In grief, you inevitably get to a point where the world moves on, and people move on. The world expects you to be less vocal about your loss. The more vocal you are, the louder the whispers about how you’re coping. How are you supposed to cope with the unimaginable? Society says quietly. And yet, death is the only certainty of life and the most difficult to accept.

In cases where death is at the hands of another, in grief, the justice system becomes the soul’s savior. It seems like the only way out of the abyss of grief is the insurmountable hope that the mind convinces itself is the answer. The belief that finally, someone can do something.

Instead, it’s really that most of us don’t know the law and complexities of the legal process and merely believe there’s some moral high ground that protects people who are already suffering. It isn’t, though. There is more suffering than we can conceive in the judicial system, and it’s not about anyone’s feelings. People come out on the other side broken. While you break waiting for the next phase in the process, victim advocates are in place to pick up the pieces. A job I can’t imagine, another state department in over its head, and a system ill-equipped to truly care about its victims.

So how do you give a voice to a victim in a system that doesn’t want to hear you or, frankly, can’t because the constitutional laws it protects don’t allow for it?

Justice has to take on another form. That’s coping, and that’s how we prepare ourselves. We’ll tell the story in a place it will live forever. Justice in this form would allow everyone to know what Jason Lopes did to Zackary Marshall. That the court may allow space for Jason’s dignity, but it’s left up to the rest of us to make sure Zack’s dignity remains in the event that justice doesn’t prevail.

I wish I had the knowledge to talk about the political sphere of the justice system and how it affects how the courts operate and how exactly we got to a bail hearing for a murderer who wasn’t caught for 10 years, who conceded in court that it was his actions that caused Zack’s death, and a man who clearly ran from the consequences, only to be allowed bail. I can’t, though, because I can’t understand it. I think caring to understand would just disappoint us more.

When we decry the court’s decision, and people scream about the constitutionally protected right to be innocent until proven guilty, and then we’re asked to have an opinion about what a just sentence would be, there’s a crossfire between wanting to respect the law but also just wanting it to be fair. What we realize is that it’ll likely never be enough. It won’t even feel remotely like justice. The highest crime in the country, murder, will likely be as unjust as allowing a murderer to have more nights on the outside because the details aren’t salacious or egregious enough. Some murders are easier to digest; therefore, somehow, they become less important.

The night Zack died, a piece of us all died too. We don’t want to be victims. Zack’s mom doesn’t want her son to be a victim anymore. We want our time with the justice system to come to an end, but yet here we are, three years after the fact, and Jason Lopes will have Thanksgiving with his family. He will see his child and be able to hug her and play with her. He’ll spend Christmas and New Years with them.

Then there’s us, discarded until someone finally decides to do something but not before making every excuse why we’ll have to wait more than three years to see the end of this through. They’ll push for the same judge who allowed bail in hopes that allowing bail meant that the judge sympathizes with the accused. The state says they’re ready for trial, but yet they continue to put dates on the calendar, and they come and go without a trial date.

What the justice system does is remove what little power and hope you have left in grief and make it so no one really wins. With the little power we have left, we want everyone to see and hear Zack’s story because he deserved to share Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family, and to hug and play with his daughter, but he can’t.