Remembering the Pulse Nightclub Shooting in My Hometown. 6/12/16.
I still can’t face the names and the faces of the murdered. But today at my church I will try.
My city beautiful, Orlando, will never forget one of the worst mass shootings in America. Forty-nine people killed, 53 wounded.
The day still haunts me. The fear in the LGBTQ+ community is still very much alive and is especially palpable in Florida. Our governor is not only not an ally, he’s a fearmonger.
After Pulse I couldn’t bear to learn the names and ages and personalities and faces of the dead. Especially because so many were young people with years of life ahead of them.
It’s disrespectful perhaps, that I consciously avoid learning personal details about the victims of mass killings.
I couldn’t bear it after Pulse. So I didn’t. I cried. I blogged. I watched the news and I grieved. But the second I heard the names read and saw the faces of the murdered flash on the screen, I shut off the TV.
It hurt too much to see the sobbing faces of the families holding up pictures of their loved ones. Sharing where their son or daughter planned to go to college and what they planned to study. Why everyone loved his smile and laugh and hugs, his famous lasagna and generous heart.
This was someone’s child or father or uncle or cousin or sister who crouched in terror in the Pulse bathroom stalls and under tables, as the shooter systematically shot people begging, bleeding, crying, shaking.
As loved ones quickly called their parents and whispered, “Mom, Dad, I love you. I may not make it out of here.”
When paramedics entered the scene, they were traumatized by the sounds of cell phones ringing next to dead bodies.
A mother’s desperate call unanswered.
I am a mother.
Nothing is worse than losing a child.
But wondering if your child is fleeing from a gunman or dead or bleeding out in agony, is a pain I cannot and will not allow my psyche to bear.
After the Sandy Hook tragedy my stepmother asked me to join her for a town square vigil in her little town in Georgia.
That night as I bundled up against the cold, she handed me a candle and one of the victim’s names to carry as I walked in a slow circle. I took a deep breathe when it was my turn to read her name out loud. My eyes welled. The teacher and I were close in age.
We marched around the little square of Washington, Georgia with the piercing wind blowing against our backs, drizzle coming down, flurries and a freeze setting in. I disassociated. I didn’t want to be there. Vigils don’t heal me. They feel agonizing.
With flashes in my mind of a gunman shooting Kindergartners at close range as they colored drawings in their classroom, I focused instead, on the bitter cold to numb me.
Years after the Pulse tragedy my daughter told me during college that she was bisexual. She’s been in a serious relationship with a sweet, vibrant warm, smart young lady. They sometimes go to gay clubs. Clubs that now have metal detectors and check purses and have hefty security.
But I still worry.
Because where evil has a will, evil finds a way.
Tonight at my Unitarian Unitarian church, my reverend will read the names of the Pulse victims. And then we will celebrate Pride month with a family-friendly drag show to soften our pain, and to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.
We will never forget. Especially as some people and some religions continue to physically, verbally, legislatively or spiritually attack our LGBTQ+ community. To claim “God loves you, but…..” Or worse, that they’re an “abomination.”
I know most people would never advocate violence against the LGBTQ+ community. But if you ridicule, rebuke, shame or “pray the gay away,” you’re part of the problem.
You feed evil from your seemingly innocent sidelines.
At least my Gov DeSantis, the king of homophobic and transphobic legislation (and book banning) had the decency to order U.S. and state flags at half mast today.
He probably did it for the optics because he’s been seen as too extreme for mainstream America. The fundamentalists love him. Moderate Christians, moderate anyone, do not.
In memory of our Pulse victims, to the murdered whose faces and names I simply cannot bear….
I promise you that I will continue to fight with all I have to help the LGBTQ+ community be seen, respected, safe and alive.
