Blog Post: What Happens After

What Happens After...



2/14/2018



5:50 PM



Another 10 hour day….I never knew I would have to wear so many hats at one job. Exhausted, I walk in the door of my home and fall onto the couch. Time to switch off, turn on Facebook, pictures of cats and babies. 



Only instead of a smiling baby, there’s a woman embracing a child. She has an ash cross on her forehead and her mouth, silenced by the photograph, screams only in my mind…not my child….not mine! 



My husband interrupts my moment of national connected horror. It’s Valentine’s Day, we’ve all had the flu for the last month, and we finally have a babysitter and a night to go out to see The Greatest Showman. 



9:45 PM 



Humming “This is Me”, I wait for my husband to get out of the bathroom, and what else would I do in 2018? I grab my phone, mindless scrolling time. 



The reactions are starting to feel familiar. 



Thoughts and prayers. 

Thoughts and prayers don’t work. 

Stop trying to capitalize on a tragedy. 

Gun control doesn’t work. 

And underneath it all, buried beneath the loudly passionate comments, the white noise hum .“We didn’t do anything when this happened before, and we won’t do anything now.” 



But my husband is coming out of the bathroom – FINALLY - and its Valentine’s Day, and a school night. 



2/15/2017 



8:10 AM 



School doesn’t start for twenty minutes, and in the copy room, the line of teachers is already pretty long. We start to talk about it. 



As we always talk about it. After. 



“Well, what do you expect? Of course they will come to schools…we have a big GUN FREE ZONE’ sign outside.” 



We are all silent. 



11:20 AM 



I’m in a PLC. Abruptly I feel hotness spreading around my neck and face. This room is in the interior of the building. I am stuck in this windowless painted cinder block room. No closets. One exit. Nowhere to hide but the desks. 



I feels like I want to laugh and cry simultaneously, but I keep staring at the door. I can’t take my eyes off of it. 



My colleague suddenly asks my principal what admin is doing or thinking after yesterday. He tells us about everything that school did that was right. 



It still happened. 



This student, a victim of foster care and loneliness, felt like his way to make himself heard was to show us. He was sad. He was lonely. And like many others who express sadness as rage, he acted out to hurt those who would not help him heal. 



My principal promises us that our culture of connectedness, that we support and encourage in hundreds of ways, is how we prevent this type of tragedy. This will not happen to us because we are doing things right. 



The same colleague mentions all the exterior doors to the school. There have to be at least 50. 



I just keep staring at that one classroom door. 



9:50 PM 



It’s getting harder and harder to unplug and Facebook is not helping. 



An old student posts about putting soldiers in classrooms. It feels so surreal to me, because when I knew him as a teenager, this student would have HATED the very idea of having a police officer roaming our campus. He had a sweet heart, but he had a history of getting in trouble with the police, and let’s say questionable after school activities. How would he have felt if his school was like a prison that didn’t trust him? 




But he is not a teenager now. He is a parent. He has a little girl. 



2/16/2018 



7:15 AM 



My son was out sick all last week with the flu, and he is getting dressed for his first day back. 



As I put together his lunch, I ask him, in that happy mom voice, if he is excited to get back to school and see all of his friends. He says, “Well I only have three friends.” 



He doesn’t talk much about school friends. “Oh yeah? Who are your friends at school?” 



“You’re my number one best friend, mom. Then I guess Julian and Gabe.” 



 Me. And two kids from his old school. Where he doesn’t go anymore.

My little five-year-old boy.



Lonely.