As It Was

Have you moved on?

Are you moving on?

Can you move on?

A year after the murders of 19 children and two teachers, at the Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, their families and loved ones are being asked these questions. 

Are you over it yet? Can’t you find closure from it? Why can’t we all just go back to letting our community be as it was? This is what those asking the questions imply as the first anniversary came and went last week.

As it was.

They want life in Uvalde to be the way it used to be before May 24, 2022. 

They want it to be as it was.

Life will never be as it was for those families who lost their beloved children. Or for the families of the teachers who were killed. Or for the 17 others who were shot, but survived. Or for those who smeared blood on themselves and played dead so that the gunman wouldn’t kill them. Or for anyone in the school that day who now will forever live with the grisly memories of what they saw, what they felt, and what they lost …

… Their trust. Their innocence. Their freedom. Their safety. Their peace.

They all lost more than any of us who were not there or directly affected, can ever imagine. The trauma, the grief, the horror will never allow them to live again in any way close to as it was before. 

That’s the way it is with grief, with loss, with trauma.

We can never really go back. We can never really find closure. We can never really not grieve what happened. It just doesn’t work that way.

We wish it did. We wish it could be as it was. But when any kind of loss occurs – whether traumatic or violent or not – it is never the same again.

The entire Uvalde community is affected. And the Uvalde community is divided. According to stories we heard on National Public Radio and read in articles such as “How One Uvalde Family Learned to Grieve in Public”, life there and for those affected by the mass shooting, will never be the same again, no matter how desperately they – or anyone else in Uvalde – might want it to be.

Some want to talk about it. Some do not. Some want to change many things – laws, school security measures, the culture that they believe contributed to the horrific violence. Some do not. Some always want to remember. Some really do not. 

The divisions are acrimonious and deeply felt. The community does not envision a common way forward. 

But our reason for writing is not only about what is happening in Uvalde. It is not only about what happens in the aftermath of any mass shooting.

It is about any trauma, any violence, any abuse, any death, any loss, any fracturing of well-being of any sort that rends our hearts in pieces, robs our spirits of goodness and beauty, invades our minds with a darkness we had never begun to imagine before. 

When the fabric of our humanity is torn beyond recognition and we don’t know how to mend and heal what has been ripped apart, the questions we receive about getting on with it, finding closure, getting back to life as it was before the trauma that seeks to destroy us took place, are simply hurtful. They do more damage than we can ever see. They cause us to feel more alone and discouraged than we can ever believe. 

Grief, in particular, knows no timeline. Every person’ grief is different. Every person’s situation is different. Grief is not on a schedule. It is not a linear journey that only goes one way. It meanders, turns back upon itself, and usually never goes away. It is complex and unique. It can sometimes be almost forgotten about one day and then the next day it rears back stronger than ever before. Sometimes it’s hour-by-hour, even minute-by-minute. We  never can guess what might trigger it and send us spiraling down into what seems like a bottomless pit. It can be very dark and ominous, frightening and debilitating. It does not go away by our will or by anyone else willing us to suck it up, to think happier thoughts, or to pray it away. 

This isn’t meant to be hopeless or defeatist. It’s simply to acknowledge that intense pain is not something to dismiss or hurry along or decree that we should be beyond it at any certain time. It just doesn’t work that way.

What does help, what does work, is to have people in our lives who understand that it doesn’t work that way. It’s to have people who know that in some way or another, it’s always going to be present. And that includes ourselves, too. It’s have patience with it. It’s to acknowledge it. It’s to listen to it when someone needs to talk about it. It’s to reassure them – and ourselves – that grief has no timetable and that closure is never really a thing when we experience a traumatic loss of any kind. It’s not to judge. It’s not to fix. It’s to never ask “have you moved on?” Are you moving on? Can you move on? It’s to live with and to know that the grief will never fully go away.

It’s to understand that life will never be as it was, again. 

And it is also to understand – and this is so important – that just because it can’t be, doesn’t mean we can’t find goodness, wonder, reassurance, joy, and a sense of peace despite grief’s presence. It’s to understand that we can live fully, completely, and well even with it inside. 

It’s to understand that even with it there, we can thrive. 

Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash