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Six years ago today the state of Connecticut – and the entire country – was rocked by the brutal tragedy of what took place at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. This story was published on RaceDayCT one year after that tragedy on Dec. 14, 2013.
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Like so many others one year ago today, I stumbled into the live news reports coming out of local Connecticut TV stations and I was transfixed.
I’ve always been a “Breaking News” junky. Always been the one that gets glued to the television once something takes on the magnitude of making everybody go live to it.
To me, Dec. 14, the anniversary of the murder of 20 first graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown is a JFK type “do you remember where you were when?” type of day. It might not be like that for everyone, but for me, I can recount nearly the entire day minute-by-minute.
And that fact is as much about the instant tragedy of that day that gripped a nation as it is about the slow, somber tragedy I was living that day, and every other day last December.
It was a day where I fully learned and felt the full spectrum of tragedy.
Color me jolly, I’ve always reveled in the spirit of the holiday season. I’ve always embraced my inner 10-year old and carried the giddiness of Christmas expectations from Thanksgiving to that big day when the presents came.
That spirit was dimmed significantly last year, and I’ve found myself fighting this year to find that childlike glee for the holidays that burned in me for so long.
December 2012 is still sapping the excitement.
In early November, 2012 my mom came home from the hospital for the last time. A decade of fighting emphysema had left my 66-year old mother ravaged. Her body left defeated by the illness that had slowly taken so much of her vibrant spirit away year after year. In November 2012 her doctors shared with our family the news we long knew would come some day, but we only hoped would never really arrive. There was nothing more they could do to treat her.
My mom decided she wanted to spend the time she had left at home. Home hospice meant my father, my sister and I watching over her, taking care of her needs, making her as comfortable as possible.
I really didn’t think I was ready for what was to come, but in some ways, I’ll always be grateful for the way it happened. Knowing the end is coming has a way of breaking down walls and enforcing the understanding of making every single second count that much more.
On Dec. 14, 2012 I watched from home in the morning as early news reports trickled in about a school shooting in Newtown. Many of the early reports on local TV stations characterized the incident in a seemingly sort of isolated manner, as a parent vs. administrator meeting gone bad.
On that day my plan was to go stay with my mom for the afternoon and evening and give my dad a chance to go hunting for the day. As I drove to their residence I listened to continuing news reports flowing through Sirius radio.
Before leaving my house I had been fixed to local television and nothing close to the magnitude of what had taken place had even been talked about yet. It was in my car driving down Interstate 84 in Vernon, with the simulcast of MSNBC playing on Sirius, that I heard the first report that possibly as many as 20 people were dead.
My instant reaction was of total disbelief. This had to be wrong. They had to have gotten some awful mistaken report. I had just left my house hearing about a possible dispute between an administrator and a parent and now as many as 20 people were dead?
When I arrived to my parents’ residence it was at that point that factual reports of the death toll were starting to come through.
My mom was sleeping when I first arrived. I sat with my dad, aghast at what I was seeing and hearing on the TV. My dad left for his afternoon hunting trip and not long after my mom woke. We turned on the TV in the makeshift former den that now was her place and we watched the TV.
She held my hand, and teared up at times watching the coverage, hearing the reports of 20 children slaughtered. She told me she couldn’t even bear the thought of losing one of her children. I thought it strange in a way that we were setting there with the full knowledge that her time with us was waning by the day, and yet she would say something like that.
As we watched the news coverage on TV my mom slipped in out of sleep, as the medications flowing through her to help ease her pain would cause her to do.
As I sat there with her I thought about the torturous heartbreak being endured by the parents of those first graders who had been murdered. And I started to think about the spectrum of heartbreak.
There I sat with my mother knowing that her passing was soon coming. Despite knowing that, there wasn’t a day during that hospice that I could really come to grips with the fact that she would be gone soon. Even when her and I talked about it openly, I still couldn’t let myself believe it. There I was knowing her death was going to happen and I couldn’t handle it, and I thought about the parents of those children. Parents who sent their kids to school that day thinking they were safe. Surely never even for one second could those parents have thought that something so awful could happen in their lives.
How could they even go on with life?
That evening I left my mom, stronger in my spirit because of all I had seen that day. I felt like I had to be stronger. Stronger in some way for the parents of those children in Newtown who were facing such unimaginably grave news. If they could endure, if they could live another day after having that unfathomable tragedy take over their lives, I could be stronger too.
The next afternoon I sat with my mom and coverage of the Sandy Hook Shootings dominated on TV. The news junky in me wanted to absorb it all. But after a few minutes watching it my mom asked if I would change the channel. She said she couldn’t handle watching it any more, that it was too sad.
I remember she said she would rather watch happy things on TV. She said “Let’s be happy today.”
I’ll never forget that. I was broken hearted each day knowing my mom was leaving me soon. But she summed it up in the way only a mom can fix things. “Let’s be happy today.” If she could be happy with all she was going through, with all the pain she was enduring, how could I not do that for her?
Three weeks to the day following the Sandy Hook tragedy, on Jan. 4, 2013, my mom died.
I’ve thought since then a lot about her saying “Let’s be happy today.” I think about it when I’m having those bad days because she’s not here. And today I thought about it in relation to the families who had to endure the tragedy of one year ago. I pray for their resilience and strength to move forward in the face of such heartbreak and loss. And I pray that they can have their times when they say “Let’s be happy today” despite all the pain they must forever bear.
Shawn, since you first ran this piece, I often think of what your Mom said, “Let’s be happy today.”
Thanks.
Just an outstanding piece of writing. Reality crashing into the fantasy world of a racing publication. Such a shame it didn’t have a greater audience to appreciate the depth of all the competing, intertwined event and personal emotions and how it was so skillfully put into words.
I’m not happy at all and see no reason to be anything but disgusted now that we can view this event and similar events through the prism of time.
I can’t help reflect on the how when it happened that so many people were trying to defend the assault style rifle with many saying it was never used. How Alex Jones and many other conspiracy theorists said the event never happened and many continuing the lie even today. How the AR15 style weapon continues to be the weapon of choice for mass murderers and on the whole the country doesn’t care. How on October 1, 2017 58 people were killed and 851 injured, many for life made possible in part by the bump stock. And over one year later Congress did nothing to ban it and the administrative move to consider it a machine gun and illegal is stuck in limbo.
That was a beautiful piece written by Mr. Courchesne at a time when there was no beauty to be found.
But that was then and this is now.
I grew up in a farming town with guns and am a gun owner and I see no reason to have these assault style weapons and especially extra capacity magazines and bump stocks legal. Not only do these tools of highly efficient mass murder delivering accurate rapid fire rounds at hundreds of yards continue to be legal but we now have 3-D composite guns entering the conversation.
I am satisfied that the deaths of our babies was not completely futile since many States in the Northeast including Connecticut have banned the sale of assault type weapons. Bans that apparently have shown results with the number of mass shootings in banned States decreasing in comparison to the rest of the country. However, for me the fact that we could not even agree by unanimous consent to ban bump stocks after Las Vegas is the final tell that we are indeed a savage nation willing to accept unnecessary death, mutilation and disfigurement as the trade off to continue our gun worshiping life styles. Lifestyles not like our forebears where the gun was a necessary tool to provide food and survive on the frontier or a region with minimal law enforcement. But literally personal arsenals as a social or political statement with more powerful weapons, more of them and more ammunition and lethal accessories. Owned by people that unlike at any other time in our history do not strive to be a more civilized society but essentially have given up and believe in it’s imminent demise and a time when all the firepower will be necessary.
I realize that this is not a popular position in the country or in this forum. I apologize in advance to Shawn and those of differing opinions on what guns rights should include. But every time I’m reminded of the moment I heard of all our beautiful little babies with so much hope and promise being killed by that goddamned gun in the innocent little community I once worked it just reminds me of a sad fact. Of how savage a nation we are and how as a nation we failed those children by doing literally nothing afterwards except offer prayers. I’m sick of people and their prayers as the only response to these events.
Doug, not sure where you are getting your info from. CT has banned bump stocks and limited magazine capacity to 10. Mental health is where it is at however, no one seems to be able to wrap their arms around that issue since the information is protected by HIPPA. I am sick as well as everyone else at the violence exhibited by those that have no respect for a human life so what is the answer? I guess if we ban guns in general as some would like then only the criminals will continue to have and abuse them so are we any safer? I don’t know what the answer is and I wish I did.
Thank you for showing interest humphry.
What constitutes gun rights is like abortion where there is no middle ground nor likelihood of the sides to agree. Nor is this the place to extend a futile debate as much as I would like to.
Racedayct had a beautiful remembrance and that triggered me. The fever has passed and I once again thank Racedayct for passing through my venting that included an inappropriate bit of profanity.
On to the 2019 racing season and all the promise it contains for a banner year.