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Virginia Tech
Apr. 16th, 2008 07:17 amToday is the anniversary of the brutal killings that took place a year ago at Virginia Tech.
If anyone reading this wants to watch the official remembrance ceremony, it starts at 10:30 AM Eastern time. There'll be a webcast of this evening's candlelight vigil as well.
Not a day has gone by since last April 16 that I haven't thought about what happened. And not a day has gone by that I haven't reflected on why this event, horrific as it was, has stuck in my memory in a way that the September 11 attacks did not, in a way that the killings at Columbine did not. It seems wrong in a way that, narcissistically, I've spent so much time glooming over the deaths of 32 people and the woundings of 25 others when every day thousands of people starve to death around the world, when every day untold numbers die in car accidents, when every day cancer and other diseases claim the lives of loved ones. I feel stupid, lame, and selfish thinking so much about the charnel house on the second floor of Norris Hall when there's so much tragedy around me in the world -- and I don't even notice it.
But nonetheless, I lie awake at night visualizing what it must have been like to be in one of those four classrooms while a madman stalked the rows of desks firing, firing, reloading, and firing again. I think about the statements that a mother of one of the victims made, noting that when she arrived in Blacksburg the day of the shootings and asked if she would have an opportunity to identify the body of her daughter, she was told by police that there would be "no point"; Cho apparently took sadistic pleasure in shooting the faces of his victims. I visualize the lakes of blood in the classrooms. I visualize the nightmares of the wounded victims, lying among the dead, wondering if Cho would be coming back to finish them off.
I was six hundred miles away at the time Seung-Hui Cho wreaked his bloody havoc on the campus of Virginia Tech. I can't claim to have been affected in the way that someone who works next door to the scene of a shooting can; I can't say "If he'd only looked in the next office, he might have killed me too." But nonetheless I can't stop thinking about the 32 who died and the 25 who were wounded.
In the end, though, I guess it comes down to this: We all have protective filters, erected by our subconscious minds to keep us from thinking about everything's that bad and wrong and tragic around us; it's either that or go crazy. If I didn't have those filters, if I thought about the Twin Towers and Columbine and Northern Illinois University and Oklahoma City all the time you'd find me curled up in a fetal position in my basement.
But my filters aren't working to keep me from thinking about Virginia Tech. I lived in Blacksburg for my whole childhood. I attended graduate school at Virginia Tech. My father worked at Virginia Tech as a professor for pretty much his entire career. Those limestone buildings and the Duck Pond and the Drill Field and the mountains around the town and the look and and smell of the trees and air on a fall afternoon are as much a part of me as anything, anything you can name. No matter how many years I spend living here in Vermont, no matter how old I grow, no matter how much Blacksburg evolves and changes over the years, Virginia Tech and Blacksburg are always going to be first in my thoughts when I think of "my hometown."
And I can't bear the thought of my hometown as the scene of a mass murder.
If anyone reading this wants to watch the official remembrance ceremony, it starts at 10:30 AM Eastern time. There'll be a webcast of this evening's candlelight vigil as well.
Not a day has gone by since last April 16 that I haven't thought about what happened. And not a day has gone by that I haven't reflected on why this event, horrific as it was, has stuck in my memory in a way that the September 11 attacks did not, in a way that the killings at Columbine did not. It seems wrong in a way that, narcissistically, I've spent so much time glooming over the deaths of 32 people and the woundings of 25 others when every day thousands of people starve to death around the world, when every day untold numbers die in car accidents, when every day cancer and other diseases claim the lives of loved ones. I feel stupid, lame, and selfish thinking so much about the charnel house on the second floor of Norris Hall when there's so much tragedy around me in the world -- and I don't even notice it.
But nonetheless, I lie awake at night visualizing what it must have been like to be in one of those four classrooms while a madman stalked the rows of desks firing, firing, reloading, and firing again. I think about the statements that a mother of one of the victims made, noting that when she arrived in Blacksburg the day of the shootings and asked if she would have an opportunity to identify the body of her daughter, she was told by police that there would be "no point"; Cho apparently took sadistic pleasure in shooting the faces of his victims. I visualize the lakes of blood in the classrooms. I visualize the nightmares of the wounded victims, lying among the dead, wondering if Cho would be coming back to finish them off.
I was six hundred miles away at the time Seung-Hui Cho wreaked his bloody havoc on the campus of Virginia Tech. I can't claim to have been affected in the way that someone who works next door to the scene of a shooting can; I can't say "If he'd only looked in the next office, he might have killed me too." But nonetheless I can't stop thinking about the 32 who died and the 25 who were wounded.
In the end, though, I guess it comes down to this: We all have protective filters, erected by our subconscious minds to keep us from thinking about everything's that bad and wrong and tragic around us; it's either that or go crazy. If I didn't have those filters, if I thought about the Twin Towers and Columbine and Northern Illinois University and Oklahoma City all the time you'd find me curled up in a fetal position in my basement.
But my filters aren't working to keep me from thinking about Virginia Tech. I lived in Blacksburg for my whole childhood. I attended graduate school at Virginia Tech. My father worked at Virginia Tech as a professor for pretty much his entire career. Those limestone buildings and the Duck Pond and the Drill Field and the mountains around the town and the look and and smell of the trees and air on a fall afternoon are as much a part of me as anything, anything you can name. No matter how many years I spend living here in Vermont, no matter how old I grow, no matter how much Blacksburg evolves and changes over the years, Virginia Tech and Blacksburg are always going to be first in my thoughts when I think of "my hometown."
And I can't bear the thought of my hometown as the scene of a mass murder.
