Someone's friend...

So... my best friend from junior high is on death row. Her execution date has just been set actually. How many people can say that? Don't get me wrong... I'm not bragging about it. But really. What do you say to that?
If you would have asked me when I was 13 which of my friends would have killed someone, she'd be pretty far toward the bottom of my list. You couldn't have known a more polite and kind person. She was nice, funny, talented. You just wouldn't have guessed what would happen to her later in life.
I'm not going to pretend that I'm Best Friend of the Year or anything. She graduated four years before me and as soon as she got out of high school, we lost touch. I saw her randomly in Walmart about a year or two after she graduated. The next time I saw her was on the front page of The Express in 2003 after she was arrested for murder. I haven't talked to her, I haven't written to her, I haven't visited her.
There's always been something holding me back from contacting her. I always talked about it, but I never did it. I didn't know if she'd want to hear from me or not. It's not like we stayed in touch after she graduated, so I didn't know what she thought of me. My next excuse is that I didn't know how to get ahold of her. Well she was in the CCCF for a few years... like 5 miles from my house. I could have figured that out. Then she went to Muncy... still could have figured it out. Above all, I just had no idea what to say to her. Hey, how are you? Well Carolyn, I'm on death row, how are you? Yeah... no idea what to say.
I finally found her address and wrote her a letter though. There are so many people who have given me a hard time for this. Wondering how I could still think about her, how I could still care about her. Well when I think about her, I don't think about her doing drugs, joining a gang, or killing someone. I think about her sleeping over at my house, sharing a bus seat with her on the way to band competitions, and watching her in the high school's production of Bye Bye Birdie.
I like those thoughts better.
I know what she did was wrong. I'm not excusing her. If it was anyone else, I'd probably be in favor of the death penalty too. But really... do you know her? Do you know what her childhood was like? Do you know what her life was like? Do you know why she made the decisions that she did? No? Me either. We don't know any of the circumstances of anyone's life in these situations. But we don't have to know. And we don't have to judge. It's not our job.
I realize that her neighbor's life was cut short in a terrible, unspeakable way. I realize that he had a family whose lives will never be the same. But her life is also being cut short and she also has a family whose lives will never be the same.
No matter what anyone says, no matter what anyone thinks... she is still someone's daughter, someone's mother, someone's sister and someone's friend.