Mourning through 24-hour news
For the first time in two weeks, Trina Gray’s sleeping pills were working.
By the time the television announced the shooting in Las Vegas that Sunday night, the 54-year-old was asleep in her small bedroom at the back of the Dickinson, Texas, mobile home she shares with her adult daughter, son-inlaw and two grandbabies.
Gray didn’t stir as Meghan, panicked that the brother she’d been texting all day was no longer responding, paced through the trailer. Or when the phone rang with the news.
What woke her was her daughter’s scream as the bedroom door slammed open.
“Mom, mom!” 35-year-old Meghan Ervin wailed. “Cameron is dead!”
Last weekend’s massacre left 28-year-old Cameron Robinson and at least 57 others dead.
The initial panic. The unanswered text messages. The heart-shattering news. And then, for most, the solemn trip to Las Vegas to reclaim the body of a loved one. In the aftermath, Las Vegas hotels filled with mourning relatives and friends who traveled there to carry coffins back home.
But Gray can’t travel. At least she doesn’t. Not in the five years since a collision with a tractor trailer left her with trouble walking and legally blind. The thought of boarding a plane is enough to bring on an anxiety attack.
So now, even as instinct insisted she run to the stepson she’d raised as her own from the time he was 8, Gray remained, trapped in this trailer, getting updates from relatives and the news.
And then their phones started ringing.
Even if she wasn’t on television herself, Gray consumed an infuriating amount of it. The interviews with the survivors; the images of those who couldn’t avoid the hail of gunfire; the grainy cellphone videos from inside the venue on endless loop. It all blended together.
“All I could hear was bullets,” Gray recalls. “All night, all day from the TV. Bullets.”
Sunday night stretched into Monday, which soon became Tuesday. Gray never fell back asleep.
And before long the television seemed to be spending more time talking about the man who had stolen Cameron from her.
“Why do they keep plastering his face and his name everywhere?!” an infuriated Gray wondered. “It’s like they’re giving him credit!”
She couldn’t stand it. She also couldn’t turn it off.
Cameron had spent the weekend texting her pictures from the concert. Cameron, who earlier this year brought his boyfriend Bobby all the way from their home in Utah so she could meet him.
When would the television talk about the man who was like a second father to his nephews, 4-year-old Dylinger and 1-year-old Delany, whom he Facetimed every week to let them wave through the iPhone screen to Cooper, his Boston terrier. He even found and gave the perfect stuffed replica: Dylinger now proudly marches through the trailer with his own Cooper.
Remembering makes her want to cry. But Gray can’t cry in front of the grandbabies, who, like her, spent the week trapped in this trailer. When she feels tears coming, Gray walks to her room to bury her face in a pillow.
Meghan left Tuesday. Bobby had bought her a plane ticket to Vegas so she could help with funeral arrangements and say goodbye to her brother. Gray stayed behind.
The phones still hadn’t stopped ringing. Gray had talked to a few reporters who called the house, but none of them had gone on TV. Maybe it was time.
Anderson Cooper, the silver-haired CNN anchor, had always been Cameron’s favorite. A promise from his producer that the shooter’s name and photo wouldn’t be shown was enough to secure the exclusive.
When the time came for the interview, Gray set the DVR on her bedroom television and called Rob, Meghan’s husband, into the room to watch with her. She smiled when Bobby appeared on the screen, live from Las Vegas.
“I want everyone to know that no matter what you’re going through, or any hardship or anything, (Cameron) was proof that you can overcome it,” Bobby testified. “He had such a drive and determination to always better his life and he did such an amazing job of that.”
Bobby was doing such a beautiful job of describing Cameron, Gray thought. This interview was perfect. She beamed with pride. She didn’t notice as 4-year-old Dylinger made his way into the room, his stuffed dog from Cameron in-hand.
“Grandma, that’s my uncles!” the 4-year-old declared with excitement at the photo of Bobby and Cameron on the TV.
Gray began to weep. There was no time to reach her pillow.