Shared Post Written By Uvalde Mom

 This was on my Facebook News Feed this morning.  There are hashtags at the end so maybe it originated on Twitter.

"Sharing: This was heartbreaking to read but important we ALL hear her words and feel her pain. Maybe then people will fight to get assault rifles banned. At least I hope so.

Written by one of the #Uvalde victims moms:

The chicken soup in her thermos stayed hot all day while her body grew cold.
She never had a chance to eat the baloney and cheese sandwich. I got up 10 minutes early to cut the crust off a sandwich that will never be eaten.

Should I call and cancel her dental appointment next Wednesday? Will the office automatically know? Should I still take her brother to the appointment since I already took the day off work?  Last time Carlos had one cavity and Amerie asked him what having a cavity feels like.
She will never experience having a cavity. 
She will never experience having a cavity filled.
The cavities in her body now are from bullets, and they can never be filled.

What if she had asked to use the bathroom in the hall a few minutes prior to the gunman entering the room, locking the door, and slaughtering all inside?

Was she one of the first kids in the room to die or one of the last? 
These are the things they don’t tell us.
Which of her friends did she see die before her? 
Hannah? 
Emily?
Both?
Did their blood and brains splatter across her Girl Scout uniform? 
She just earned a Fire Safety patch. What if it got ruined?
There are no patches for school shootings.

Was she practicing writing GIRAFFE the moment he walked in her classroom, barricaded the door and opened fire?
She keeps forgetting the silent “e” at the end.  We studied this past weekend, and now she doesn’t need to take the spelling test on Friday.
None of them will take the spelling test on Friday.
There will be no spelling test on Friday.
Because there is no one to give it.
And no one to take it.

These are the things I will never know:
I will never know at what age she would have started her period.
I will never know if she had wisdom teeth.
(Or if they would have come in crooked.)
I will never know who she spoke to last.  Was it the teacher?  Was it her table partner, George? She says George is always talking, even during silent reading.

Did she even scream?
She screamed the lyrics to We Don’t Talk About Bruno at 7:58 AM as she hopped out of my car in the circle drive.  She always sings the Dolores part, her sister sings Mirabel and I’m Bruno.
“And I wanted you to know that your bro loves you so
Let it in, let it out, let it rain, let it snow, let it goooooo……..”
Did the killer ever see Encanto? 
Could we have sat in the same row of seats, on the same day, munching popcorn? 
What if Amerie brushed past him in the aisle? Did she politely say, “Excuse me,” to the boy who would someday blow her eye sockets apart?

Was he chomping on bubble gum as he destroyed them all?
If so, what flavor? 
Cinnamon?
Wintergreen?

Was the radio on as he drove to massacre them?  Or did he drive in silence?
Was the sun in his eyes as he got out of the car in the parking lot? 
Did his pockets hold sunglasses or just ammunition?
These are the things I will never know.

There is laundry in the dryer that is Amerie’s.
Clothes I never need to fold again.
Clothes that are right now warmer than her body.
How will I ever be able to take them out of the dryer and where will I put them if not back in her dresser? 
I can never wash clothes in that dryer again.
It will stand silent; a tomb for her pajamas and knee socks.

Her cousin’s graduation party is next month and I already signed her name in the card.  Should I cross it out?
That will be the last card I ever sign her name to.

The dog will live longer than she will. 
The dog will be 12 next month and she will be eternally 10.

What will the school do with her backpack?
It was brand new this year and she attached her collection of keychains like cherished trophies to its zipper.
A beaded 4 leaf clover she made on St. Patty’s Day.
A red heart from a Walk-a-Thon.
A neon ice cream cone from her friend’s birthday party.
Now there will be no more keychains to attach.
No more trophies.
Surely they can’t throw it out? Would they throw them all out? 19 backpacks, full of stickered assignments and rainboots, all taken to the dumpster behind the school?  Is there even a dumpster big enough to contain all that life? 

These are the things someone else knows:
The moment the semiautomatic rifle was put into his hands--was “Bring Me a Higher Love” playing in the gun store? “Get off my Cloud” by the Rolling Stones? Maybe it was Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” 
Did the Outback Oasis salesperson hesitate as they slid him 375 rounds of ammunition?
not my problem my kids are grown and out of school
Or I don’t have kids, so I don’t have to worry about their skulls getting blown across the naptime mat
Or fingers crossed there’s a good guy with an equally powerful gun that will stop this gun if needed
Did they sense any danger or were they more focused on picking that morning’s Raisin Bran out of their teeth?

My Nana used to say, “Pay attention to what whispers, and you won’t have to when it starts screaming.”

But now I know there is a more deafening sound than children screaming.

More horrific even, than automatic rifles on a Tuesday morning.
I beg the world:
Pay attention to what’s screaming today, or be forced to endure the silence that follows.

#gunviolenceawareness
#MoreGunsIsNotTheAnswer
#BanAssaultWeapons
#WeaponsOfWar
#CiviliansDoNotNeedWeaponsOfWar
#AmericanEpidemic
#CallYourLegislators #CallAllElected
#GVP #gunviolenceprevention"

Do Something. Please.

Robert Reich had a very moving newsletter this morning, for me, anyway.  https://robertreich.substack.com/p/empathy-and-activism?s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web He wrote about the different types of empathy and its opposite, indifference or numbness.  The article meant a great deal to me because I am an empathic soul with an inner warrior that comes to the surface when there is injustice.

The slaughter of the elderly black citizens in Buffalo, the 19 children and 2 teachers in Alverde, TX has awakened that inner warrior.  The massacre of these innocent people is a gross injustice.  They deserved to live out their lives in whatever path they were led.  In addition to all those people killed with yet another AR-15, seventeen were wounded at the elementary school.  It makes my blood boil.  I can’t even begin to imagine the devastation and grief the families feel.

I saw a post listing all of the mass shootings, all of them carried out by an AK-15, an automatic weapon that fires many rounds within seconds.  They kill people because of the devastating and mutilating wounds they cause.  Citizens do not need automatic weapons, which were designed for the military.  The primary and only purpose is to kill a lot of people which makes it appropriate for soldiers but surely not for 18 year old disturbed or supremacist kids.  Hunters don't need automatic weapons.  They wouldn't be able to use the meat from an animal blown to pieces.   Access to those weapons has to be changed and it's up to people with empathy to bring that change about.

Robert Reich wrote that some people are so empathic, they feel as if these tragedies are happening to them.  They so strongly identify with the victims it becomes almost debilitating.  They are unable to act because they are so devastated.

There’s empaths more like me.  We grieve deeply but then are moved to act and try to do something to make things better.  I’m disabled so marching and carrying signs aren’t for me now although I once did participate in a sit in at the formerly called Health, Education & Welfare (HEW) building in Washington, DC.  It was 1976 and the law to protect people with disabilities had been passed in 1973, but the HEW secretary never signed them. 

I was 21 and volunteered to go in with a group of Deaf, blind, and wheel chair bound protesters.  I would be one of the interpreters there for the Deaf.  The police were reluctant to move in and remove us because it would have looked really bad in the press.  Instead, they did their best to drive us out, denying us food and phones, ratcheting up the AC although it was April and cold, and making us remove our shoes before going down the hall to the bathrooms.  I slept on the floor with everyone else, my purse as a pillow. 

We left the next morning because many protestors needed medication and other necessities that were denied by the police.  We weren’t angry about that; we were trespassing so we knew we wouldn’t be coddled.  Similar protests went on at HEW offices around the country.  Secretary Califano signed the regulations.  I totally value that experience.  I felt I was doing something positive about correcting an injustice. 

I can’t do that but there’s a lot I can do from home and have already contacted organizations to volunteer my time.  I can write letters, send emails, join a phonebank, address envelopes – whatever it takes.  It’s not much but when people get involved and do the same thing, it’s amazing what we can do.

On the other end of the spectrum, Reich wrote about the people who either don’t care because they’re narcissists (like the “illustrious” 45), because they’re too focused on what’s going on in their lives, or because they feel nothing they do will make a difference.  I can’t say a thing to change a narcissist and some people really have very overwhelming issues already, but I can say to the people who think what they do doesn’t matter:  yes, it does.  Doing one small thing matters.  Stepping up and. Like Howard Beale from Network, proclaiming: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

Harry Chapin was a singer/philanthropist and his cause was hunger.  He would say, “When in doubt, do something.”  Well, that applies here too.

Please.

Step up and do something too.

Nietzche

 

"That which does not kill me makes me stronger."

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

My late first husband, Rich, and I practically lived and breathed that quote all throughout our marriage.  We had our own favorite take-offs and variations.  It kept us sane when the going got rough.  We’d have some financial disaster or another, usually financial, and he’d say “Well, that which doesn’t kill us only serves to make us stronger.” 

 

I would answer with a smile, “But it makes us wish it had.”

 

Sometimes Rich would re-phrase and say, “That which does not kill us builds character” and that was my cue to say something like, “And boy, we sure are a couple of characters” or “how much more character can we get?”

 

I saw the quote on a message board for widows and widowers.  Many were deeply offended by it, as if to say it took the death of their loved one to realize how much strength – or weakness – they actually had. 

 

Someone said:  “Nietzsche was dead wrong. That which doesn't kill us most often leaves us maimed and broken.”

 

Maimed and broken?  Not permanently – not for me.  If it doesn’t kill me, it makes me stronger.  Hmmm… well, I guess so.  If I could survive the loss of my soulmate, I suppose I must be strong.  That is absolutely the worst pain to endure. 

 

It’s hard to describe the pain if you haven’t experienced it.  But looking back, Rich’s death didn’t kill me but it left me maimed and broken.  It’s like surviving the amputation of half your heart. There is an initial anesthetic (shock and numbness) so that you don’t always feel the agony of this gaping wound.  After about 12 weeks, though, the anesthesia is abruptly withdrawn.  Unexpectedly, you are assailed with the worst pain you can imagine until you learn how to manufacture your own anesthetic.

 

Every widow and widower carries heart scars from the deaths of their loved ones.  Some of the scars heal pretty well, so that you can hardly see them.  Those survivors aren’t left permanently disfigured.  You can’t really tell that there’s been such a tragedy unless they tell you.  Other scars heal badly or not at all.  Those survivors are permanently maimed, and everyone can see the disfiguring scars by the survivors’ behavior. 

 

I made a conscious decision not to be permanently broken by losing Rich.  He wouldn’t want me to suffer and mourn for him the rest of my life.  We’d discussed it a couple of times over the years, and he always insisted that if he died first I had to go on living.  I couldn’t imagine myself ever loving anyone else but I always agreed to appease him.  After he died and the worst of the shock and pain abated, I realized the best way to honor his memory was to go on with my head up. 

 

I don’t want to make it sound like Rich was such an inspiration, he gave me the courage to go on.  Much of that came from within.  Many times in my life, I felt like I was out in rough surf.  Big waves would knock me down, carry me helplessly onto the shore, throw me down on the sand and then try to suck me out.  I would always struggle to get up, even if it was to see yet another wave coming.  Eventually, I would anticipate the waves coming and as I came up, I’d hold my nose and dive under the crest.  I didn’t feel so helpless then.  I couldn’t control the wave, but I could control me. 

 

I was hit by a tsunami wave and that was Rich’s death.    I was terrified because I had absolutely no control over what happened to us.  I felt stunned upon being thrown onto the sand, and I had a lot of trouble standing up again.  The undertow would pull my feet out from under me and I’d feel myself being pulled away.  I couldn’t breathe; the ocean waves roared in my ears; the sand scratched my skin roughly every time I was thrown down.

 

That wave didn’t kill me.  Eventually I got my footing and stood up.  Now I could see the approaching waves.  They weren’t as scary or as big.  I didn’t always need to duck myself under the water.  Many times, I could stand up straight and, because I was stronger now. 

 

I hated what had happened, but I could manage.  I’d taken care of myself before I married Rich and I would do so again now.  I kept working to help support our kids.  I took us on outings and even went down to Florida for a vacation.  I’d never been able to drive over bridges before without suffering these debilitating anxiety attacks but now I was stronger and I had coping strategies.

 

I didn’t think I would ever meet someone and fall in love again but it happened.  My husband Ted and I have been married 20 years now.  We’ve had our own opportunities to say “that which does not kill us” and we’ve become all the stronger.

Dealing With Loss

 

I look back on the twenty years since Rich died and I realize one thing is absolutely true:  you can experience losses of family members and friends and go to lots of funerals.  None of it prepares you for the almost paralyzing agony of losing your soulmate, your spouse, your life’s partner.

 

I had one really tough year as a kid.  I lost two grandparents and my favorite uncle.  What was especially hard was that I had to break the news to my parents.  They are deaf.  We’d moved from the family in Long Island all the way down to Baltimore, MD.  It was a necessary move; my father was laid off in NY and there was just no other printing work for him.   Anyway, for the longest time we didn’t have a telephone because we couldn’t afford it.  Telegrams always meant bad news.

 

My mother’s father passed first.  We went to Long Island, and I was happier about seeing my grandmother, aunt, uncle, and cousins than I was sad about my grandfather.  I hate to say this, but I really didn’t feel much of anything about my grandfather’s passing.  My mother cried and that upset me.  My grandfather was a stern cold man and I was always afraid of him.  I stayed out of his way and I don’t think I ever talked to him without my grandmother being there.

 

This was the first time I’d been to a wake.  I was 10.  I hung out in the lobby with my cousins and brother.  They were around the same age, and we probably got to fooling around too much.  My grandmother came out and asked if I wanted to see my grandfather.  I didn’t, not really, but I didn’t want to tell her no so I held her hand and walked into the viewing room. 

 

We walked up to the casket and I looked at my grandfather.  He didn’t look real.  My grandmother touched his hand but I drew back.  It was more than not wanting to touch him.  As I stood there, looking at his face, I thought I saw his chest rise and then fall.  I nearly jumped right out of my skin.  Could he be alive and just in a deep sleep?  I was scared. 

 

I went back out into the lobby and pulled my cousin Anne aside.  She was older than me, 12, and I told her what I’d seen.  Anne shook her head and explained all dead bodies do that when you stare at them long enough.  It was an “optical delusion” or something.  I still worried about it.  What if my grandfather got up and came home?

 

I think I must have shared some of my worry with my parents because they didn’t let me go to the next two wakes.  My father’s mother died.  She’d had a series of strokes that practically incapacitated her but she kept fighting back.  The last one killed her, though.  Once again, we got the dreaded telegram and had to go to a pay phone.  It really sucked because we had only enough change for 3 minutes of time … just enough time for me to get the details from my Aunt Bea (Dad’s sister).

 

Again, the most distressing part was having to tell my father that his mother died.  I didn’t remember her well because we didn’t see her as often.  All I remembered of her was that she’d sit and rock in her chair all day.  When I would go to hug or kiss her I was frightened by a thin black moustache.  Grandmas weren’t supposed to have moustaches.  That was for Grandpas.

 

My brother and I were the youngest of the cousins and so we waited out in a comfortably furnished room alone.  It was boring.  My father’s family was very typically Irish.  There were lots of aunts and uncles and hundreds of cousins.  The trouble was that they were all a generation older than us.  My first cousins on my dad’s side of the family are the same age he is and the cousins-once-removed were either having their own kids or were of an age that they didn’t come to the wake.  Maybe they were in school.

 

When we gathered back at my grandparents’ apartment in the Bronx, one of my aunts gave me a beautiful doll and told me that Grandma Molly (that’s what we called her) wanted me to have it because she’d loved me so much.  I was really surprised and I felt guilty.  Here this grandma had been loving me and I didn’t know it.  I probably didn’t love her enough back!  I named the doll “Molly” but I didn’t play with her because I felt bad when I did.  I tried to miss her more than I did.

 

Except for being the bearer of bad tidings, I wasn’t too traumatized.  Then came the third telegram.  I’m not quite sure what happened to my Uncle John, the uncle I loved best.  Some members of the family said he had a heart attack.  My father said he died of a broken heart.  Other members of the family said he killed himself because he couldn’t handle the loss of my grandmother.  I just remember that this time, when Aunt Bea gave me the news I went right into hysterics. 

 

He couldn’t be dead.  But he was.

 

My parents managed to calm me down enough so that I could tell them what happened.  When we went to NY, I told them I wanted to see Uncle John.  They wouldn’t let me.  I was furious.  My dad explained they didn’t want me to see my uncle dead.  They were afraid it would upset me and they’d rather I remember my uncle alive.

 

Nowadays, there is talk of needing “closure”.  You see the body and you know without a doubt the loved one is gone.  I didn’t get to say a final goodbye to my uncle.  For a long time, I was angry about it.  Now, at my age, I am glad my parents protected me from that.  My very last memory of my grandparents are of their dead bodies lying unnaturally stiff in boxes.  Sometimes, though, you can’t be protected.

 

I have never seen a body that looked real.  In a way, that has helped me deal with the wake and the service itself.  I can always kid myself.  That’s not him.  That’s not her.  It’s a very strange kind of detachment or dissociation.  In this case, it’s as if none of this is happening.  It can’t be because that person in the box is not him, not her.  I’d been to the wakes of friends and I found it wasn’t so difficult to deal with it.

 

I met Rich in 1983 and we began dating in October.  He asked me over to his house to meet his parents a month later, the middle of November.  One week later, his mother was killed in a car accident.  Rich had never been to a funeral before.  He couldn’t handle it.  We went in one time to view his mother’s body and he dissolved in tears.  Afterwards, he couldn’t go back into the room.  “That’s not my mother,” he kept saying. 

 

I comforted him was supportive – even while I was emotionally distancing myself from all the grief and emotion the other family members were experiencing.  I did that to help me cope with it all.  I don’t know that I ever went back and processed it thoroughly.  That’s a drawback to disengaging from your feelings.  If you don’t go back to figure out what happened you can set yourself up for a real crash and burn later.

None of these experiences really touched me … not until Rich died.  Even then, I detached from my feelings and went on auto-pilot right from the time Rich said he was having atrial fibrillation again to just hours later, acting as if I was giving him CPR to shield my son from the knowledge that his father was already gone.

 

I began to write to Rich the day he died.  I wrote to help me sort things out.  It just seemed absolutely incredible that he was really gone.  How could he?  We were supposed to spend the rest of our lives together!  “How can I live without you after I’ve been loving you so long…” (that’s Michael Bolton).  Who was I going to confide everything to now?  Who was going to read my mind or let me read his so that we’d come out with the exact same thing?  Who was going to hold me and love me?

 

Much of the time, I just felt numb.  I joined an online widow support group within a few weeks after Rich died.  I told myself it would help me.  I posted a couple of times and learned that my numbness was normal.  Usually the numbness would “wear off” at about the “three months anniversary”.  Anniversary!  I was very relieved to have that board.  It was almost like a lifeline.  I went there everyday, almost round the clock.

 

My numbness took longer to wear off.  Other widow/ers from dysfunctional families confided to me that the invisible shield we put up against hurt insulated us so well that it usually took longer for the numbness to wear off.  Once it did wear off, I was in trouble.  I was very very angry and had a hard time not showing it.  People at work wondered what was the matter with me.  “You seemed fine during the summer,” one person said.  Well, duh, I was still in shock!

 

The anger scared me so badly (I would fantasize about wrecking the car, throwing things, breaking things) that I contacted a bereavement counselor for help.  I went for individual therapy and joined a bereavement group as well.  I signed the kids up for bereavement support. 

 

Things got worse before they got better.  I couldn’t work my regular schedule and cut back drastically on my hours.  I withdrew from everyone, my family and friends especially.  I’d agree to go out and then change my mind.  I missed Rich terribly.  I didn’t act self destructively because I couldn’t do that to my kids.  It was a rough ride, really rough.

 

I guess the turning point was making a decision to go to Florida with the kids no matter what over the spring break.  I’d always been afraid to drive over bridges.  I’d get these seriously horrible panic attacks and so Rich always took the bridges for me.

Now Rich wasn’t here anymore.  I told myself, what did I have to be afraid of?  I’d survived the very worst thing that could happen to me.  What was driving over a bridge?

 

The same was true for just about anything that came up after that.  So what?  It was nothing compared to Rich’s death.

 

You get a whole new perspective on things.  Worries that seemed a big deal before become insignificant.

 

I am not afraid of death anymore either.  I don’t want to go before my kids are all grown up … but I know that Rich and my other loved ones are there waiting for me.