Sometimes not even time can heal the greatest of wounds.
When Samantha Bertha Walsh - a 13-year-old pretty, blond-haired girl full of life's zeal - was ripped from her parents George and Milley Walsh 10 years ago, it tore a hole through their hearts.
While time has sutured the wound, the gaping hole remains as large today as it did on that frigidly cold winter evening when they arrived at their empty Fleur-de-Lys home.
For the next 17 days following Feb. 6, 2000, people combed the harbour that surrounded the short jaunt from her nan's place that night wearing her pajama bottoms instead of snow pants.
The search for "saltwater joy" as she was often called, expanded to the surrounding streets, the hillsides, nearby towns and throughout the far reaches of the province and beyond. The myths and rumours poured in, people were questioned, tips that raised false hope were eventually dashed, and perhaps the ultimate of worst nightmares came true with a confession of murder.
A 16-year-old boy, Michael John Victor Lewis, a supposed childhood friend and neighbour, strangled George and Milley's beloved Sam. Her short life came to an end.
"It's easier and still it's very difficult," Milley told The Western Star last week as she and her husband George sat in their living room which overlooks the same harbour they had hoped to see their only daughter come walking home on a decade ago.
"I look behind me and it's been 10 years, but, when I stop to think about it, it's only like 10 minutes, 10 hours or 10 days."
The gut-wrenching feeling of that vacant house comes back as if it was happening all over again, she says; other times she describes it as if she now lives in another world.
"It has been long, yet it still seems like it was only yesterday," she said. "There's not a day that goes over my head that I don't think about Sam. She's the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, and it's also throughout the day.
"It's not so much that I think about what happened to her, I just think about what we've lost. I think about who she is and who she could have been."
George, who is the town's deputy mayor and Milley its mayor, pried himself away from working on the final details of the town's budget. He said his daughter is still with them always, recounting a story of how he hit a rabbit while driving just the night before.
"I apologized to Sam for doing that," he said. "She would have been there saying, 'Daaad.' Those things are still just as hard as ever they were, but it is easier to live."
George has a prayer he says daily, a constant reminder of Samantha, but there are many reminders in the father's daily life - whether it is seeing a young woman who would be his daughter's age or the conversations with friends, neighbours and strangers that still exist 10 years later.
Milley agrees. She says seeing Samantha's friends, although none of the closest ones remain in the quaint little town on the Baie Verte Peninsula today, are the hardest.
Rebecca Stuckless of Baie Verte got married in St. John's last weekend, and Samantha's best friend Devina Alyward came back from the mainland to attend. It was a proud and difficult moment for Milley.
"I think of these moments in girls', daughters' lives and family's lives that we will never have," she said.
Milley, who is a teacher, says she also draws strength from hearing from Samantha's friends, knowing her daughter had an impact on the lives of many. It is something she is hoping to continue by teaching 10- and 11-year-olds in Baie Verte.
"I look at each one of them and I feel like they are my own," she said. "It's a great privilege to be able to teach children and hope you are able to make at least a little mark on their lives."
Annual celebration
Today, George and Milley will again lead a celebration of Samantha's life. The rosary and church service has been well attended for the past nine years and the parents expect the same, if not a larger turnout this year.
It has just been another measure of the outpouring of support the family has received right from the beginning. They still receive mail from well-wishers all over. It has been remarkable how many people felt impacted or moved by the story of a missing 13-year-
old, and later her murder. It has become almost synonymous with Fleur-de-Lys.
"That bothers me in a way," Milley said. "The connection with Fleur-de-Lys will surely be a beautiful memory, because I think the province got to know who Sammy was, but I find it very, very sad that you can think of this little community because someone murdered an innocent child.
"If anything that Sam could have wished for, I think it would have been that people love Fleur-de-Lys as much as she loved it during her 13 years."
The mother, who still has a very difficult time looking through the family pictures, yet still surrounds herself with photos and paintings of her Sam in every room of the house, says she believes people were able to connect to this incident because of the misery in those 17 days of unknown.
"It is so hard to talk about even today," she said. "I don't know how we got through those 17 days, because I don't remember ever really sleeping."
Both, George and Milley had tears in their eyes as they spoke of their daughter for well over an hour, but it was particularly hurtful to discuss details of the horrendous crime and the emotions they continue to deal with all these years later.
Samantha would be 24 years old this May. Milley says she never had big dreams for her daughter to be a certain something, but there were traits her parents were instilling in her they hoped would lead to something great.
"I just really wanted Sam to be good," she said. "Just to be a good human being, to leave her mark in goodness and simplicity, and not to live false dreams. To always be connected, to value what we were born into, and not to ever turn her nose at people.
Milley said her daughter also had another side that not many people got a chance to see. She says Samantha had a voice, and a will to stand up for what she believed in.
Her Mom hopes she would have used that to fight for Newfoundland and Labrador, the province she adored as a 13-year-old.
George mentions the possibility she could have been married by now, with children, and both parents agree that would have been fine, too.
"Provided she met the right fellow, I suppose," he said.
After Christmas comes and goes, Milley says the anticipation of February arrives.
She says the darkness of winter, the early nights gets to her, that the longer days makes her heart lighter. They will give out pots with bulbs inside at this year's celebration.
Sometimes it has been trees or small shrubs, many of which can be found growing throughout the town now. She said nature has always been thought of as the true definition of life, and she hopes it shows there is something that follows life.
"It gives me a sense of hope that maybe Sam is not that far away," she says, again crying a little more. "I really don't think she is, in spirit. I know I feel her."
churley@thewesternstar.com
