The Uvalde Tragedy Will Keep Metastasizing
This was posted on Facebook on Friday, May 27, 2022 after a spectacle of a state law enforcement press conference in Uvalde, Texas.
It's pretty clear that the tragedy this week will spread beyond what has already unfolded.
We don't know how exactly yet, but already one of the teacher's husbands has died.
After the shitshow of a press conference this afternoon (and excuse me for swearing but it was obscene)... I have no doubt there will be suicides from those involved in the response. In any aspect of it - from cops to dispatchers to EMTs to firefighters to those in the coroner’s office.
None of us who are not inside know how broken or jacked up or exasperating or terrifying any of those moments were.
The people who were a part of it do.
Whether or not they were the ones who made the mistakes... they are the ones who saw it go down.
There's a lot of responsibility all around here.
Number one it's on the shooter.
But after that there's a lot of shared blame. A LOT. A spectacular amount. The response was abysmal and appalling, and in flagrant violation of over two decades of well-recognized national protocols.
And that’s only what we know on like day 4.
The god-awful horror caused by the active shooter is worsened by mistake after mistake after mistake in preparedness and response. And compounded by deliberate, terrible on-scene actions that worsened everything.
Whatever ends up coming out as the stories clarify is likely going to be explosive all over the place and in lots of ways for very many things.
This one is a game-changer.
Not necessarily for guns, although I surely hope so. As per usual.
But it's a game-changer for lots of other things for sure.
Certainly for the lives of every single person who was involved in the response and every single kid in that building and every single person in that community and every single person who is connected to someone tied to this.
Everything changes.
It's different for everyone, and it varies depending on how close you are... but everything changes. And it moves outward, too, spreading ripples of loss and trauma and survival. These things stick, and pass through generations. This is who we are. This is what we do now.
There will also be survivor's guilt. And so on. Lots of stuff.
I started my week Sunday talking with one of my favorite people about Sandy Hook. It comes up often when we talk. A decade later, and it's still a huge part of that person's life. Didn't realize on Sunday how relevant that conversation would be to this entire week.
In another story, I had a friend break down after an emergency that triggered a post-trauma thing a year after the Navy Yard shooting she'd been at.
None of it goes away.
I only write about this because everyone involved in all of this is going to need some grace. I'm talking about everyone touched by it. Everyone. The kids and the families and the responders and the communities. Everyone who touches anyone’s life who is connected with this.
Including all of us. It’s not the same as being on-scene or close to it, but there are ties. We’re human. We’re touched by it in so many ways.
I'm angry and pissed off, for sure. With a range of other emotions. But I'm not carrying the lived experience or guilt of being intimately involved in this particular incident. Lots of folks are. From teachers to dispatchers to little kids to cops to EMTs.
I see so much rage out there, and people wanting to point the fingers at everything. To find answers. Blame.
There's not just one thing that went wrong here, though.
It's a perfect storm of horror. That's what it is.
We will get through it. Most of us.
It's a good time to look after some humans. We may not be as deeply affected and as at-risk as those tied intimately to what happened, but there are huge effects on hundreds of thousands of us.
I haven't seen this many adults cry on TV for a very long time. I'm doing it, too.
Check on some people. Take a moment for yourself. Take a five-minute break. Do something different than what you've been doing. Pull yourself away from whatever. Breathe. Eat. Do something involving gratitude or beauty or love. Just for a moment at least.
We have to help each other through. This is going to be one hell of a year.
This is so fundamentally deeply profoundly... everything.
Given the horror of this, I can't imagine what it would be like to be in Ukraine right now... and to have a foreign adversary doing this to your people and your kids and your schools. I keep going over that.
Look at how profoundly touched empathetic Americans are by this incident. I can't imagine how much more intense it is in Ukraine.
Be safe. Talk to some humans if you can and need to. Look after each other. Check up on each other.
We got good people.
We will find our way through.