Journalism by Rebecca Morris

 

 

 

 

 

How do families mourn loved ones they're not sure are really gone? Published Oct. 21, 2007, Seattle Times

IT STORMED THAT NIGHT, hiding any sounds that might be heard in a big house.

 

Sometime late on Aug. 31, 1961, 8-year-old Ann Burr brought her younger sister to their parents' bedroom. Mary was crying because she had gotten sand under the cast on her broken arm, and it itched. Beverly and Donald Burr reassured her and sent the girls back to bed.

 

The next morning, Beverly went to check on the children. Mary was asleep in her bed, but across the hall, Ann's room was empty. Beverly found a living-room window ajar and the front door, usually locked from the inside with a deadbolt, standing open. A bench had been pulled up outside the window. Someone had climbed in, then left through the front door with Ann. The abduction of the blond girl with bangs and a ready smile was Tacoma's biggest story of 1961. But months, then years, then decades passed. Beverly and Donald Burr had no body to bury, no cemetery to visit and no end to this devastating and complex grief. They suffered what psychotherapist and author Pauline Boss calls "ambiguous loss."

 

Continue reading...

Beverly Ann Burr, mother of abducted Tacoma girl, dies. Published Sept. 21, 2008, Seattle Times

Beverly Ann Burr died Sept. 13 of congestive heart failure at her Tacoma home. She was 80. To many she will be remembered as the mother of Ann Marie, who was 8 years old when she was abducted from their Tacoma house early on the morning of Aug. 31, 1961. No trace of her was ever found. It is one of the most puzzling unsolved crimes in the Pacific Northwest, made all the more sensational by a connection to Ted Bundy.

 

She is remembered as a mother who put aside her own grief, and her own aspirations, for the sake of her children.

 

From that first day, Bev suspected that Ann would not be found. "It came to me, just like that," she told me several times over the last few months. "It was a strong feeling. When they were searching, I thought, 'What's the point?' "

 

Continue reading...

Siblings, torn over caring for mother, learn to work out differences. Published Feb. 8, 2007, Seattle Times

The glass exploded when it hit the pavement, sending horseradish into the air, where it mixed with Seattle rain and fell from the sky.

 

It was then, after throwing a jar of my favorite condiment at my brother, that I knew I was really stressed. The smell lingered over my mother's Wallingford neighborhood for a week.

 

This was shortly after I had moved back to Seattle from New York City, in part to help with the care of our then-94-year-old mother. I don't remember what we were arguing about that night, but our differences are usually about much or how little time I have to contribute to her care.

 

Continue reading...

What do we do now without Mom? Published May 7, 2008, Seattle Times

In the last weeks of her life, my mother began asking my brother and me, "What do I do now?"

 

Was she being existential? Practical? Fatalistic? Or was she confused?

 

She had every reason to question us. My brother and I had moved her twice in three months, first from her much-loved home of nine years in Wallingford (where she lived when I first wrote about her for The Seattle Times in 2007). When she needed more care, we moved her to assisted living on Queen Anne, and then to a rented apartment in my brother's condo building in Belltown.

 

Usually when she asked, "What do I do now?" I would explain that she could read, or we could play gin rummy. But I wondered whether she could have been telling us she was caught between this life and the next.

 

Continue reading...

Female sex offenders reveal cultural double standard. Published Sept. 10, 2007, Seattle Times

It all seems so terribly familiar.

 

A trusted, even respected or beloved teacher is accused of having a sexual relationship with a student.

 

What used to shock us, but is now much too commonplace, is that the teacher is a woman.

 

Their names become tabloid headlines: Mary K. Letourneau, Debra Lafave, Pamela Diehl-Moore and others.

 

Continue reading...

Just what does it take to make somebody snap? Published Feb. 15, 2007, Seattle Times

What were they thinking?

 

Lisa Nowak. Isaiah Washington. Michael Richards. Ryan O'Neal. Mel Gibson. Problem is, whether stalking a romantic rival, assaulting a family member or blurting out bigoted rants (sometimes more than once), they weren't thinking.

 

They were probably in an altered state, say Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, authors of "Snapping: America's Epidemic of Sudden Personality Change." The communication researchers define snapping as a sudden, drastic alteration of personality — but say the snap may actually be a long time in coming.

 

Continue reading...

Free Web Hosting