The Ghosts of the past are wide awake

Hello dear readers,  as many know this has been a a really horrifying five days since 19 young children and two teachers were shot to death at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX.  It is hard to fathom.  More challenging is the knowledge that in just the first 122 days of the year 2022, there have already been 27 school shootings.  I was watching an interview with the father of a young girl who was killed at the Stoneman Douglass shooting in Parkland Fl.  I was jarred back to a piece I wrote here in 2018 about the memories all those affected at that tragedy will have in the future.

The Dad was saying in paraphrase, "All these things, all these memories I will never have, those parents in Uvalde will never have in their lifetime...No high school graduation, no college graduation, no proms or weddings.  All stolen. I want everyone to think how you would feel if your child was killed."   I am the father of only daughters, and a granddaughter.  I have given this thought numerous times over the last five days.  I stayed and worked at home the rest of the week so I could be close to my granddaughter's school.

I've heard the interviews and posturing over gun control, over a simple background check.  A background check that I have supported as a meager measure of control.  I am a gun owner.  I do not believe assault weapons are, as the nearby store used to advertise "big-boy toys."  They are firearms, not toys.  Further, in my opinion- only those professionally trained as military, police, and all level of law enforcement should own one.

The title of that 2018 piece is called Memories in the future.  Unfortunately the memories are playing on rewind.  They are playing more frequently and the ghosts of the those memories are wide awake and still haunting.  The Answerman says "We need an answer, we need solutions.  It is not just one thing.  It is not enough to say "It's mental health, it's gun laws, it's high magazine weapons, bad parenting, on and on.  We need leadership and that starts with each and everyone of us."

Be good, Be safe.  Full piece below the line from  February, 2018.

____________________________________

 Hello readers.  This is a new day, which makes all of those preceding it a memory.  In the Helios-bathed neighborhood of Parkland, Fl their good people were plunged into emotional darkness last week.   They became the latest site of a school shooting.  17 dead.  Countless affected.  This jarred me back to 1999 and Columbine, CO.  All the way back then it was the third school shooting in a year...but the first where dead were in double digits.

It occurred to me that the youngest of the students from that horrifying '99 event were 14...but are now as old as I was at that point in 1999-32 years old.  When they left for school that morning none would have ever imagined that the memory created that day would repeat itself in the future...and unfortunately, several times before they even reached middle-age.  When you're 14-18 people that are 32-36 are "old."

I remember the anger I had when the news coverage of the 2007 Virginia Tech University shooting seemed to be laid out as a "How - To" list rather than informative and responsible media coverage.   I later befriended a woman who was a student on campus in Blacksburg, VA the day that those shootings occurred.   There was a lot of confusion and mixed messages both during and after the shootings she explained.  The event triggered a change in the way emergencies are communicated by all school systems.  However, we are not able to stop them from happening.

In retrospect there were no mass shootings in schools from 1976 to 1991 (University of Iowa).  Then from the '91 event there were none until March 1998 (Jonesboro, AR), followed by Springfield, OR in May, 1998 and the aforementioned Columbine, CO event in April, '99.  There has been a copying of the preparation followed by the shooters.  A constant has been the damaged mental state of the perpetrators. I will plainly stated that the mental state is inexcusable.  Damaged yes, excusable as the reason- NO!

There was a lull from the shock of 15 students being killed in a single event at Columbine and six years passed before the March, 2006 Red Lake, MN shooting.  Since 2006 there have been nearly one per year.  VA Tech is the worst school shooting with 33 deaths, followed closely by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (Newtown, CT) in Dec, 2012 with 28 deaths.  All of those affected at those and all the others are here, in 2018, reliving memories.  Terrible memories.

 Now that seemingly distant "old" age of 30-something is real for those students from '98 and '99.  Many are now parents.  What was so far away in the future is here and the memory is cloaking them in sadness that it is still happening.  The adults from that time are reliving it too.  I wasn't there but the memories linger and I'm angry.  We live in a world of constant electronic media and the signals are all too clear-and clearly being missed.  I won't go far down the road on gun control - but something clearly needs to be done.  Our poorly informed President took action to undo some preventive measures that had been in place. I think those measures should be reapplied.  In this instance it may have helped delay the shooter from supplying himself for the massacre, but not totally prevent him from arming himself for mass murder.

There is a line from the song Mrs Potter's Lullaby (Duritz, A. 1999- Counting Crows) that is very telling, probably meaningful to them as it is to me.  The line is "If dreams are like movies then memories are films about ghosts."  Unfortunately these memories in the future for Parkland, Fl will be like a film about ghosts that haunts their minds on playback.  The missing friends, the what if's, the wondering what their lost friends would be like in that future time when they reach a certain age. The students, to their credit have already stated that they want to be the last mass school shooting in the country and vowed to take action merely days later.

The Answerman says "May the moments today that create memories in the future be of happiness and pleasant events.  When the memories go on playback that the ghost not be haunting."

Be Good, Be Safe