Tag: mass shooting

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Another’s Story

This week, I wanted to be teasing the royal family about their new arrival, Archie, and ask if Prince Jughead was next.

Didn’t get to.

Or maybe I could be celebrating and lamenting the Colorado Avalanche season gone by, with so much accomplished on the ice and so much left to do.

Uh-uh.

Heck, at any other time, falling back on Mother’s Day would be a valid plan.

But not this week.

This week, we had it all shatter again. Death in a place that’s supposed to be safe. Violence where it shouldn’t be. A lost child celebrated for heroism when his family only wanted a graduate.

School shootings are my least favorite topic. But it’s one that keeps coming back. And it has a way of erasing everything else that crosses its path, leaving no one sure what to say.

So this time, I’m going to start by saying nothing.

***

It sounds unnatural, I know. When someone is grieving, we want to help. We’ve all seen it – or done it – so many times: this friend helps a hurting neighbor clean things up, that one helps get them where they need to go, and everyone brings them dinner.

It’s one of our best traits. It’s what makes us a community instead of a bunch of people that just happen to live together.

And like any good trait, it can be taken a step too far.

Because what we also try to do, so often, is tell our story.

“I had a cousin who went through the same thing …”

“Oh, my gosh, I remember when that happened to me …”

“I bet I know exactly what you’re feeling right now …”

It’s natural. It’s human.

And unless it’s invited, it’s also taking over. All of a sudden, if we’re not careful, we’re making someone a spectator to their own grief while we make it all about us.

The best help starts by listening.

It’s hard. We don’t like silences. Or unanswered questions. Or pain.

But the pain of grief lives in a sacred space, a time and a place set apart. A time and a place for the one who’s living it.

It’s a space they can fill with their memories of what happened, their need to examine the details again and find their place in it.

It’s a space they can fill with their memories of who they’ve lost, reminding themselves and the world around them of the treasure that was here.

It’s a space they can fill with their anger. With their hurt. With their uncertainty. With their need. And (with time) their hope.

And yes, it’s a space they can fill with silence when they need it.

When we enter that space, we’re not the author. We’re the audience.

That’s challenging enough when the pain is a private, local one. It becomes even more so when it’s something so public that re-opens so many of our national wounds. There are issues that have to be dealt with, alternatives that need to be discussed, policies that need to be addressed – if only because it seems like we can never get anyone talking about them at any other time.

Those are conversations we need to have as a nation. They shouldn’t be delayed.

But we still need to respect the space.

Those who are at the center of all this have their own stories, their own priorities and needs. They’ll join that conversation if and when they choose to do so. If it’s forced on them – from any side – they have every right to say “not here, not now,” just as they did at a recent vigil.

Our hearts may break at their grief. But it is their grief. We don’t own it, any more than we own the new royal baby just because Harry and Meghan let us share a piece of their joy.

“A time to keep silence and a time to speak,” the old verse goes. We have our time to speak, in abundance. And I don’t doubt we’ll fill it.

But remember the silence. Remember to listen. Remember whose story this is.

If we don’t have the words – maybe they were never ours to begin with.

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Hearing Through the Storm

I wanted to write about Adam West this week. This was going to be a warm and fuzzy farewell to TV’s Batman, full of  the echoes of “BAM!” and “ZZONK!” and maybe even a “KAPOW!” or two.

But then shots rang out. Again. And it’s been a little hard to think about anything else.

This time, it crossed the country in a single day. The sites couldn’t have been more different. A baseball field in Virginia where congressmen were practicing for a charity game. A UPS center in San Francisco, where it was just another working day – until suddenly, it wasn’t.

Until the anger reached out. Again.

I used to write about these more. That was when the announcement of a mass shooting was a punch to the gut, a painful shattering of an ordinary day. It demanded to be grappled with, even if there were no clear answers to offer. (Are there ever?) Even if all that could be offered was comfort.

Now it seems more like an old wound, poked and prodded to life again. They’ve not become normal – please, let them never become normal – but the pace has increased and the alarm bells have started to blend with the overall noise. Now, we pay lasting attention mostly when something raises the bar, with maybe a high profile victim (the baseball shooting), or a strange setting (the Aurora movie theater), or a huge casualty list (the Orlando nightclub).

I almost wrote “… or a place we expected to be safe.” But that’s the point, isn’t it? We used to expect safety. Now, we seem to expect anger. No, shootings like this aren’t normal yet, but now they’re punctuation marks rather than breaks in the narrative.

When I was a kid, we used to play a storytelling game called “The Boiler Burst.” It was a narrative version of musical chairs, where whoever was up had to tell a story, usually long and rambling. Sooner or later, the person would have to call out the words “the boiler burst” and everyone would move.

After you’d played a while, you became harder to surprise. You learned how to listen to the story, to listen for the cues that would suggest the punchline was coming. You knew which players would jump to the punch line as quickly as possible, and which ones would draw it out to the point of agony. The more closely you listened, the more ready you were.

I think we need to do some listening now. Because the pressure keeps building. And if it doesn’t stop, the boiler will burst again.

I’m not naive enough to think that we can ever completely scourge this kind of thing from the nation, or that we can ever understand every last motive of every last shooter. But we can grapple with the national anger that gives them a space to grow and flourish. The rage that has touched all of us, even those who have never heard a single shot.

Some of that anger comes from understandable places. There are many among us who fear for their families, or their jobs, or their rights, or their place in the world. When the conversation seems to stop, when those who might be able to help turn into stone walls – or worse, seem to add to the pain – the fear turns to anger and the anger grows.

Some of it is manufactured. From ancient times to now, people have found it convenient to stir up anger and point it at a target – an “other” who can be safely blamed for all their woes. That rage can build mobs. It can build camps. It never, ever builds solutions.

We need to hear where the anger is coming from. We need to listen for the real worries and fears that generate it, and to know when we’re being sold an easy answer. We need to be more aware of each other and our hurts, so that no one has to shoulder their burden alone.

We won’t prevent all the crazies. But we can stop helping them flourish. And if we turn down the volume, maybe, just maybe, we can better hear them coming.

Batman’s not going to burst through the door this time.

This time, we have to come to our own rescue.