Respect, Compassion and Understanding....

As the weather turns warmer it's a reminder that the Roseboro murder trial isn't that far off. As much as those directly involved have waited anxiously for it to start they have to also be filled with a sense of surreality and dread.
Each person involved may have their most personal information broadcast across a packed courtroom, and entered into the public record.
To those who believe in Mike's innocence, the terror has to be rising daily. Which is worse...to jail an innocent man or allow a guilty one to walk free?
Those who are heartsick over the loss of a beautiful soul in Jan Roseboro have been waiting and praying for justice. Those who believe Mike did, indeed, beat Jan brutally and then throw her into her own swimming pool are praying that the jury finds him guilty.
People have been trying desperately to pick up what pieces they can since the night of the murder, and even more desperately since Mike's arrest.
How do you answer the questions the children most certainly have?
They will grow up one day and find their own truth. No matter what the jury says.
People that haven't been in the Roseboro circle or had any significant contact with Mike in years may be called to testify.
Some have been yanked unmercifully out of their secure, happy lives and asked, or ordered, to relive and share the most intimate details of a chapter of their life that they would much rather never had experienced, and never wanted to share publicly.
For anyone not involved directly enough to testify, and the general public there is a choice ahead.
We are all going to hear things we've never heard about the people involved. Some things that were to be kept private forever may be shared openly in testimony.
The choice that we all share is how we will react to what we learn at the trial.
This trial will reveal many things that the general public is still very unaware of.
Will it all be a new titillating source of gossip or will the shock make some people finally be quiet and realize that any of us could have been in the situations some have found themselves in?
People make decisions based on who they are and what matters to them at the moment the decision is made.
I like the phrase "young and dumb". We all were once. At forty-nine, I am not the person I was at 21. I see things very differently. I often make the comment that if I had college to do over again, I'd have gone to law school. But that would have postponed a wedding and the births of my incredible children.
Alot of us don't have many decisions or choices that we would change drastically if we could revisit them. But some have one or two. And in some cases, those choices were huge, in the end. In a good way and a bad one.
Mike Roseboro has the reputation of a lothario, a ladies'man. There are many affairs attributed to him with many different women.
I've thought alot about the position some may find themselves in at the trial.
Some were more recent than others. And some have had to reveal the affairs to the husbands they were married to while seeing Mike.
For some, the affair with Mike was far in the past.
Having to go back and reveal that part of their history has been painful for some, I am sure.
I sincerely hope that the women who are called to testify are given respect, compassion and understanding. They aren't the ones Mike spoke with on the phone the night Jan died. They didn't parade around town wearing the infidelity like a badge of dis-honor.
Jan Roseboro lost her life.
And many, many people have lost much as well.
I just hope the feeding frenzy never happens. Anyone in Mike's past is in his past.
And their involvement with him has cost them enough already.
They feel remorse, I am sure. They are quite unlike Angie Funk.