On a slow, sunny day in Portland… late in the summer of 2009… the 3 year ordeal of Eric Pepin’s trial finally ended. Nobody cheered, or breathed a sigh of relief. A few phone calls to loved ones went out, “It’s finally over”. That’s it. That is all anyone could muster to say.

Perhaps because by then everyone was too tired, beat up and exhausted to feel. To endure such a thing, you have to steel many of your emotions. You are robbed of much of your life.

Perhaps it was also because while it was “officially” over, everyone knew it would never really end. The damage was done… on lives, hearts, minds. Nothing would ever be able to undo it.

Or perhaps, and any in this position may relate, while the case ended it left in its wake a hole of justice… that the experience of the last 3 years had taught any who witnessed it… would NEVER be filled. It was just a moment of life. A battle, a fight that had to be fought… and now you simply learn how to move on and rise again.