In about three hours I will be linked via conference call to the sentencing hearing of the man being held responsible for my grandmothers death. I have been asked to write and read a victim's impact statement. I have been struggling with what to say. How do you portray grief in words? You can't. A feeling so basic yet complicated and intense cannot be translated into words in a way which would satisfactorily represent what I am feeling. But I had to try. Below is what I think I will be reading at the hearing. You many be asking why I am posting this publicly. Because, I want people to know what happened. I have had so many conversations with people in total awe that this man could do this, while my experiences with him have not always been that way, so this is my way of respecting their opinions and honoring my own. No one has to read this. But here, I will have a record of my efforts and my journey to come to terms and be at peace with this situation.


My name is Amber Alexander and I am Joanne Nelson's granddaughter. My mother, Cindy ******, is her daughter. My Grandma Joanne is so much of who I am today. Her presence in my life, especially during my childhood, was a guiding force in my explorations and discoveries of the person I am and the person I want to be. Through her I learned skills and hobbies of hers that are now passions of my own, and her warm embrace was such a strong part of my childhood that I can still feel it surround me today. I have hardly begun the grieving process because her death has hit me incredibly hard. The circumstances of her passing are confusing and painful for me.

I do not feel that I have enough wisdom or insight to draw conclusions as to what I think should happen to whom in the wake of her death because I am still making sense of it. My emotions flare between grief, sorrow, anger, guilt, sadness and pain. And a lot of confusion and unanswered questions. I can't begin to imagine what it was like in the final weeks of her life, I can't say whether I believe everything was done to ensure my grandmother spent her final days with the best possible quality of life, because I was not there. I do not know what was happening, I do not know what was done to help her, to ease her pain, or make her comfortable. What I do know is that my grandmother died in way that must have been unimaginably painful, in a hospital room with one blessed person holding her hand. A nurse she did not know.

What I would like to come away from this whole thing with are answers. In trying to make sense of this tremendous sorrow, there are several things that keep going through my mind, bringing up more questions. The first of which surrounding the last couple times I saw my Grandma Joanne. One was in her home in the early afternoon. She was laying in bed and the whole time asking Gil if he was going to get her out of bed soon. While I know that in the wake of her stroke, one of the lasting effects was a very focused one-track mind, I still can't help but wonder how much of her days were spent like this? Was she in bed all the time? Asking to get up? Another is when she was put in a nursing home while Gil was in the hospital. By the time we were notified, she had been there three weeks, and we found out because one of Gil's sisters finally called my mother to let her know. Why did no one tell us what was going on sooner? We had offered in the past to help, only to be turned down, so we quit offering. Partly because we trusted that if help was needed, or additional care required, they would let us know.

My grandmother went into the hospital just before midnight, November 30th from what I have been told. Her condition was grave enough to warrant law enforcement notification so I know she must have been in really bad shape, yet, the first call made to us was at 8am the next morning, 8 hours after she was admitted. And about an hour after we left the house for the morning, leaving this urgent news waiting for almost the entire day until we heard it two hours before she passed away. This effectively made it impossible for us to get to her before she died, and we never got to say goodbye. That is one of the hardest parts of my grieving process. Why was there more than an 8 hour gap between the time Gil called 911 and the time he called us?

Shortly after my Grandma Joannes passing one of my other grandmothers, Ida *********, whom is my fathers mother and a retired nurse, told me that she ran into Gil in the grocery store shortly before Thanksgiving. She asked him if he had heard from me and whether I would be in town for the holidays with my daughter. Gil replied that he never heard from us. Ida asked how Joanne was doing and Gil replied that she wasn't doing well at all. At that point my Grandma Ida told Gil that she didn't think he looked well either and according to her memory he said neither of them were doing very well. At this point my Grandma Ida told Gil that they had home services that would come in and help take care of Grandma Joanne, or even just help with housework and cooking and she asked him if he had looked into any of this. My Grandma Ida does not remember Gil's exact response but she says that it was to the extent of "We will get by". She remembers saying something about him not being able to handle this on his own. This was about two or three weeks before her death. What I want to know, is if it was acknowledged that neither he nor my grandmother were doing well, why didn't he reach out? Why had he turned down offers of help? I cannot say whether reaching out and asking for help would have prevented my Grandma Joannes death, but at the very least, she would have had more people there with her when she passed. And he wouldn't have had to do it all by himself. Judging from his response to my grandma Ida's question about hearing from us, I can only assume that Gil was at the very least, bitter that we were not in better touch. I will be the first to acknowledge I did not call that often. But I think it is also important to acknowledge that communication is a two way street. There were phone calls on my part made that went unanswered, the phone just rang endlessly with no answering machine. There were several times that they had plans to come and join my mother and I for holidays yet failed to show up and failed to call to tell us they would not be coming. There were also many times that my mom would call and Gil would say that Grandma was in bed, but that he would call back when she got up, yet he never did. While I strive to be a compassionate person I am struggling with the anger I feel towards this man whom my grandmother trusted, as did my family, to care for her, who failed to reach out at times of need. One can only hear a rejection to offered help so many times before they quit offering and I fail to understand why he didn't tell us what was really going on, or how any bitterness or anger or resentment towards us would warrant not making phone calls at these times like these.

My Grandma Joanne was foundational to the person I am today. I truly feel that in order for me to honor her memory, and the impact she had on my life, and to make peace with this terrible situation, I must try to find the answers to these questions.