Why Did My Mother Love the Man Who Murdered Her?

On Christmas Eve 1978, during midnight Mass at St. Lawrence the Martyr in Santa Clara, California, I forgave my mother’s boyfriend.

I was an 18-year-old college freshman home for the holidays. “Be nice to him. Give him a chance,” my mother had urged me. Thinking about shaking this man’s hand and sharing a blessing with him, after all he had done to my mother, made me ill. Despite my reluctance, I wanted her to be happy. So when the priest commanded us to exchange the sign of peace, I looked up at Dan and said, “May peace be with you.”

“Thank you,” he replied.

Mom turned to me and smiled, squeezing my hand. “ Gracias , mija ,” she whispered.

Three weeks later, he killed her and himself.

My mother, María, grew up poor in Mexico’s rural Tierra Caliente region in the 1940s, with n