What does it take to forgive?

In the wake of unspeakable tragedies, some find forgiveness a relief. Others find it impossible.

Here are three stories of forgiveness in the toughest of circumstances, and a story of a woman who says she just can't bring herself to do it.

Instant forgiveness

It took time -- she's not sure how long -- for Joan Magette to realize someone actually had been behind the wheel when the car crashed.

Someone drunk.

Someone she could blame.

But she never would.

Her mind at first was only on a passenger: Her son, Jared. And the only reality she could grasp was that he lay dying in a hospital.

He was out of surgery by the time she made it to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge from her home in Kansas; she prayed over him, and said the rosary.

He never awakened.

Somewhere in that blur, Magette recalls asking priests to relay a message to the car's driver: We don't blame you.

It was, she says now with certainty, instant forgiveness.

"From the beginning, we never put salt on him," Magette says of Rob Spaulding, the 27-year-old who had a blood-alcohol level of .135 percent when his car veered off the road in September 2005, striking a tree and killing two friends. One was Jared Cheek, Magette's 23-year-old son.

The boys were seminarians at the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein.

Magette was brought to tears when police announced they had charged Spaulding with DUI and reckless homicide. He was a stranger, but she said she'd still never want to see him sit in a prison cell.

"I never thought for a second that, 'Oh my gosh, this guy killed my son,' "

Spaulding pleaded guilty.

Magette later pleaded for leniency, telling a Lake County judge her son was a forgiving person who would want Spaulding forgiven, too.

"We felt he was a decent guy who had just made a poor decision," she said.

But then, Magette reasons, so had her son. Jared chose to get into the car with a man who had been drinking.

She and Spaulding have struck up an unlikely friendship, talking regularly. She's also watched him share his story, once with teens in the Kansas town she calls home.

Magette credits her faith in God with her forgiveness. She also credits Spaulding, who she says made things much easier by pleading guilty and admitting responsibility.

Forgiveness, she says, was "just a relief. We were carrying so much burden already."

'He has no soul'

Since the day of her only daughter's murder -- and all through the arrest and lengthy trial of the man eventually convicted of doing it -- Cindy McNamara has thought little about the killer.

"We just dwell on the good things," she says. "We don't think of him, don't dwell on him. We don't obsess."

She does, though, fight for his eventual execution.

Anthony Mertz was the first person put on Illinois' stalemated death row after former Gov. George Ryan cleared it, pardoning some inmates and converting the sentences of others to life in prison.

Now, Mertz waits.

So does McNamara.

The Rolling Meadows mom has written regularly to Gov. Rod Blagojevich, begging him to lift the state's moratorium on executions. She says she's terrified Mertz will otherwise find a way out of prison, end up a free man someday, and hurt someone else's family.

She hasn't forgiven him.

She says she can't.

"What I try to do is take care of my own soul," says McNamara, who also has a son who's since made his way through college. "Forgiveness right now -- I don't think I can use that word."

Shannon McNamara was 21 when she was murdered in the middle of the night in her off-campus apartment at Eastern Illinois University.

Mertz, who lived across the street, sliced his way in through a window screen, authorities said. He then strangled her, stuffed a washcloth down her throat until she stopped breathing and used a knife to mutilate her.

At trial, Mertz said he didn't know if he'd killed her, saying he often drank so much he blacked out.

Had he ever owned up to the murder, asked for forgiveness or shown remorse, Cindy McNamara says that could have been a "stepping stone" toward eventual forgiveness.

She says he hasn't.

"He still denies it," Cindy McNamara says of the crime. "You get to the point where you have to take responsibility for your own actions."

And "I really believe you have to ask Christ for forgiveness, and to get to Heaven you have to ask Christ to forgive all your sins," she says. "Because I think he has no soul, that'll never happen."

Cindy McNamara considers herself a Christian; that faith helps her believe she will see her daughter again.

But she says she can't fight her feeling that some people are just pure evil. And Mertz, she says, is one of them.

"The end part of it is, we don't want to put any energy toward thinking about him," she says. "Energy that could be used for the better.

"We carry on, we try to do what needs to be done, and we just go on from there."

'He can't have me'

Jeanne Bishop remembers the first thing she said as she sat with police after learning about her sister's murder: I don't want to hate anyone.

"I'd never hated anyone in my life," she said. And today, though she's seen her sister lying inside a body bag, she says she still doesn't.

With her Christian faith as a guide, Bishop said she's chosen to make mental peace with her sister's teen killer.

"I do not want to be consumed with hatred for him," she says. "I don't want to give him that power over me.

"He took my sister," she says. "He can't have me, too."

It was Palm Sunday 1990.

A call to church, as Bishop stood in her choir robe, relayed the news: A 16-year-old had waited for Bishop's sister Nancy and her husband, Richard, in their North Shore home the night before. When they arrived, the killer handcuffed Richard and forced them into the basement.

Nancy, three months pregnant, watched as her husband was shot in the head. When the killer turned the gun on her, she folded her arms over her stomach, begging for her child's life. He fired right into it, twice. He left her to bleed to death.

He's never apologized.

Bishop's first step in overcoming the anger, she says, was forgiving God. Then she focused on the teen criminal.

"I have forgiven him, but I'm not done," Bishop says of convicted killer David Biro. "I have to keep forgiving him. I think it's a daily decision.

"You make the choice to forgive -- again and again."

She views full forgiveness as a journey: She imagines herself in the water, swimming always toward a sandy beach. Some days, she's able to forge through the current. Other times, the pounding waves just push her back.

Bishop says she'll never understand why it happened. And trying to sort out the killer, she acknowledges, is "like looking into this dark abyss."

Forgiveness "is partly me accepting that some things are beyond me."

The murder also led Bishop down an ironic career path in which she would end up defending accused criminals. Already a lawyer, she switched directions to become a Cook County public defender -- saying her time as a victim makes her hold herself to a higher standard.

Years ago, Bishop was fine with the fact that Biro was too young to be eligible for the death penalty in Illinois.

Today, with her sister's killer in jail for the rest of his life, she's an outspoken opponent of capital punishment.

She questions the idea that putting a killer to death brings closure. The whole attitude of an eye for an eye, she adds, is actually insulting. It suggests a killer's life is worth as much as the innocent lives he took.

Seventy times seven

A year ago, an angry Greg Hockerman wanted his children's killer to burn in hell.

Forever.

Then, a turning point: an invitation to tell a group of recovering alcoholics of the day Ralph Pollock climbed drunk into his pickup truck with a bottle of vodka, ran a red light and slammed into the Hockermans' vehicle.

For guidance, Hockerman turned to a Biblical exchange between Peter and Jesus in the Book of Matthew.

In Chapter 18, Peter asks Jesus, "Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?"

"No," Jesus tells him in return. "Seventy times seven."

"Basically, that means we are to forgive, period," Hockerman said. "As Christians, since we've been forgiven so much in terms of our sins, we are obligated to forgive."

And he's doing that.

He and his wife, Sherry, of West Lafayette, Ind., had just retrieved their van from a remote O'Hare International Airport parking lot after a July 2005 vacation when Pollock hit them, triggering a fiery blaze. Greg and Sherry were burned as they tried in vain to free their kids. Paul, 11, was pulled to safety by a nearby stranger. Claire, 14, and Nathan, 5, were killed.

Pollock, a 46-year-old convicted drunken driver from Schaumburg, had a blood-alcohol level of more than three times the legal limit. After the crash, he sat on a curb at the grisly scene -- so intoxicated, prosecutors said, that he needed help walking.

The Hockermans' decision to forgive is a vital one, they say, for restoring their souls. It's also challenging. A choice they make every single day.

"Some days, you do better than others," Sherry Hockerman admits. "It really is a process, and it's like, 'This is going to be hard,' and you know that from the start. But do I want to become a hardened, bitter old woman?"

Her optimism belies the difficulty. Often, she says, memories of that day or thoughts of her dead children come rushing back, spurring a spiral of grief all over again.

And the bitterness returns.

The couple strives for full forgiveness, Sherry Hockerman says, "so we can move on. So that we can try to resume some kind of a life."

Forgiving Pollock didn't take away their desire to see him sent to prison, they say. He's been sentenced to 25 years.

"I've reached a point where I don't want to see him burn in hell," Greg Hockerman said. "It doesn't mean that he shouldn't have to face justice for what he did. … The law needs to be upheld, but that does not mean that he is beyond redemption. In God's eyes, and also in my eyes, he isn't beyond redemption."

The couple admits some who know them have questioned how they could possibly forgive such a crime -- particularly since it meant the deaths of their children.

But the Hockermans, who say they know Pollock didn't wake up that morning planning to be a killer, insist it's tough for anyone to know what they'd do if faced with the same tragedy themselves.

And, they say, if you're honest, you know you've messed up in your own life a time or two.

"As you examine yourself before God, you realize how many times you do wrong," Sherry Hockerman said.

"This is foundational," she continues of their decision to forgive. "Knowing our own sins -- and knowing we already have been forgiven."

To help you forgive:

• Consider whether you've ever done something that required forgiveness yourself.

• Try to empathize with the person who wronged you. If you can't, try to sympathize.

• If you're religious, pray.

• Make up your mind to do it. Like a lot of other habits -- overeating, smoking -- anger can be a hard one to beat.

• Recognize that letting go of anger can reduce stress, anxiety and depression.

• Make an effort to practice forgiveness in daily life.

Source: Daily Herald Interviews

Things to remember:

• You don't do it just once.

Many who have struggled to forgive say the same thing: It's not just one decision. It's a day-to-day journey.

"Because we're human, the feelings come up again and the anger comes up again," says Pat Larson, the director of victim services with the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists, "and you will have to just keep re-forgiving."

• Forgiving doesn't mean you oppose a punishment.

Forgiving someone who's wronged you and wanting to see justice served aren't mutually exclusive, experts say.

"Justice is social, and forgiveness is something that happens inside your skin," explains Everett Worthington, a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University who has authored a book about forgiveness.

Worthington goes so far as to say you could forgive a killer and still want him put to death, since a stance for or against capital punishment also is a separate social issue.

• Forgiving isn't the same as condoning the behavior.

Joan Magette forgave instantly the man who killed her son in a drunken crash.

Yet she also recognizes the absurdity of the situation. It was wrong, she says, for all to drink and climb in the car.

She places no blame.

But, "The act was just stupid," she says now. "I wish they wouldn't have all done something stupid. Why did they have to be stupid?

"How stupid was that?"

• You shouldn't feel rushed into forgiveness, and the act isn't exactly a requirement.

Avis Clendenen, a religious studies professor in Chicago, has high praise for people who are able to let anger go.

But she says it's not imperative that people who are hurt make that happen.

"Especially," she says, "if there's been no repentance. I don't believe it must follow that when something happens to you that is life-altering, not of your own making -- that it's absolutely imperative that you have to do the work for forgiveness."

The belief that you must rush to forgive often makes the person faced with that decision feel guilty, she says, particularly if the offender is being arrogant or indignant.

There's no time limit.