The Anniversary of a Nightmare

Today is the anniversary of the day my life changed. Ten years ago on this day, horror came into my peaceful town, and killed innocence. Evil took the lives of four children and one adult, an angel shielding her charges. Evil came in and did something that had never been done before, and our lives changed. A barrier was broken, and now it gets crossed, time and time and time again. Evil came in that day, and it has never left.

This is the anniversary of the Westside school shootings. It was both a private and a public nightmare. Private, because our nephew was there. In the chaos that reigned, we couldn't find him. For us, among so many dead, hurt, and terrified; we searched for our one. The authorities were entirely too busy to find one child among so much horror. We were on our own. So, we did what families do. We spread out, and we searched, and finally, we found him. Safe, scared, and sound.

It was a public nightmare because almost instantly we were national news. Within minutes network news was there, in our yards and our restaurants and our hospitals and our schools. Cameras were everywhere you turned. We were grieving and shocked and still trying to make sense of just what had happened, and someone wanted to know how we felt about what had happened. How did they think we felt? We felt horrible.

It wasn't the local media that was the problem. For the most part, they treated the situation with respect. But the national media was ridiculous. They trespassed, they filmed places and things inappropriately and caused all manner of things that made the situation even worse.

Westside was the first. But sadly, they weren't the last. Each time there is another school shooting, the events of that day come rushing back to me. I will never forget that day. It changed something in my soul, scarred something in my heart, etched something in my brain.

Ten years have come and gone. The murderers are out of jail with a clean record, free to live their lives as if March 24, 1998 never happened. But it did happen. Four familes who no longer have their daughters know it happened. One man and one little boy who no longer have their wife and mother know it happened. A community whose life was changed that day know it happened. And a writer who has scars that will never heal knows it happened.