I never asked his name as his story was too personal.

And I did not take his picture - for the same reason.

But I will never forget him.

I met him at a hardware store.  He was helping me and we began talking…

When he was 7 or 8 years old his mother sent him out to find out 
why his father was late coming home from work. This man, then
just a child, said he went to the construction site where his father
worked and found him lying in a pool of blood in the snow next to
his truck.  Dead.  

This man told me that later the man who had killed his father came

to his mother, crying. He confessed, and asked for forgiveness. He said 
that he had not meant to do it, but that it had happened in a moment of
anger.

I asked the man what had happened next and was told that his

mother decided not to turn her husband’s killer into the police.

She told her son that nothing would bring back his father, and

that she did not want to see a human being spend the rest of his life

in prison.

He told me that his mother was never the same after the loss of her

husband and that she died a few years later. She left behind six fatherless

children. He said he was raised by his older sisters.

The man who told me this story was someone that I met in a store.

To be honest, I only spoke with him for 10 minutes.

I will probably never see him again.

His story haunts me — A child finding his father laying in the snow,

dead; A woman with six children deciding to spare the life of her

husband’s killer; A child losing both his mother and father but

growing into a man who holds no anger.  

I told the man that his story changed my life. It did.