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Nicole BernsJenna Broderick
Samantha Brunell
Dan Ciamprone
Patrick Korellis
Monique Caspillan and Lhee Santos
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Profiles of victims
Gayle DubowskiCatalina Garcia
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Ryanne Mace
Daniel Parmenter
"Grieving is a price we pay for love"
By Barry Rozner | Daily Herald StaffThere are only two certainties for what passes as life for Gary Parmenter since the Valentine's Day shootings at Northern Illinois University.
One is that he will be known everywhere he goes as Daniel Parmenter's father.
As proud as he is of the way his son died, and more so because of the way Dan lived, there are worse ways to be known.
But the other is that Gary Parmenter will suffer the unspeakable pain of losing a child, a torment so severe that only those who have had such a loss can possibly comprehend the depth of his sorrow.
For Parmenter, it has been a public mourning, which in many ways makes it that much harder to move on. But move on is what he's doing, and only recently has he begun to live again.
"I can actually say that six or seven weeks ago, I really started feeling better. I didn't have that heaviness tugging at my heart, and I can talk about it without going to pieces," Parmenter explained. "You know, we can fight it as much as we want, but it won't change anything. Once you finally accept that you can't change the outcome, you say, 'Where do we go from here?'"
"If we tie ourselves up in being bitter and fighting it, are we fulfilling any purpose God has given us for what's left of our lives?
"If you fight it and withdraw and refuse to go forward, from a physical and emotional standpoint, you'll never make it. You have to find a way to live with it, accept it, and find a purpose."
Parmenter's new purpose is looking for ways to help others who are going through what he's been through.
He says the grief support classes saved him after many months of misery. He discovered that it's OK to feel OK again, without feeling guilty about it, and while still missing his son.
"We have some funny ideas about grieving in our society, the way we choose to grieve alone and bury our pain," Parmenter said. "I believe you have to grieve with others and let it all out, and let it happen as long as it has to. Time will heal, but it takes time."
In nearly 10 months, Parmenter has learned the harshest lesson of all, that nothing is permanent, not even a relationship with his son, a person he loved and molded into someone so special that the son became a role model for the father.
And in the aftermath of his son's murder, he found himself slipping into an abyss of misery and solitude, digging such a hole of silence and suffering that he wasn't sure he'd ever find his way back to the surface.
"I know what I went through every day. You just sit there and cry and say, 'Now what do I do?' You're consumed by the abandonment and loss and nothing matters."
With his daughter Kristen having moved to Virginia for a teaching job, Gary Parmenter was alone in his home, the most frightening time for someone in mourning.
As he sank deeper into depression, Parmenter was forced to change.
Or else.
"It becomes a matter of life and death. I know," Parmenter said. "It affects you physically, mentally and in your personality. I needed a complete revamping. I couldn't live in the past anymore and that's a hard thing to stop doing, because you spend all your time wishing it was back to being the way it was.
"You have to go through a lot of that to turn the corner."
One day, he said, if you get help, "you make the commitment to do things differently, and then you're on your way to recovering.
"I took the classes, listened to CDs that really helped explain things, and being around others who are going through the same thing really helped."
That's when Parmenter altered his direction.
"I realized I had to take all the good qualities I instilled in Dan and apply them to myself, and to the things I was looking for in life," said Parmenter, who divorced a few years ago. "I had to change in order to see that."
He says helping others cope with intense grief now is his purpose.
"I want to help others with this so they don't have to suffer so much."
He wants to meet with parents who have lost children. He wants to console the inconsolable. He wants to set up a process by which he makes himself available to the grieving, so that they can also see there is one day a chance to feel OK again.
"All I can do is give back. It lessens the burden on my heart," Parmenter says. "One thing that's come out of this is you realize people are living with loss and they haven't confronted it yet. Until you do, you can't move on."
Parmenter still regularly sees the men of Dan's fraternity, NIU's Pi Kappa Alpha, and knowing what he knows now, he also sees them suffering in silence.
"Imagine that you're one of the strong, 20-year-old men, who don't know they can show emotion or tell anyone they're not handling this OK, and I know a lot of them aren't handling it," Gary said of Dan's fraternity brothers. "They're not getting help. They're hiding it, or drowning their sorrows.
"I spent hours up there one day just giving them someone to talk to, just listening, trying to change their thought processes, feeding their minds and giving them different ways of thinking.
"They're not ready to let go of Dan, and they don't know help is out there for them, that they can get confidential counseling."
So Gary Parmenter is there for the Pikes, and he's there for anyone who needs his help.
In that sense, they are also helping him, fueling his need for purpose.
"Grieving is a price we pay for love, and that message is one that needs to get to the people who are grieving so they realize it's OK," Parmenter said. "It's important for people to know they're not alone, that there's a better way to go.
"Dan had nothing to die for and so much to live for. I can't think of anything more devastating, but it happens every day. Look at all the families who've lost family members in the war, or families of policemen, or kids sitting on their front porch, shot while minding their own business.
"So many families go through it and they might not know what's out there for them. I knew I needed support but didn't want it. I finally found it and it saved me.
"Until you let the feelings out and grieve, you can't start healing. That's my message. That's my way of helping."
For Gary Parmenter, from this point forward, it's his way of living.
