A Good Family - Hardcover

by Fredi Cooper (Author), Jo Ann Caplan (Author)

When our brother's death finally happened after years of expecting something bad to come to him, we were all frozen into a strange silence. In the world of not talking about his murder and its impact on all of us came an unreality about the life of our family. On the surface we all were living our lives with success and happiness. Under the surface lay questions, anger, guilt and an unspoken hatred for someone we had all loved deeply.

The conditions for this silence were unspoken by our parents. Our deep love and devotion to them required that we would play by whatever rules let them go on living safely. We knew that the parents we had prior to Martin's death were gone and this new set of parents needed to be treated with kid gloves. And so, we did just that. We allowed all of us to keep silent about Martin and the true nature of his death. With our parent's death, and our journey to the later years of our own lives it became the time to open up this part of both of our lives. We both understood that who our brother was and what happened to him had shaped every aspect of our lives as women, mothers, wives and professionals. This book is about discovery and acknowledgement. It is most powerfully about forgiveness.

It is a story that our brother Martin in his last years wanted told. We have done this for him and for our own healing. The process of researching, revisiting and understanding our brother has shown the powerful strength of family. Even after so many years of silence this book has offered the chance to both properly mourn Martin, but also to travel with him in life again.