On December 14, 2012, 9 months after my husband’s death, my second grader had his Christmas play. The night before, I climbed into bed, turned off the light, and laid in the dark.
Don’t be sad tomorrow. Do not ruin it for Nathan. Make it a happy day. Make it Nathan’s Day, I thought.
The Christmas play was adorable. It included the classes from Kindergarten, First Grade, and Second Grade. The sweet little faces of children saying their lines and singing Christmas songs is one of the things I like most about our school. Nathan had one of the lead roles in the play and he just killed it. He knew all of his lines and he delivered them with feeling and emotion. After the play parents, some of whom I did not even know, told me how fantastic he was.
Before I left, I found and gave him a big kiss.
“I am so proud of you and Daddy is so proud in heaven”, I whispered to him.
Nathan’s face shone with happiness, no trace of sadness in his big brown eyes.
I held myself mostly together during the play. But after the play, I jumped up into the driver’s seat of Gordie’s truck, closed the door and the tears started to fall. I was intending to go back home to work but I ended up taking a detour to Gordie’s grave. I walked up to his “wall” and sat on the little ledge across from it.
“You missed it. You should have been there”, I said out loud while looking at his name on the wall.
I sat on the ledge for a few more minutes then dried my face with my sleeve, stood up and walked back to my car with my head down the entire way.
As soon as I got home, I lost myself in a few hours of work. I had a session with my Grief Counselor in the early afternoon. Before I left for the session, I turned on the TV, which is something I never do. I rarely, if ever, turn on the TV during the day. But something made me do it.
Breaking News. Another School Shooting.
Oh no, I thought.
I watched the news for a few more minutes. The shooting was at an elementary school in Connecticut: Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Oh God, no, I thought.
As I was leaving the house for my therapy appointment, I found our Nanny in the family room folding the boys’ laundry. I told her the news and turned on the TV so she could watch it.
I tuned my car radio to a news station and listened as I headed to my appointment. Twenty children had died, all of whom were in Kindergarten or First Grade. Tears streamed down my face. The faces of Nathan’s schoolmates in the play that morning flashed into my mind. The kids in the school shooting were the exact same age.
As I drove down the freeway, I screamed out loud.
“Really God? I am suppose to believe in you when you let someone gun down 20 little kids?”
I walked into my therapy session sobbing.
“Those poor parents. I can’t imagine that someone’s grief could be worse than the grief I’m feeling yet I truly believe theirs is. I believe this because if nine months ago someone had told me I had to choose between my husband’s life and one of my children’s lives, I would have chosen my children without hesitation. And I know Gordie would have made the same choice”, I told my Therapist.
I paused and looked out the window….still crying.
“I do not even know these people and I feel such despair. Is this normal?” I asked.
“Yes! It’s absolutely normal. It’s opening the wound. It’s throwing you back into the early part of your grief. It’s reminding you that life is fragile and unpredictable” my therapist responded.
I did not feel any better at the end of my therapy session that day. I was just so, so sad.
I picked Nathan up at school. As I was waiting for him, I ran into the Grandpa of his best friend. He asked me how we were doing. I could not hold it together. I started to cry.
“I’m sorry”, I tried to explain, “today’s news has just hit me so hard”. He patted my arm and said he understood. I remembered that he too had experienced great loss, a son who had died very young.
When we got into the car, I gently told Nathan about the tragedy in Connecticut. Nathan was very observant and he watched the news when it was on, read headlines on magazines when we were in line at stores, and read the newspaper when it was lying on the table at my parents’ house. I wanted him to hear the story from me first.
“Why did that guy do it” Nathan asked.
“I don’t know Nathan”, I replied.
“Sometimes people are ill and they get out of control” Nathan said.
Wow. Where did he learn that?
“Yes, that’s true. They are very sick and they do crazy and terrible things. But there are not a lot of those people in the world so do not worry, OK?”, I said.
“OK” he replied.
“Do you think Daddy is welcoming the kids into heaven?” I asked Nathan.
“Oh yea” Nathan replied “Daddy loves kids”, Nathan said with a smile.
I could not stay away from the news. I had it on in the early evening and tears continued to stream down my face. Nathan came into the room. I turned the TV off but not before Nathan had caught a glimpse of the story. He looked at the TV and then looked at me.
“Are you OK Nathan?”. I asked.
“Yes”, he said.
I had not run that morning because I was too busy getting Nathan ready for his school play. I desperately wanted to run that evening but I had work to finish before the weekend and I had a dinner that night with my Widows’ group. I really did not want to go but made myself go. It was the right decision. We talked briefly about the tragedy and it made me feel a little better. It hit some of my Widow friends hard too. I was not alone in my sadness. We did a gift exchange at the dinner and it was a nice distraction.
I spent the night at my parents’ house that night since they had babysat the boys at their house while I was at my Widows’ dinner. I got into my bed at my parents’ house and cried for the kids who had died, for the parents who had lost a child, and for my loss of Gordie.
The next morning I got up early and went for a run. The boys were still sleeping soundly at my parents’ house. It was cold, really cold for California. There was frost on the lawns and I could see my breath in big plumes. The tears started falling as soon as I started to run down the hill, the tears were warm as they dripped down my cheeks. I could not stop thinking about the children and parents of Sandy Hook.
How can there be a God when things like this happen?
I even found myself silently asking “ Gordie, couldn’t you do anything to prevent this?”
I also could not stop myself from wondering what the children who died went through and what they felt. It reminded me of the night Gordie died, lying in my bed wondering if Gordie suffered, if he knew what was going on, if he was scared and wondering where I was. I had finally gotten to a place where I only occasionally thought about these things. But while I was running I wondered what those kids experienced and felt…and could not stop my mind from then wondering what Gordie experienced the day he died.
The children who died at Sandy Hook were five, six, maybe seven years old. Nathan was seven years old. I could not imagine him being in a similar situation, being so confused, so scared, in such mental and physical pain, probably desperately wanting his Mommy. Thinking about Nathan experiencing such terror, such fright, made me lose my breath as I continued my run. It is one thing for an adult to experience terrible fright, but a child….
Thinking about those kids in those moments finally became too much for me. I ran across the street and vomited in an open space.
That night I watched the coverage on CNN. Anderson Cooper read and showed the names and ages of the victims. There were also some pictures of the victims. I wept quietly as I watched the names, their ages and looked into their sweet, innocent faces.
Later in the coverage, I watched an interview with a Father of one of the young victims. He said “Let us not turn this into something that defines us”. His words penetrated deep into my thoughts. I did not want Gordie’s death to define me or my sons. Would it shape the people my sons would become? Yes. Would it shape my own evolution? Yes. But as I listened to this Father’s words, I vowed to not let Gordie’s death define us.
It has been six years since the tragedy at Sandy Hook and there have been numerous mass shootings since then. I continue to experience extreme sadness every time there is a shooting. However, none of them have affected me as strongly as Sandy Hook. Perhaps Sandy Hook affected me more because my son was the same age as those children. Perhaps it was because Sandy Hook happened the same day that I found some peace watching a Christmas play with children of the same age. Perhaps it was because it was the first big mass shooting after losing my husband. I don’t know. All I know is that I still, six years later, think about the children whose lives were lost that day and their parents. I continue to pray for those parents. I follow some of them who are actively trying to create change in our society so that mass shootings stop. I can tell that though they are moving forward and trying desperately to bring change as a result of their loss, they are still going through their journey of grief. I get it. Grief is a never-ending journey, a journey through which I continue to run.