Sandy Hook

It is 9:37 am and your daughter is dead.  You don’t know that yet, though, not at this point, but in years to come, you will obsess about the time, obsess about what you were doing at 9:37 am, obsess about where you were, where she was, the wild chasm between your experiences at that moment, and it will feel as though you should have known, should have acted, should have been able to act.  You will feel as though you could have stopped it.

But you couldn’t have.

There is nothing you could have done because the reality – the unchangeable reality – is that sometime earlier that morning, a man walked into her school with two guns.  To the media, the type of the guns will matter; they will say something about the man who shot and killed your daughter.  For a moment, you may think it matters.  You may think it matters why he did what he did, what happened in his life that made him go into her school with two guns.  But it doesn’t, and it never really will.  All that will ever really matter is that he walked into the school with two guns, walked into her classroom and opened fire.  All that will ever matter to you ever again is that he shot and killed your daughter.

You, of course, were not with her at that moment.  You were in a meeting, discussing project budget forecasts or headcounts or something else that is, ultimately, comparatively, inconsequential.  You might have seen a text message come in from a number you didn’t recognize and turned your phone face down in that meeting, not realizing that it was the mass-text-alert from the school advising parents that the school was on lock-down.  You will check your email and messages to try to piece together the timeline, figure out what slide you were on in the presentation at that very moment.  Did a news alert pop up on your screen, only for you to quickly close it, embarrassed that it interrupted your presentation – the presentation that you worked for days to put together?  Did you ignore the message that you could have saved her? 

You will ask yourself these questions over and over and over again.  You will assume everyone else is asking them as well.

You will imagine what it must have been like for her, that moment before she was shot, before she was killed.  You will see it in your dreams, and when you close your eyes during the day.  You will hear her screams even though you never really heard them, and don’t even really know if she did scream.  Your body will convulse as hers must have when you hear the gun shot in your head.  You will weep with your closest friends as you wonder aloud whether she saw him as he prepared to shoot her.  Did she have any idea what was going on as the gun was aimed at her?  Did she look him in the eye and give him a coy smile, like she would do when the neighbor boy would trail his toy gun on her from his yard?  Or maybe he shot her in the back.  Maybe the fucking coward shot your baby in the back, giving her no chance to plead for her life, no chance to run, no chance to escape.  Maybe he couldn’t stand to look her in the eye as he murdered her.  You will eventually find this out, whether he shot her in the face, in the chest, in the stomach, in the back, but at that moment, at 9:37 am, you have no idea.  You ignorantly believe she is in her music class like she is every other Friday, learning songs about cows or sheep or whatever children her age learn songs about.  You believe she is safe.  And you are wrong.

You will pore over these details in the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and even years to come.  You will lose control of your voice as you tell the story, when you dare to tell the story: there you were, in your meeting or getting your coffee, while the news was just beginning to trickle out that a gunman had entered her school.  You missed the news initially – the end of the quarter was coming up, you know, so you had things you needed to do, important work that others were counting on you to deliver.  She was in music class...  She so loved her music class, so at least at that moment, you knew she was happy.  He went into her classroom, drew his gun and began firing.  You could have done something, if only you’d been there, if only she had been in gym class instead, if only you had seen the message from the school.  You could have left earlier; you could have gotten to the staging area where the children were evacuated sooner; you could have found out your daughter was dead a whole hour before you actually did.  An hour.  A whole hour.  That single hour will ultimately define your life, will make you question whether you could have prevented it from happening, will make you wonder whether she was taken by this madman because you couldn’t get there more quickly.

You will cry yourself to sleep at night because, if only you had listened to her when she said she wanted to stay home from school that day, she would be alive.  Or if you had surprised her with breakfast at McDonald’s, she would be alive.  She loved McDonald’s – even the ones without the Play Places.  Maybe you didn’t really need to be at that meeting, or you could have called in from home.  If you’d stayed home that day, maybe she would have gone into school late or just taken a day at home on the sofa watching movies, and she would be alive.  If only.  If only.  If only.

If only that man had not walked into her school with two guns and opened fire on the children.

If only.

But that is not what happened. 

Instead, it is 9:37 am and your daughter is dead.