20 July 2012

For me, 20 July was a day that seemed to have been lived in the Twilight Zone for that old TV series would have been able to portray what happened in its deft and surrealistic way.

Awaking to the appalling news from Aurora was a terrific shock.  I watched some of the news items on TV for a short time before I had seen and heard enough.  My problem with the TV coverage was that it lacked focus and cogency.  The broadcast producers, anchors and news reporters would seize on any detail and magnify it out of proportion in an effort to fill what otherwise would be dead air time.  That may have kept viewers in front of their screens but didn’t treat the tragedy with the gravity and importance it really deserved.  But in these days of 24/7 news cycles, this is what I’ve come to expect so I turned the TV off and got on the Internet. 

There I got involved in a nasty online debate about the meaning of the disaster.  I took quite a few lumps and dealt out some myself.  I suppose I was angry and wanted to lash out at anybody so I wrote things that were unfair and intemperate.  But I wanted to do something, anything that would help my adopted home state get past another disaster in a summer that has been anything but a good one.  Only the day before, I had e-mailed my Internet correspondents about how homesick I was for Colorado.  Now I found myself wondering if the Colorado I had left behind was perhaps in an alternate universe.  So much had changed in the space of twenty-four hours and a summer that was already a bad one due to monstrous forest fires and withering drought for the state had suddenly become much, much worse.

The Twilight Zone elements manifested themselves in the evening.  One of my cousins was getting married and I attended the wedding.  This cousin was someone I did not know as she had been born and grown up in the years I have been away.  When I was invited to the wedding in April, I had looked forward to the event with joyful anticipation.  Then came the news of the Aurora massacre and suddenly everything took on a completely different perspective.  I talked to some of my friends in Colorado about the murders, e-mailed others, and argued and debated on the Internet with complete strangers, some of whom were very angry with the stance I took and let me know that in no uncertain terms.  The wounds this tragedy opened and re-opened are very raw and won’t heal for a long time.  But after all was cussed and discussed, I still had a wedding to attend.

For my family, it was as though the events in Colorado had not happened at all.  Nobody discussed it except one of my cousins and my mother.  I wondered if any had even heard about what had happened in Aurora.  But I also understood that I was in neither the place nor the time to bring it up.  Our family had gathered to celebrate and affirm life, not to weep and mourn over death and murder.  On my cousin’s wedding day, the topics for conversation were to be ones of joy and love, of reaffirming family ties, and seeing that the newlyweds got off to the best possible start.  So I put on the best face I could and attended the wedding and the reception that followed.  I enjoyed the events and the people I saw.  I told funny stories and heard others related to me.  I got reacquainted with relatives who were very happy to see me and catch up with my undertakings.

But as I took part in the festivities, there was a dark corner of my mind that dwelt on what had happened in Aurora.  Once the shock and numbness wear off, how will the people of Colorado carry on?  The memory of the Columbine massacre has been dredged from its shallow and unquiet grave to haunt the state once more.  Another horrible mass murder has been committed on Colorado soil to be chronicled beside others, and there have been others besides Columbine.  But those others have been relegated to the history books because there are none now alive who remember them.  While I never ruled out the possibility that something like this could happen again in Colorado, I certainly didn’t expect it to recur as soon as it has.

My absence from the state did not soften the blow of Friday’s events.  However, living in Alabama has meant that the coverage has not been as intense as it has been in Colorado.  Besides, Alabama has had to deal with two shooting sprees that have occurred since the start of June.  One left three people dead and three others wounded in the university town of Auburn.  The other, in the college town of Tuscaloosa, saw seventeen injuries but fortunately no deaths.  Dealing with these rampages has left people here little emotional energy for taking on Colorado’s even more grievous tragedy.  The focus will be single-mindedly on Colorado for the next several days and weeks and Alabama will be left to fend for itself.  That is just as well.

I have told everyone how much I look forward to returning to Colorado.  Today’s news has tempered that desire somewhat.  It’s not that I no longer wish to go back as it is that I have been forced to realize that evil can be found anywhere and it can strike anytime.  My cousin reminded me of this truth when we talked about the Aurora situation on Friday afternoon.  He didn’t say that Alabama is a better place than Colorado or that I shouldn’t want to return there.  He simply observed that absolute security is a fantasy and that nobody should feel he is beyond the reach of disaster or tragedy.

I can only hope now that my Colorado family will carry on.  None of the people I know in the state has been directly touched by these murders.  Nobody is planning to abandon it because of what has happened.  I am sure each is trying to sort out what happened and then move on with life.  All I can do is to affirm my own support for them and let them know that I feel their pain in some measure.  At the same time, I want to draw lessons from this and apply them to my own life.  One of them is surely how precious and fragile life is and that I cannot take any day for granted.  Instead I want to get the most out of life, not in hedonistic pursuits, but in appreciating what I have and treasuring it to the greatest extent I can. 

The date 20 July is an important one in history.  It was on this date that Neil Armstrong took his “one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for Mankind” back in 1969 when he became the first man to set foot on the Moon.  And my family will now have a reason to note it as well with the wedding of Paul and my cousin Amber.  I will have to think of these things to offset the blackness of the Aurora massacre.  My Colorado family will also have to find a way to recover and move on.  We were able to do so after the Columbine murders although that is an ongoing thing.  I have confidence we can do the same with this tragedy as well.