This post will piss a lot of you off. At the very least, it may leave you scratching your head and thinking I’ve been living with the space-outs and hippies too long. Do me a favor— don’t talk to my father about this post. Ah, hell— no one every listens to that. I know you will talk to him about it. When you do, don’t give the bullet points. At least tell him the entire idea behind this post.

I write this a day later than the usual posts, in part because I went back and forth on whether to even post it. But if it helps even one person out there, I gotta do it. So here we go…

Lucio E. Fernandez killed my brother. I think about him every single day. Although I haven’t seen him in fifteen years, I know his face like I know one of my friend’s or family’s. Daily, for over eight years, I’ve given him my attention and energy. But not in the way you’d think.

2003. We had waited for Lucio Fernandez’s capture. It felt like an eternity. When we finally got news the U.S. Marshalls apprehended him, we knew we were looking at an eventual court date with Mr. Fernandez. This was a big deal. I’d seen Fernandez in the newspaper mugshot after he’d killed Brian, and I’d seen his picture on America’s Most Wanted. But this would be face to face. The idea was more than a little intimidating.

I didn’t know how I’d handle myself. My mind went through every permutation of what would happen in that courthouse. Would I spit on him? Try and jump over the little wooden partition? Yell obscenities at him? Glare at him? I really didn’t know.

When the day finally came, one of Brian’s friends yelled something. Someone else from our circle sat on Fernandez’s side of the courtroom to get up close, glare and intimidate him. There was a lot of muttering. There was talk of, “if this doesn’t go down… if justice isn’t served… someone’s got to take care of this. Someone’s got to take this into their own hands.”

For myself, I remember the first time I got a good, face-front look at Fernandez. Since that moment, I’ve likened him to a great white shark. Dead in the eyes. He seemed soulless and I remember thinking every piece of fiction I’d consumed— tv, film, books— had gotten it wrong. Evil wasn’t some mustache-twisting, Hans Gruber maniac. It was like this guy in the courtroom—dead inside. By the looks of him, I knew he’d killed my brother and felt… nothing. There hadn’t been a good reason for the murder and we would not get some teary confession of the soul. There wasn’t a soul to bear.

However, something happened when I got that face-to-face glance. Something broke inside me. Through all the friends and family’s buzzing on seeing this Fernandez, I had felt this total absence of energy. I heard everyone around me— the love for my brother was giving them intense energy against this guy. Look what he’d done. He’d taken Brian away from us. Brian had his whole life ahead of him, and this fucking piece of…

I couldn’t get there. I couldn’t feel hatred. I couldn’t bring myself to feel… anything towards this guy. I didn’t have it in me. I thought something was wrong with me. I’m sure I was experiencing some kind of crazy disassociation, a PTSD-style shutdown, but with it came strange thoughts. 

For two years since Brian’s death, I had felt deep depths of depression. They had sapped me of all my vitality. I’d slept twelve hours a day, had taken months off of work, but none of it had helped with the fatigue. You can see it in photographs. If you look at photos of me in 2000 and then look at one from 2001 or later— there’s a clear demarcation of before and after. I physically aged ten years in one calendar year. So, upon seeing Fernandez, I instantly knew I couldn’t hate him. Hate takes energy, and I didn’t have it to spare. Here I was, two years after the murder, and I could barely get through the day.

So I didn’t think of him. I thought of Brian. I mourned his loss. I clung to family and friends. But I would not think of this guy. It didn’t have the time or the fuel.

I’ve written here about my spiritual journey and how it started from a place of rock-bottom emptiness. When I began practicing and studying a spiritual path, though, I felt better. About everything. I know it literally saved my life because my worldview was getting mega-dark and I was running out of options.

I'll walk you through part of my daily routine. I practice a meditation called Metta Loving-Kindness. Put that seatbelt on. This is where I'll lose a few of you…

The practice sends thoughts and specific phrases out. I don’t have the space here to give you the nuances of Metta Loving-Kindness, so after you’ve read this, if you haven’t unsubscribed and unfriended, give it a Google.

Metta Loving-Kindness starts with sending these phrases to myself. I’ve forgotten where I found the exact phrasing, but here they are:

May I be safe and protected from inner and outer harm.

May I live my life with a sense of ease.

May I be truly happy and deeply peaceful.

May I love myself completely just as I am.

May I be healthy.

May I be free.

I repeat these two times, sending them to myself. Why does it start with myself? Because I can’t give it away if I can’t first direct it inwardly. If I think these sentiments are bullshit and phony and don’t actually feel these warm feelings toward myself (and I didn’t), then I think of a time where I felt most loved by others. Usually, I thought of our wedding and that got me there.

Now the Metta practice expands these thoughts to outer circles, eventually sending them out to all sentient beings. So, after giving them to yourself, you move to a benefactor— someone easy to love, to whom it’s easy to send these phrases. Next you move on to people you feel positively towards: friends, family, neighbors without a yapping dog, etc.

Then you send the phrases to neutral beings. The ones you passed by in the grocery store, the postal worker who’s name you don’t know, non-yapping dogs, birds outside, etc.

The next group is difficult people. I have an alcoholic brain, so I can throw a dart and find one of those: annoying people at the ballpark, an annoying manager at work, and annoying upstairs neighbor with a yapping dog. (I’m the common denominator in these. But that’s another story for another time.). You send all those beings loving-kindness.

Next is the most difficult person in your life. Sending these thoughts to this person is extremely challenging and—</p> 

It’s obvious where this is going, right? Well, it wasn’t to me. I worked with this practice for weeks, and the person I put in the “most difficult” category was this bastard of a manager I’d had.

Then one morning, I thought of Lucio E. Fernandez. I had been blocking him out for years. That certainly was the person most difficult to send these thoughts towards. Jesus, could I even do it? It felt easier to say, “Dad, I’m into Satan now. Check out this cool pentagram.”

As I’ve said, I was in such a dark place and spiritual practices had pulled me out of that darkness. So I was willing to try anything. Including this. The first day was like an explosion in my head:

Lucio Fernandez…

May you be safe and protected from inner and outer harm.

May you live your life with a sense of ease.

May you be truly happy and deeply peaceful.

May you love yourself completely just as you are.

May you be healthy.

May you be free.

I wanted to throw up. But I promised myself I didn’t have to mean it right away. I would try it for a week. If it drove me to Lovecraftian levels of insanity, I’d revert to my bastard manager.

But you know what? It actually worked. I know this meditation truly is to help others, but as the practice says, it begins with me. And the side effect was that I felt better. I felt lighter and I could greet the day easier. Fernandez was no longer this blocked out ghost from years past.

I eventually even had days where I meant it. I had stared into those great white shark eyes. If there’s a soul behind them, it’s in big trouble. I could send thoughts of ease and comfort, in hopes to help him. Because in the big scheme, if everyone’s healthy and free, murders in snowy parking lots don’t happen. (Pie in the sky. I know.)  The idea behind sending these loving thoughts is doing so with a warrior spirit. What are the odds it changes even one thing in the world? I don’t know, but as Han Solo says, “Never tell me the odds.”

I can’t change the past, but the past was driving me to madness. The meditation has changed my relationship with the past.

Look, I know this is offensive to many people. For you, it may mean I’ve condoned what happened, I approve, or I forget. Like all my posts, I’m not here to push anything on anyone (except National Novel Writing Month— that one you really should do). I’m only here to share experience and what’s worked for me in both creative work and with loss and grief.  So all I can tell you is Metta practice opened my heart to my life and my loved ones. The price I paid for it was to cast some kindness and even love to someone who’d ruined a bunch of our lives— including his own.

Sending simple phrases and thoughts has truly allowed me to love, appreciate and be present with all of you — the ones I adore and cherish. The ones that matter the most.