prosecutor's theory was that Abbott and his conspirator had initially wanted only to steal her stereo equipment and television but, realizing in the course of the crime that she could identify them, had gone beyond that. Apparently a blindfold had slipped. Based on the testimony of the man to whom Abbott had given the stereo equipment for safekeeping, Abbott, a black man, said he'd had to "off some white bitch," and it was further determined, on the testimony of the coroner, that she had been bludgeoned and strangled and that some sort of sexual defilement had been inflicted upon her.

I was not seated for the jury. I was dismissed by the prosecution's peremptory challenge due to my reservations about the death penalty, reservations I lost after listening to the details of this crime. My term of duty was for a week, so I attended the trial, every minute of it, and later went to the DA's office to ask questions. He answered on condition that I would reveal nothing to the newspapers or any media, for there were things he knew that could not be brought up in the courtroom, such as that Abbott had confessed to his lawyer that he had indeed committed the crime. But in the end, after a week of trial, the testimony, the memory, of the man with whom Abbott stowed the stereo and TV went hazy, and the evidence could not establish a thing called "corpus delecti", something that would put Abbott in the apartment the night of the murder and connect him to the body. The case was dismissed. Joe Abbott's football career was over, but (I presume) he returned home to Pensacola and is today a free man. He would be in middle-age now. He can never be retried.

It had come to mind off and on over the years, and when I thought of it again last week, I decided to do a search on the case. Technically, it's an unsolved murder. It ought to be listed in the records of some bureau somewhere. I'm not an expert at it, but what I found was nothing. The Gainesville Sun's online records go back to only 1986. I tried other places, but nothing. Cathy Leland's murder has disappeared into the maw of forgetfulness.

And memory of her put me in mind of another sad incident that occurred a little over ten years later, just a few miles from where I lived. A young woman, a college student, left her Casablanca apartment complex and went out for her daily jog along the Williston Road. She was never seen again. Her name was Tiffany Sessions. Ring a bell? The incident made national headlines for a while. She was declared dead by a judge in 1994, five years after her disappearance, though no body has ever been found. In 2000, a dying inmate in a Florida correctional institution told authorities where they could find a sweatshirt belonging to the girl. He did not tell them where they could find a body. The sheriff's department turned the sweatshirt over to the FBI for testing. Two years later they got around to it, with no explanation offered for the delay. The inmate was never named, and I can't find a follow-up article giving the results of the tests. All very puzzling and mysterious. Forgetfulness. But you can remember her by clicking here and looking at her one more time.

Do you remember Elizabeth Smart, the harp-playing angel from Utah? Of course. It's a recent case, circa June of 2002, and something about it caused the media to gather round. But you haven't seen her lately, and the family calls no more press conferences or, if they do, no one's paying attention. But you can see her again if you like; it's been less than a year since she vanished without a trace, and she's fading away. How about Jennifer Short? Probably sounds familiar. She also went missing in 2002, more recently than Elizabeth Smart. The difference is that they found Jennifer - shot dead, her body dumped somewhere in North Carolina, far from the Virginia home from which she'd been abducted, and where her murdered parents were also found. They used DNA to identify Jennifer, because she'd been missing awhile, and her body was far gone to the elements. And from the more distant past another name that once had a face might come back to haunt us, one Sarah Wood. She also made the television news, and if you take a look, you might recognize her. She disappeared in 1993, ten years ago. In the maelstrom of iniquity that seems to buffet our world, it might as well be an eternity. She was abducted while riding her bike home from church in Litchfield, New York. Her books and the bike were found by the side of the road, and that's all there is.

I ran across an interesting figure: between 1982 and 2001, the number of reports of missing persons increased by 444%, from just over 150,000 in 1982 to over 800,000 in 2001. Most do not end in murder or final disappearance, but it looks like something's going on. Even the relatively few seem like so many. I found a site offering page after page of missing children, and page after page of missing adults. Leaf through a few of them. Some of the faces will leap out like old friends from the past. Most, you can be sure, have met with foul play.

And so memory moves on, and becomes shortened in the rush of events. But it shouldn't. Memory is all we have to offer the unavenged murdered and missing. How can we, in all love and mercy, forget? Cathy Leland's murder is nearly thirty years in the past, but that doesn't stop us from marking the 30th anniversary of Roe v Wade. In fact, as that landmark of iniquity in our nation's moral life bore down, I thought I saw a bond between the two. It seemed logical at the time, though the limitations of the parallel do not escape me. The Cathy Lelands and Elizabeth Smarts had people who loved them, and called them by name, and who knew what they looked like. The unborn don't have that. The people who should love them don't want them, don't give them names, don't know what they look like, and don't want to know. Cathy Leland got a proper burial, while the unborn are disposed of like medical waste. The Lelands and the Smarts at least got to feel the sun on their faces, while the unborn never even see the light of day. The deeds that ended the lives of Cathy, Elizabeth (I suspect she's dead - do you?)*, Jennifer, Tiffany and Sarah were done in darkness, while the slaughter of the unborn flourishes in the protective light afforded by the machinery of the state and by the approval of those among us who lavish praise upon the glory of this newfound freedom. The killers of Cathy and company are (at least technically, in her case) unknown, while we know perfectly well the killers of the unborn. The murdered and the missing, having been born, are "officially" more important. If we could catch one of their killers, we'd punish him severely, but if Roe v. Wade were overturned tomorrow, no one will ever pay for what's been going on for the past 30 years. It will be "put behind us," forgotten, while the perpetrators run forever free. Well, not forever.

But really, what's the great difference? Both the missing and the unborn were cut off before their time. They never got to finish the race, to work things out for themselves, to find husbands and wives and have children of their own, reaffirming through the deeds of their own lives that life is good. It is a cruel trick that has been played upon them. I imagine them, wrongly, as lost souls wandering the ether, unable to rest until justice has been served, while in truth they are all known to God, all resting in the arms of the angels, all having bathed in the blood of the lamb and crying out through the generations, "How long, O Lord?" If, while looking at those pictures, you shared my sense of forlorn helplessness, then maybe that is something. Since prayer and remembrance are all we can bring to bear, maybe they form some part of justice. In the case of the unborn, the numbers are unimaginable, and it is because of those numbers that I say that for most crimes of murder, we will not see justice in this life. This is a hard saying.

So set memory free. Keep the shine on it, and don't save it for another day. Fight against the fog of time. Gather in as many as you are able, and you will have many friends waiting for you in the world to come. Memory is the wellspring of hope.
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*Elizabeth Smart was eventually found, alive, praise God.