Saturday, October 13, 2007
Tomorrow will mark a terrible anniversary. October 14, 2006 is a day all in the small town of Bonaparte, Iowa, would like to have not happened. It did and it will be a part of the legacy of the small town forever.
I still remember what I was doing when I heard of the murders. I was driving in my car and listening to the radio. My daughter, Hannah, had hockey practice that morning. I heard of a murder of five family members in Iowa. Even in the cynical world we live in now, I couldn’t believe it. We live in Minnesota but I am from Missouri and my husband is from Iowa so this is right at our back door. I got home and did a search online and read what had happened and where…….when I saw the pictures of the family, there is only one thing that comes to mind. WHY? Who would do such a thing? As soon as I found out who the suspect was, the whys only get bigger.
I continued to follow the story for a while. Through the funeral and the initial court hearings but then my mom got sick. On November 9th, which would have been Sheena’s 18th birthday, I was headed through Iowa to Missouri to let my mom go. She died on Friday, November 10 2006. The grief was overwhelming because two weeks earlier we were making plans for her to fly to Minnesota for the Thanksgiving holidays. Now I was making plans for a funeral. It just didn’t seem possible.
I was lost in my own grief for quite a while but in the spring, I started to check again about the murders. Motions and pretrial hearings began and pretty soon it was May and the trial started. I followed it daily via news reports and message boards. It was then that I really started to understand the loss of this family. I knew it had to be huge before because I know what a small town they came from. When you see the grief in the courtroom of the family and friends though, it breaks your heart.
I also went through this same sort of thing when I was in high school. A classmate murdered his entire family, two brothers and his parents. He was convicted in 1986 and executed in 1996. Our town was a bit bigger than Bonaparte but it was still quite a shock. Especially when you go to school with someone who is the nicest person and then they do something like this. It’s difficult to comprehend.
It was about this time that I started thinking of doing a memorial website. It seemed very strange to me at first but I began to feel like it was something I really wanted to do. See being so far away from my mother’s grave, I was unable to visit or leave flowers for those important days like her birthday. I have always being into family history so I do searches for that stuff all over the place. There is a website called www.findagrave.com
So I put my mom’s information in and did a request for a picture of her gravestone. She is buried in a veteran’s cemetery with my father so I figured it probably wouldn’t take too long for that to be put in place. This very nice man took the picture and put it on the webpage for me. The first time I saw it, it broke my heart. It made it all so real. He emailed me and offered to take pictures on special days and even take flowers if I wanted. I asked him to take a rose on her birthday, March 30th. I offered to pay him but he told me no money was necessary, just pay it forward.
I thought maybe it might help someone who is grieving over this family. I also hoped it would show them in the way they should be shown. Warm and wonderful human beings with beautiful souls who brought so much to our world. A small part of a larger, loving family who are missed so much. Yes, they are murder victims, but if you look, that is just a small part of it. They had a love of God and family and all that is sacred in life. They lived their lives to the fullest and were active in their community. They “did unto others” as you should. We should all learn from them.
No, we won’t see what the girls could have been in their future – what career they may have chosen, the marriages they might have had or the babies that would have called them Mom. Their family and friends have been robbed in the most horrible way imagined. The only thing I can think of to do is to look at what they were and what they did. Their lives were wonderful and full. They are now in heaven watching over their loved ones who they will be reunited with one sweet day. I believe all the bad stuff falls away when you get to heaven and all you feel is love and peace.............
God Bless the Mendez and Bentler families!! My thoughts and prayers are with you constantly.
Mike, Sandra, Sheena, Shelby and Shayne’
In Our Hearts
(author unknown)
We thought of you with love today.
But that is nothing new.
We thought about you yesterday.
And the days before that too.
We think of you in silence.
We often speak your name.
Now all we have are memories.
And your picture in a frame.
Your memory is our keepsake.
With which we'll never part.
God has you in his keeping.
We have you in our heart...
