True grace: Odin Lloyd's mother forgives Aaron Hernandez for murdering her son

A few hours before he would eventually be murdered, his body riddled with bullets and left to rot in a field behind an industrial park, Odin Lloyd went to his mother, Ursula Ward, and wished her a Happy Father's Day.

Odin Lloyd didn't have a father in his life, but as he'd grown and matured, now 27 years old, he'd come to realize he had something better: a mother who somehow pulled off the task of being both. So Father's Day, 2013, wasn't going without recognition.

Ursula Ward cries as Aaron Hernandez is found guilty.

(AP)

He had a mom, an immigrant mom, who despite financial hardships and a lifetime of setbacks, had stressed the straight and narrow, had pushed him through high school and into community college, who managed to shepherd him past the street gangs and corner violence that dominate his neighborhood in Boston. Odin Lloyd never was in trouble.

He had a mom who taught him about the value of professionalism and hard work, to the point where when he went to apply for a landscaper's job out in the suburbs, he arrived in a shirt and tie, carrying a résumé.

"Unusual," his boss acknowledged.

It was that landscaping company, which Odin Lloyd rode to on a bike 10 miles each way, which first knew something was wrong on June 17, 2013.
Odin Lloyd was late, they realized. And Odin Lloyd was never late.

He had a mom who encouraged him to live life with passion, to laugh and smile – "As long as I have life, I will smile," Odin would say. "Smiles never die." He had a mother who stressed friendship, faith and loyalty over material items.

"A lot of people … will not value the riches he had," an uncle said. "He was a prideful, prideful guy."
He loved music and parties and his Caribbean culture and, of course, football. He loved football so much he played semi-pro, just for the appreciation of the game.

He had a mom who taught him how to care for women, from his sisters – "He was my daughters' keepers," Ward said – to his girlfriend, Shaneah Jenkins. They met when a previous job as an electrician took him to Connecticut and he was holed up for a few weeks at a hotel where she worked while attending college. Odin hung around the front desk enough to win her over with his larger-than-life grin and easy-going way.

So, Mother's Day, Father's Day, there was never a day that Odin Lloyd didn't want to honor Ursula Ward and all she'd done for him. He'd call her beautiful. He'd tell her he loved her. He'd tease her that she wasn't allowed out without his permission.

"I miss my baby boy so much," Ursula said Wednesday.

She was standing in the middle of Courtroom 7 of the Fall River Justice Center, addressing Bristol County Superior Judge E. Susan Garsh, giving the kind of address straight out of every parent's worst nightmare. Behind her sat her sobbing family, daughters and cousins and uncles and, of course, Shaneah.

To her left was Aaron Hernandez, murderer.

About a half hour earlier, a jury convicted Hernandez, saying he was responsible for Lloyd's death in those early morning hours. Despite the fame and fortune of being a star for the New England Patriots, despite a loving family of his own, including Shaneah's sister – his girlfriend and mother of his 8-month-old daughter at home in their million-dollar mansion – Hernandez decided to drive Lloyd to a remote spot with a couple of two-bit criminals at his side and ruthlessly slaughter him.

Odin Lloyd was shot at least five times, including one near the back of his head, more than enough for the jury to deem it "extreme atrocity or cruelty" and level a first-degree verdict. Hernandez was automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. They drove him up to a prison in Walpole, just around the corner from Gillette Stadium, where the Patriots play.

Even though Hernandez's fate was a formality, victims' impact statements were read by a small parade of Lloyd family members. Hernandez sat to the side, wrists and ankles shackled, watching on without a hint of emotion.

Ursula Ward went first. She'd traveled down here, 50 miles south of Boston, for all 41 days of testimony, often wearing Odin's favorite color purple, often fighting through tears at brutal testimony or pictures of her son's corpse. Judge Garsh had scolded her for crying in court and so she started retreating to the hallway to find composure. It was never easy though, not with Aaron and Shayanna sitting there, too.

Across the months of this case, court officers say she began making this about something even bigger than her son's death and the celebrity trial that surrounded it. She began befriending and supporting other families of crimes who had came to court seeking justice. They'd meet in the Witness/Victim Room on the first floor, Ursula becoming everyone's mother, always there for a hug and a sympathetic smile. She was a rock, a woman of deep conviction who knew precisely the torment they were in.

Odin Lloyd

"Extraordinary dignity and class," district attorney Thomas Quinn said of her.

“We drew strength from them,” prosecutor William McCauley said of the Lloyds.

So now Ursula Ward was given the floor, free to say anything and everything she wanted. Free to express her woe, free to celebrate her son, free to speak her peace.
"The day I laid my son Odin to rest, I felt my heart stop beating for a moment," Ward said, her voice catching. "I felt like I wanted to go into that hole with my son, Odin."

From the depth of that place, of that wound, she was free to turn to Hernandez, the man who gutlessly killed her kid, and offer up words that might rattle around his head and haunt him for the rest of what will be his pathetic, penned-in life.

And maybe, in a completely Ursula Ward way, in a way of profound grace, in a way of the kind of woman who could raise Odin, who could be celebrated on Mother's and Father's Day, in a way that lived up to everything anyone praised her for … she did.

"I forgive the hands of the people who had a hand in my son's murder, even before or after," she said.
Here, in her hour of built-up tumult and longstanding grief, she forgave … forgave a big, rich pro athlete who didn't have the decency to express a hint of acknowledgement at her words, at her pain, at her absolution.
Here, to a defendant who will be forever known for his depravity, was sheer decency.

"And I pray and hope," she continued, "that someday everyone out there will forgive them also."

Ursula Ward, her eyes red, her mouth somehow in a satisfied smile, took a seat in a once vengeance-filled courtroom that was, courtesy of this simple, yet indomitable woman, now overcome with awe.