Journalism
Remembering Columbine 25 Years Later
How a television journalist loses her innocence along with the rest of this country
Killing The Bluebird Inside My Heart
(inspired by Bluebird by Charles Bukowski)
I settled into the middle seat, halfway into the belly of the airplane. The steal belly was colder today. The seats a little harder. My TV news producer’s shoes a little tighter. The air inside the plane was recirculating the news we didn’t want to believe. It caught me off guard, the children, the school, the boys with guns, the death.
This plane was going to Denver. I was going to Columbine, to a suburb, to the scene of a horror we had no words for yet. Our everyday vernacular didn’t include unimaginable, lockdown, AR-15, bump stocks, massacre, blood bath, automatic weapons, mass murder, or mass shooting. These words didn’t yet live beneath the surface of everything we do in this country. But this day changed everything.
Oh, how the silence of those dead children entered the cold belly of the plane and sat next to me today
The cold settled next to me, along with the silent ones. The journalist’s lips…
