The incongruity of Thanksgiving in a land of routine slaughter
When an editor calls unexpectedly at an odd time, it’s usually a bad sign.
My phone rang around 5:30 AM the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, with an editor on the line, asking how far away I was from Chesapeake, Virginia.
Another mass shooting - not far from my home.
I was out of bed and throwing on clothes in minutes, prepping for a 7 AM hit on Morning Edition while packing up gear to run directly to an 8 AM press conference.
Details trickled in: six victims dead at the hand of an overnight supervisor who began shooting before turning the gun on himself, as dozens of people were still shopping ahead of the holiday.
I’m so heartbroken and tired of this.
Here’s my full list:
Not to mention all the ones I didn’t cover.
We’ve gotten it down to an awful science: The phone rings late at night or in the middle of yoga or as I’m shutting my laptop down. We follow the same morbid routine, yet again: contact the relevant authorities, visit the scene, visit the reunification center, name the victims, identify the shooter, describe the weapon, search for a motive, attend vigils and memorials.
I don’t want to remember the shooters’ names, and in most cases I don’t. This crime has become so routine as to make them forgettable. And I want to forget them.
I don’t want to forget the victims, but there are too many recall. And as I cover these events, I know that for each name there’s a family who will never forget, whose life has been permanently upended.
I was a senior in high school in Kansas City at the time of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado - a seemingly unthinkable one-off at the time. By the time a mass shooter slaughtered all of those beautiful little ones in Sandy Hook, I had my own little guy in kindergarten. I was hosting Morning Edition on Iowa Public Radio at the time, hearing all those stories, picturing his face each time I heard their names. For a few weeks there I didn’t want to get out of bed. It wasn’t my child, but the thought of all of those children and their parents was so much to bear.
The first mass shooting I helped to cover was in 2007, at the Westroads Mall in Omaha. I can still see some of the victims’ photos in my mind. I didn’t even go to the scene - I just listened to the 911 tapes from my desk in Lincoln. But the next year, on a girls’ trip with my mom and sisters, I had a sudden panic attack as we headed into a busy movie theater and could barely sit through the film.
My colleagues and I cover these events again, and again, and again, until we are numb and depressed and afraid, like the rest of the country. I can only imagine what first responders and healthcare providers go through.
Two days after the Chesapeake shooting, Thanksgiving, we briefly moved on. Roasted the turkey, hosted the family. Tried not to think about it for a few hours.
On Friday, Chesapeake authorities released the identity of the sixth victim - whose name they’d temporarily withheld because he was a minor.
Fernando. Age 16. About the age the Sandy Hook kids would be. I once again pictured my own teenage son, waiting on me to watch a movie in the living room while I filed an update.
I thought of Fernando’s family, and all the others, robbed of those moments forever.
Several of our family members, in town for the holiday, were staying at a local hotel. En route back to our home, my Jewish mother-in-law listened politely as her rideshare driver opined that, ‘The real problem is that people need Jesus; that’s why these mass shootings keep happening.’
But we know why this keeps happening (and, to state the obvious, plenty of countries with religious demographics similar to the U.S. are far safer): what separates us from other countries, as piles of research indicates, is easy access to millions upon millions of guns.
The question is, will we ever do anything about that?
So unthinkably prevalent ... too sad to even comprehend. Your last paragraph, Sarah, is spot on! It will never be corrected as long as too many Americans (fueled by Republicans and gun lobbies) have a completely perverted view of the 2nd amendment. 😔 😡
My heart goes out to you. What a devastating topic to cover. We are a hideously flawed society, too far removed from community and nature. We deny so much to attempt to live as we do.