Jeanette O'Keefe 1972 - 2001        A MOTHER'S HEART: 12/07 LETTER   “Jeanette had the ability to excel in anything of interest to her. In secondary college, her subjects she liked best were Indonesian, Art, Mathematics, Geography and Music.  She received many academic awards of distinction each year. She graduated in 1993 with a Social Science degree, majoring in Sociology. In 1994 she undertook a Graduate Diploma in Computer Science (which is equivalent to a degree in Computer Science, but completed in one year). She liked the course so much that she took an overload of subjects including Artificial Intelligence.    I reported her missing to the Australian Embassy in Paris, who contacted the French Police and hospitals. I immediately emailed a photograph of Jeanette to the Embassy and French Police and the foyer, where Jeanette had lived for two months. For the next nine days and nights, I was on the telephone and sending emails to people who were connected with Jeanette and then passing all this information to the French Police.  I can not really put into words what that nightmare was like for our family.    The Police came and told us a body had been found in Paris and it was believed to be Jeanette.  She had been identified by people at the foyer, but for confirmation, family members traveled to Paris to identify Jeanette.  The murderer had removed Jeanette’s belongings, including passport, laptop computer, cameras, money and backpack.   Our family has never been the same since then.  We could not believe how cruel the murderer was –to attack a small innocent young lady, who did not have the strength to stop him.  The family was devastated and still finds it hard to come to terms with Jeanette’s death.”		CAN ART CATCH A MURDER?  There is no point in fighting who you are. I was born a nomad. When I was nineteen I decided to celebrate myself and go on vacation to Europe. I asked several friends to accompany me, many said yes, but when the time came they each made excuses for staying in the confines of their porches.  I understood. They were not like me. I grew up in the back of a '77 Thunderbird that raced cross country. From the outside, some would say that I never stayed in one place long enough to have a home. And my reply would be that the unfamiliar was home because I had the consistency of picket fences inside me. My identity has always been embedded in a value system that was not reliant upon external influences, lovers and friends were not like the math I was dependent on for stability; lovers and friends were not variables that dictated my given outcome. I booked my flight the following year and traveled alone for six weeks.  Upon my return I spent the next year living off Cup of Noodles to save and invest heavily in the stock market, which ultimately paid for my relocation to Paris.   By the time I met Jeanette in the winter of 2000 I had a thorough awareness of what it was to lose, more than most people anyway. I had attended at least a dozen elementary schools. All of my grandparents had died before I was thirteen. I went to three high schools my freshmen year alone.  And in spite of my familiarity with loss Jeanette’s death wounded me in hidden places, spaces I could not cover with shaky hands, gaps where pressure could not be applied to stop the leaks. Her death marked the beginning of a deep erosion as the confidence in the world outside me evaporated. I was not the one in question. Inside me the sun was shinning, it was eighty degrees and not a cloud in sight. Outside me there was chaos, an unlimited space where people got away with murder…   …every belief I had slipped from my hand like a rope that was snatched in a game of tug-of-war, a cord I would search for repeatedly in the middle of my reoccurring nightmares.  I am not fragile. Nor I am not afraid to lose. The truth is anyone can break at any given time. Lose too much all at once and it is almost inevitable.   Jeanette’s death was the first in a series of three immense traumas I was to experience back to back over the span of a year. So, in a sense, her death marked the beginning of the end.  I have spent the past several years slowly piecing together my faith in the world outside me.  Working through the agoraphobia (fear of spaces and new people) I developed from the post traumatic shock of having to identify the body of a friend. A friend I will always feel closer to in death than in life.    The Sacred Stones Collection is inspired by the heroic act of mourning. Because I believe that we are never more vulnerable than in a moment of grief.    Violent deaths take away more than the victim. Such acts kill trust in justice, principles too.  In speaking to members of the O'Keefe family I found that we all, to some degree, lost hope in gaining closure to this tragic event. And so I elected to give (not donate, not write-off) an undisclosed sum of the Sacred Stones Collection to the Chief of Police of Versailles with the hope that money will be an incentive to someone who knows something.   This is something I am willing to fight for forever.  In moving all over the world and having a life that defies normalcy, on all levels, I will share the only truth I have been able to claim. It is a concept I made a point of emphasizing to the last group of foster teens I gave a presentation to. I told them:   "You will walk through a lot of doors in your lifetime. Not all doors will have good things on the other side of them, but the only thing I know to be true is this: as long as you walk through each door with integrity -the best of who you are, good things will always eventually find you."   So I do not fight who I am. If I have to fall apart, I must, and I do. And it's okay. As long as I pull together so I can try to enter the next door with as much honor as I can manage. I try to approach each door with a newborn confidence like it's the first time all over again. It isn't as easy as it sounds. After all this time I have disembarked from the greatest journey of my life, having gained a soul I can never misplace.     I am honored to have you as a witness and participant to my journey. You are here, when you can be anywhere and that means a lot to me. So thank you. I love you.   -KEARIENE MUIZZ