Carrying the torch

Orange County woman publishes account of her children’s murder By Pamela Chergotis Monroe, N.Y. — Lajla Abrams never suspected the horror she would find that December day 10 years ago when she arrived at her estranged husband’s apartment to pick up her child support check. Yes, she thought it odd that his car was parked outside because he was supposed to have taken their two youngest children on a fishing trip. But she figured they went out for breakfast first, or to run some other errand on foot. When she entered the apartment, she saw a note taped to a chair. It read: “You will carry the torch for this.” Where were the children? It was then that she noticed a hose pipe leading upstairs. Calling her children’s names, she ran to their bedroom but found the door locked. Sean, the neighbor who had let her into the apartment, peered into the room through the fanlight. From his reaction, she saw that something was terribly wrong. Sean forced the door open. “The first person I saw was Eloïse lying on a mattress on the floor. Guthrie was next to her. I ran over to her and touched her and said her name. She was cold. There was the despicable hose pipe lying on the floor. At the end of its run, deadly gas fumes pouring out of it. Then Sean shouted, ‘For God’s sake, get out of here.’ I ran down the stairs and outside into the yard.... “Madness started to set in....” Losing the future Lajla’s long journey from that moment is recounted in her shattering book, “When the Unthinkable Happens: Survival After a Family Murder,” which she self-published in July. Her life was divided into three parts: life before her children, life with her children, and life after her children. In sorting out her experience, she tells the story of all three: her happy childhood as the well-traveled daughter of a South African diplomat, the miserable marriage that ended in grief, and her remarriage in Monroe, N.Y., where she and her eldest daughter, her only surviving child, have found a measure of peace and happiness they thought had been denied them forever. Lajla lived in England and the United States before her family moved to South Africa, where she met her Afrikaans husband. They lived together in Johannesburg. She is unable to explain her attraction to him except to say that she was young, and allowed herself to be wooed with false charm while on the rebound from a previous relationship. He was indifferent to his family, infrequently employed, and an inveterate liar. But she found so much joy in raising their three children that she was able to keep pushing back moment of reckoning. She endured her miserable marriage for 15 years before deciding, finally, to leave. She moved with her children to a pretty little house nearby that became a haven of peace and contentment. But the time they had left together was to be brief. They did not know how much danger they were in. Her departure led her husband, whose defining feature was a profound lack of initiative, to plot and carry out an intricate scheme to kill himself along with their children. And, as he had apparently intended, he inflicted on Lajla a never-ending grief. The pain will never fully go away. She has embraced pain as insurance that she will never forget her beloved children: “I’ve heard people say that pain has no memory! But, for me, pain is a memory unto itself. I live with pain every day. I forget pain momentarily and then I remember it again. I let go of pain for a while and then I hold on to it again lest I should go for too long without it and have to start the process all over again. Pain lives inside of me. It has settled and become a part of my everyday life. I dare not let go of it fully as I fear memories of my children may fade with it.” Guthrie was 10 years old when he died. Eloïse was 7. The calendar is fraught with painful anniversaries. Every passing year makes it harder for Lajla to remember the music of their voices, the fragrance of their hair, the feel of their skin. “With every birthday that passes, my children would be a year older,” she writes. “And the more birthdays that pass, the more difficult it becomes to visualize what they would look like and how they would act. Sharing in their achievements, their growth and maturity and the participation in their everyday lives — all gone. The saddest thing for bereaved parents is to lose their future.” A story never told Lajla started to write about her life in diary form two years after her children died. She ended up writing the book she had been looking for but could not find. Seeking comfort after her tragedy, she went looking for a book that would speak to her experience. But among all the many books on bereavement available, she found no personal account of a family murder. “If this book could help just one person, it would be worth it,” Lajla said. Incredibly, the murder was never reported in the South African press. At the time of his death, her husband was a fireman, and in South Africa firemen protect their own. They dealt with the shame of his crime discreetly. They even accorded him honors at his funeral. But although the lack of press coverage allowed her husband’s memory to escape public censure, Lajla believes it is probably for the best that she was not forced to grieve at the center of a media circus. Her book helps to correct the injustice, bringing to light what had been buried for too long. Lajla was, in the end, supported by the love and devotion of her mother and two sisters, and, later, her new husband in America. Her Christian faith was also crucial to her recovery, and gives her book a strong religious theme. She takes comfort knowing her children are in God’s care. “I know that they know how much I love them and still want them to be a part of my life,” she writes. “My love for them continues to keep them a part of me. They are in Heaven - I am still on earth. They are at rest. I have found my own peace on this earth. Now that I have made my home in the Northern Hemisphere I can dare to live out the rest of my life in peace and solitude.” Where to find a copy “When the Unthinkable Happens: Survival After a Family Murder” is available for $14.98 through www.lulu.com and for $14.95 www.amazon.com. The author, Lajla Abrams, is currently employed by Straus News in Chester, N.Y., which publishes The Pike County Courier and eight other weekly papers in the tristate area.