Tag: KIng Soopers

Status Check: One Week Later

On By SeasweetieIn Death, Life, Photography, thoughts, Writers Life, WritingLeave a comment

The massacre at the Table Mesa King Soopers in Boulder happened one week ago today. Who has forgotten? It’s certainly not a news item anymore, surpassed by the trial of George Floyd’s murderer, the boat that blocked the Suez Canal, and the endless discussions about COVID-19. We’ve held vigils, put candles in our windows, and been to the memorial fence. We’ve gotten over our initial reluctance to visit the grocery store — any grocery store. Our first responders have held space for the body of our slain police officer as hetravelled from the scene, and for his mother as she drove here from New Mexico, standing silent and vigilant at overpasses all along those routes. Officer Eric Talley’s funeral will be held tomorrow.

While our flags fly at half-mast and rock cairns stand in Boulder Creek as a tribute to the victims, our lives go on. Their lives do not. For those of us who did not know any of them personally, things seem the same. For their loved ones, and for those who were in the store and survived, things will never be the same. Once the initial outpouring of shock and attention fades, those who are emerge from this tragedy may find themselves rather at sea, left alone for the first time in a week, the first time in what likely stretches long before them. It is a struggle to find whatever peace looks like on an individual level after something like this, after such a trauma, such a loss.

I was about to say that talk on social media has turned more political — more about gun control reform — but I realized that there is no more talk on social media about this event. It has been swept downstream by other topics and our short attention spans, fed by 24 hour news cycles and networks greedy for the next sensational thing. There are those in our community, such as the Moms Demand chapter who hosted one of the candlelight vigils last week, who maintain their laser focus on the issue of gun control, and I very much appreciate their dedication.

In the community, we can’t help but notice the approach of spring. It’s warmer. Robins congregate in gangs in grassy spaces. Trees are just starting to bud. We know we’ll have one or two more snow storms, but there is hope. Hope that we will be able to luxuriate in this season the way we couldn’t last year. That doesn’t change my awareness that for a number of people, those whose lives were altered forever last Monday, there is no joy yet. But like spring, it will one day return.

Daily gratitudes:
Feeling post-vaccine better
Ginger Dram
Books
My newly replaced kitchen light
Chainsaws

Quote of the day: “You can’t unwrite the tragedies life engraves into your bones; you can just give them a voice.” — Nitya Prakash

And the Next Day in Boulder

On By SeasweetieIn Death, Life, Photography, thoughts, Writers, Writers Life, Writing1 Comment

The past hasn’t changed. We all wake up and in those strange waking moments when we bring ourselves back to reality, we remember. We remember what happened in our community. We remember the grief that we might have shielded ourselves from in dreams. We awaken to the pain, to that sinking feeling of what we’ve lost. People. Security. Peace. Illusions.

We get up and make coffee. We get on with our day, with our jobs, with our lives. At the back of our minds, we are tragically aware that there are 10 people who are not doing those things today, and who will never do those things again. That their families are waking up to their new worlds and feeling the devastation that comes from having someone you love ripped out of your life. And in the midst of their pain, they have to do practical things and procedural things. They do those things on autopilot – this I know, from my stepson’s suicide.

Our Boulder world looks the same on the surface. We still go to the grocery store, but now there are police officers in the parking lot. We still buy flowers, but now they are for the memorial and not the bookshelf in our living room. We still pet dogs, but now they are therapy dogs trained to comfort us. We still sit on grassy hillsides, but now we’re restricted by yellow police tape. When we see a police car speed past us with its sirens blaring and its lights flashing, our first thought is “Is it happening again?” When we hear glass breaking, we think “Is that a shooter breaking windows?”

As the reality sinks in, we still don’t care why. Only that. Not why. But we are starting candlelit vigils. We have a memorial that spans two blocks, with flowers and candles and signs and crosses in front of the chain link fence that keeps us away from where the shooting happened. I went there today, and left flowers. Hugged sobbing strangers. Video chatted with K, showing her what I saw, so she didn’t have to feel so alone, distant, and removed in her grief for her town, for her younger self, for her memories.

It will be same tomorrow. I know grief and loss so intimately that I understand how it will play out for me. While it’s different for everyone, there are some constants for all of us. Time is kind enough to help our sorrow nestle into a place in our souls. But it never allows us to forget. 

Daily gratitudes:
Blue skies
K
Dogs
Community
Flowers

Quote of the Day: “She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.” — Jonathan Safran Foer