An excerpt from Judy Shepard’s new book: The night she found out Matthew was beaten and near death

More than 10 years after her son’s murder, Judy Shepard has written The Meaning of Matthew: My Son’s Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed (Hudson River Press),

She writes about her family: first the joy and frustration of parenting a complicated teenager, then the horror and resolve when that child is the victim of an unspeakable crime, and how it felt to watch her dying son  become a symbol for the entire nation.

An excerpt from the book has been posted on Newsweek.com. I’m sharing some portions of it with you:

The phone call that Thursday morning wasn’t from Matt. It was about him. When the man on the other end of the line announced who he was, an emergency-room doctor from Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie, I went numb. I don’t remember what he said, or what I did next.

I’m not sure whether it was the ringing phone or my subsequent gasp that startled the still-sleeping Dennis. Whatever it was that woke him, Dennis took the phone from me and then, after a seemingly endless silence, made a noise—a sort of helpless and mournful groan—that I’d never heard before and haven’t heard since. Coming as it did from my husband, a man whose reserved manner is as typically masculine and Western as his Wrangler jeans and cowboy boots, the moan confirmed my worst fears.

Matt had been attacked. He had sustained injuries to his head that were so critical, his chances for survival were nearly impossible.

“In fact,” Dr. Cantway told Dennis, “Matt’s wounds are so severe that he had to be transported 40 miles south of Laramie to a hospital in Ft. Collins, Colo., that was better equipped to deal with head injuries.”

As with all parents, our first instinct was to run to our son’s side. Unfortunately, we happened to be 8,000 miles away. The flight to Denver, by way of Amsterdam and Minneapolis, didn’t leave for 19 hours. To add to the already surreal situation, we still had to deal with the bureaucracy of Saudi Arabia and get the proper documentation to leave. Dennis and I were forced to wait almost an entire day before we could even begin our trip to be with Matt. We used that time to call a few relatives in the States to let them know what was happening and to make sure Matt wouldn’t be alone in Ft. Collins. None of us knew what we’d find or would have to do once we reached Colorado.

As Dennis and I rushed around in a daze—packing our bags and preparing paperwork rather than staring at the slow-moving clock—I did everything I could to stay hopeful. Dennis and I had only limited information about the extent of Matt’s injuries, and absolutely no information about the circumstances surrounding his attack. We knew he was critically injured and that his hold on life was tenuous, at best. Still, our highest hope at that point was for Matt’s complete recovery. Our most basic, and perhaps most realistic, hope was that he would hold on to life until we could be with him, by his side.

During the 19 hours that Dennis and I waited in Dhahran, we were in constant contact with Ivinson hospital and then Poudre Valley Hospital. But in all that time, there was very little they could tell us about what had happened to Matt. Although the medical staff knew he had been attacked—his injuries were too severe to suggest anything else—nobody could explain who had done this to my son or why.

When it came down to it, I knew that no amount of speculation on my part would help answer any of the thousands of questions that were already overwhelming me. Even if I could find answers, I knew that none would ease the panic or the excruciating pain welling up at the root of my soul. No answer could help Matt, who was hanging on to life with every ounce of his incredible strength. So as our plane finally took off, for the first leg of our long flight, I gripped Dennis’s hand and tried to force myself to think of better times.