Mourning a Loss : Slow Grieving Takes Different Forms for the Westminster Family of a 13-Year-Old Killed Last Year

Gail Martinez’s hand trembled as her fingertips traced the image of her son’s face on the screen. Kneeling in front of the television, she rubbed the back of her hand against the flickering ghost, caressing the electronic echo of his face.

For a few minutes, it was as if her son was alive again, for a few moments she could hear his voice. “I love you,” she whispered, leaning forward and kissing the cold glass screen. “I miss you, and I’m so glad you were born. I love you, Jeff.”

The videotape is of 13-year-old Jeff Martinez and some of his friends practicing skateboard jumps on a sunny corner in Westminster. The digital read-out in the corner marks the time as August of last year, Friday the 13th, 4:18 p.m.

Just four hours later, riding the same skateboard, Jeff Martinez would have his life ended by a drunk driver several blocks away.

The boy’s death sent shock waves through the quiet Westminster neighborhood, as did the subsequent arrest of a local man who was behind the wheel during the hit and run. Hundreds of cards poured in, the city’s Traffic Commission put up more stop signs in the area, church and school groups held the tragedy up as a chilling example of the evils of drunk driving.

Nine months later, with the memorial services and court case long over, life goes on for neighbors and for Jeff’s classmates, busy with their freshman year of high school.

Certainly many people’s thoughts occasionally turn to Jeff. But for most, time has cushioned the pain. Not so in the Martinez household. For this couple and their 7-year-old son, Jonathan, the wounds are still open.

Sitting in the dim room watching a visual sliver of her child’s last hours, Jeff’s mother could barely find words to describe her loss. “So much,” she said as she rummaged through a box of cards and photos from the week of Jeff’s memorial. “Just so much to say.”

The power and duration of the grieving period following a loved one’s death varies by person. For parents such as Gail and Ed Martinez, whose son died so violently, the grief can taint or overwhelm every aspect of their lives, UCLA psychiatry professor Robert Coombs said.

“No human problem produces more difficult pathological problems than the loss of a loved one,” said Coombs, who leads the university’s Grief and Bereavement Program, counseling mourners from Orange and Los Angeles counties. “And the most acute suffering I have seen is among people who have lost a child.”

Parents naturally expect to outlive their children, and they typically visualize their offspring’s future from the moment of birth. Those expectations, coupled with the strong bond between parent and child, magnify grief, Coombs said.

The only way to move forward is to explore the feelings, perhaps with one-on-one counseling or maybe in a group setting, Coombs said. Grievers should do what feels right--be it toiling at work to distract themselves or mourning at home. The key is make sure the emotions are released somehow, he said.

“For people like (the Martinezes), they have to make it through a long healing process, not unlike the way you would have to heal from a surgery,” Coombs said. “It’s a surgery performed without anesthesia. It’s like someone went inside them and ripped out their heart and other organs. The healing process is of mind, spirit and body. It will take a long time.”

The car that killed Jeff Martinez was going 40 m.p.h., maybe 45, when the driver dipped toward a gutter to avoid a speed bump, police reports show. Jeff, a skateboard lover, was on the edge of the road, beneath a street lamp, when the car slammed into him. He suffered assorted injuries, chief among them a fractured skull.

Back at the Martinez home, a cherry pie was cooling in the kitchen and Gail was standing on the porch, wondering why Jeff and his friend were overdue. She had already dismissed the idea of driving around to find him--the friend was visiting from Oceanside, so she was worried that her increasingly image-conscious son would be embarrassed. When the phone rang, Gail felt an inexplicable sense of dread.

After witnessing the grisly accident, the visiting friend called the Martinez house. Within minutes, police and paramedics were en route, and a frantic Ed was standing over his son’s crumpled form.

The driver, Matthew Thomas Wilbur, 23, was arrested within an hour. Jeff’s friend gave a description of the car, but police might have pulled Wilbur over without it. When he was arrested, Wilbur was speeding down the Garden Grove Freeway, headlights off, with a shattered windshield from the impact of the teen’s body. He had twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system, according to police records.

“This guy had been at a party, we found out, and he had been arrested before for driving drunk, but that didn’t stop him. He left my son in the gutter,” Ed said. “He hit someone and he knew it, but he didn’t do anything but keep going.”

Wilbur is now confined to a state work camp, serving a two-year sentence for drunk driving and vehicular manslaughter. He has become a figure of distant dread for the Martinez family and a target of sometimes ambiguous sentiments.

For Gail, who said she has been somewhat withdrawn and fragile during her grieving, Wilbur’s name stirs up feelings of malice and resentment. She says she hopes the religious faith she has used as a lifeboat during the long months of pain will help her eventually forgive Wilbur’s actions. “But I’m not there yet,” she said in a steely voice.

Her husband says he has feelings that are more difficult to pin down. “Gail and others have exhibited a lot of hatred for him for all the reasons you would expect,” he said. “But I have not harbored hate for this man, and I don’t know why. In some ways I wish I did. I can’t explain it.”

Ed does a better job describing his sentiments toward the courts. “I’m as angry with the judicial system as anything. That whole experience was just unbelievable.”

The Martinezes were stunned when Wilbur was allowed to go free without bail while awaiting trial. Hoping to sway the judge to keep the repeat offender behind bars, they gathered several thousand signatures in two days. “The judge looked at it, but it didn’t make a difference,” Ed said.

Their frustration grew when Wilbur was ordered to prison for two years, which prosecutors described to the Martinez family as a “middle-of-the road” sentence, Ed recalled, shaking his head with in resigned contempt.

“Drunk driving and killing somebody is treated with more leniency than stealing somebody’s property,” he said. “But we knew there wasn’t going to be any man’s justice that was going to satisfy us. Ten years wouldn’t have made us feel any better. My son is dead. Only God can pass judgment.”

There are other differences between the way the two parents have dealt with the emotions that have buffeted them. Ed immersed himself in his work in custom software sales, hoping the labor would stave off the pain, but the stress has been building, he says, and things are not getting easier. He also began speaking at schools, lecturing students about the dangers of drinking and driving.

‘My theme is ‘Dreams,’ the things we dream about,” Ed said. “I tell them about Jeff’s dreams, to play basketball at UNLV, just to grow up. He was denied those dreams. Telling these kids about him and what happened makes me cope a little better. And maybe just one of these kids will listen and think about it when they have to make decisions about drinking.”

For Ed, who felt powerless during the trial, doing something helped him establish control in his life.

But for Gail, activism was not the answer, nor was speaking to crowds. For her, plumbing her grief could only be done alone. As a result, she says, she has become withdrawn and fragile.

“For 43 years I had no sorrow, no true sorrow,” she said. “Then my son died for other people’s sins. I want to heal and move forward. I don’t want to be bitter, I want us all to be well again. But this has been . . . so much.

“Part of me died with Jeff,” she said, looking through a photo album. “And not a small part.”

The workweek is a series of emotional peaks and valleys for Gail, an elementary schoolteacher. “And the peaks aren’t really peaks,” she said with a bemused smile. Some days, she looks out at the young faces in her class and she can only think about her lost child. The weekends are roughest, probably because of the time it allows her to look at pictures and think about the past.

Roxane Cohen Silver, associate professor of psychology at UC Irvine, said the different tack taken by the two parents is healthy and is evidence of the need for individuals to cope with their grief in the manner that suits them.

“Despite people telling others what they should do, there isn’t a right or wrong way to respond,” Silver said. “Another myth is that people recover from these experiences. They don’t: They just learn to cope with it; they reach an equilibrium. But they don’t forget it; they come to terms with it. It’s been nine months for this family. That’s not very long at all. A decade is not a long time.”

Silver, who is writing a book about the grieving process, said that because every person has a different response and coping mechanism, it’s difficult to give advice that holds up. The best she can do, she said, is to caution against pulling into a shell.

“People shouldn’t shun their social network,” she said. “A lot of people withdraw because they think their friends will get tired of hearing about it, or they think they’re being a burden. But that interaction with the people around you can be very valuable. To their friends, I would tell them not to ignore the situation or form a conspiracy of silence. That only minimizes the experience.”

Jonathan Martinez, like his big brother, loves physical activity. He loves to shoot hoops, and around the house he is a blur, running through rooms chasing after his new puppy, Kaspar. The dog, a rambunctious black Labrador, is into everything and seems to have almost as much energy as his young master.

“The dog has a lot of life, and that’s a good thing for Jonathan right now,” Ed said. “It’s a good thing for this house.”

Despite his exuberance, Jonathan is not carefree, his parents say. Since his brother was killed, the child has been easily riled and more aggressive. He has also become less affectionate.

“He doesn’t like to hug,” Gail said. “And that’s what I need most sometimes. It’s like he decided, OK, no more of this kid stuff. He grew up a lot.”

Coombs said the boy’s reaction is a familiar defense of youngsters in distress; they put up walls until they can figure out why bad things happen. “He’s been hurt and is looking to get more control so it doesn’t happen again,” Coombs said. “He looked around and said, ‘Why should I form bonds with other people if they are just going to unceremoniously leave?’ ”

The boy, as does Gail, visits a professional counselor. He says he enjoys the talks, and he doesn’t mind discussing his brother. “I miss him a lot,” he says, and he recounts the way his sibling used to wrestle with him and play games.

In his room, on a shelf above his bed, Jonathan has an ornate, carved red horse made in Sweden. The treasure was a gift to Jeff from his grandparents, a souvenir bought before Jonathan was born. When Jeff died, the younger boy picked it from all of Jeff’s things to have as a keepsake.

Running his fingers over the grooves of the horse’s mane, Jonathan tried to make sense of his brother’s death. “He got hit by a drunk driver,” he explains. “I loved him. I wish that everyone in the world would not drink.”

The boy is young, his parents say, and they are optimistic that he will grow beyond the pain of Jeff’s abrupt departure, that he will display the resiliency that protects youngsters from life’s cruelties. In the meantime, they can only wonder how he’s doing.

“Sometimes we’re just not sure where Jonathan’s at with all this, how he’s handling it,” Gail said. “We were this loving unit who knew each other, but now that’s been shot to smithereens. And it makes me mad.”

To grapple with that anger, Gail and Ed have often turned to their religious faith and, more specifically, to Pastor John Bradosky at Grace Lutheran Church in Westminster. Besides consoling them and offering spiritual insights, Bradosky shared his own experiences with grief.

“Our son died when he was the age of 6,” Bradosky said. “It was, and is, very painful for us.”

Bradosky’s child died seven years ago in an automobile accident, and seeing the Martinez family grapple with Jeff’s death struck the minister hard.

Two months before he performed Jeff’s funeral, Bradosky had watched the tall boy walking down the church aisle for a confirmation service. He remembered thinking on that day how his own son would have been Jeff’s age if he had lived.

“There are so many people hurting; there are so many people who have lost someone,” Bradosky said, thinking of the tragedies that have brushed the lives of his congregation members. “They’re everywhere.”