The climbing roses are blooming at nearly the same time this year. The yellow ones are already copious while the red ones are slow coming on. You will recognize them from the photo of Jim on the home page to this blog.
“On May 24, an 18-year-old gunman wielding an AR-15-style rifle killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a small city west of San Antonio. It was the deadliest school shooting since 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.” That’s a quote from The New York Times, August 25, 2022 several months after the shooting when emotions had subsided, information was known about the sooter and timeline of the events. There was the usual finger pointing and calls for gun control and background checks.
And the reminder that more children are killed by guns in the US than any other country for sure, but also any other malady known as childhood illness. I find this quite alarming. But what I also find alarming is the depth of the trauma and grief the survivors suffer.
I recently read and article which featured two of the children who were shot but miraculously survived.
A girl named Maya who was shot seven times and has now undergone sixty plus reconstructive surgeries to repair her right hand, which was nearly torn apart; skin grafts to cover the gouged flesh; incisions to remove dead tissue and bullet fragments lodged near her wounds.
A boy, Noah, who was shot through the back. shredding his shoulder blade. He survived by pretending to be dead.
But aside from the physical trauma, which is bad enough, both children, as their parents describe them, are unrecognizable from the children they were before. How can they not be?
“They have changed in ways only their parents can see. Noah rarely leaves his room these days. Mayah runs to her room or hides under the kitchen table when someone knocks at the door unannounced.”
But they are alive and that is a lot compared to so many others. Each one of those 19 children and two teachers had families, friends. they did silly things and made their parents laugh. They were looking forward to… all the things we look forward to. Both teachers died trying to cover the bodies of those young children with their own bodies. They were brave, they were caring. They are missed.
I know we can’t physically hold all of these people and tell them the pain of their losses will subside. It’s not like a news cycle where the next story of a shooting puts the last one in the past. I put myself in their place and I don’t understand how the painful experience of such ugly wasteful death could ever come to an end.
I believe we need to see the victims of these crimes as people not statistics. And the statistics are staggering. In 2023 so far there have been 185 mass shootings, 254 resulting deaths and 708 wounded. These statistics were just to the end of April.
I’ve been grieving this year over the loss of my husband. I am a grownup and his death was not a surprise. At times I have been brought to my knees. I understand we should not compare our losses, but I can’t help thinking how devastating the sudden tragic loss of a child would be. I am heartbroken just thinking about it. Each and every loss is a heartbreak to someone, a painful grief that makes it hard to catch their breath or think a rational thought. A wasted potential. A sadness that remains where love had been. I grieve for them all.