The club that no-one wants to belong to
Students and teachers brought out of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, after the shooting just over a year ago.
‘‘Eventually, just by putting one foot in front of the other, you start realising you can have windows of happiness and joy and there are things you don’t feel guilty about. That takes a different amount of time for different people.
‘‘Are there times when it still brings me to my knees? Yes, there are. But is it every day? No. I used to cry in the shower every day for six months. I don’t do that any more.’’
The school is still visited several times a week by people wanting to see where the tragedy occurred. Among them are the conspiracy theorists, who say there was no shooting, that the people claiming to have had children at the school were lying, that it’s been fabricated by anti-gun groups.
‘‘What the victims in Christchurch will find out is that they do not have control of this story any more,’’ Jacob says.
‘‘There will be conspiracy theories, which I’m sure have already started. I can’t imagine if my loved one died that way turning on the TV and unexpectedly seeing a story about it again six years later, or seeing a flash of my daughter’s funeral, or reading a book – an innocent fiction book – with a passage about it. You just don’t have control over it.
‘‘We don’t mention the shooter’s name here. We don’t talk about him. We’re going to talk about the tragedy, not him. The press has caught on to it. They write articles that don’t include the name or image of the gunman because one of the things they know about these crazy guys is that other crazy guys emulate them.
‘‘The more you make the story about them, the more heroic they become to other people who want to do this. It’s part of the whole sickness.’’
Settling on a site and design for a memorial is fraught with difficulty, says Jacob. That’s one thing she wants New Zealand to be prepared for. ‘‘It’s been six years of painful discussion for us because even among victims’ families they do not agree what should happen.
‘‘We’ve finally decided, through a pretty good process, on where the memorial is going to be and what it’s going to be. Now we’re in the process of raising the money to create that memorial.
‘‘I would encourage the people of Christchurch to talk to us about how that happened in Sandy Hook, because I think that’s one of the things we did do well. But it’s still super painful.
‘‘I would say to the victims and survivors that we, the Sandy Hook community, are here to support you in any way we can. We know you’re in for a hard, long, difficult road and if there’s any way we can help make that road a little smoother we will do that for you.’’
‘Something like that wouldn’t happen here’
The mayor of Parkland, in Florida, Christine Hunschofsky, had just arrived at her home across the road from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14 last year when a lone gunman entered the grounds and killed 14 students and three staff members. Several of her friends’ children were killed.
Just 13 months on and the city of 24,000 people, ‘‘which barely anyone in even Florida knew about’’ beforehand, is still a long way from coming to terms with that day.
‘‘This kind of event completely shatters people’s sense of safety and security,’’ Hunschofsky says. ‘‘It was always ‘something like that wouldn’t happen here’ and then it does. There is a lot of trauma around knowing the people who were killed and around knowing that maybe you’re not as safe as you think you are, and being faced with that in a very real and immediate way.
‘‘I always say we weren’t as safe as we thought we were before February 14, but I don’t think we’re as unsafe as we feel we are at times after February 14 either.’’
If Hunschofsky could say anything to the people of Christchurch it would be: ‘‘Don’t underestimate the ongoing effects of trauma.’’
‘‘Because a lot of problems come from trauma that’s unaddressed. Everybody grieves differently and something like this reopens any previous trauma you might have had. Everybody deals with it in different ways.
‘‘The people I see who’ve done the trauma therapy and really worked on it, it doesn’t mean they don’t ever have their moments, but they recognise it and learn skills to help manage it. The ones who haven’t addressed it – you definitely see the difference.
‘‘Some people thought they were fine and it wasn’t until months later that they started exhibiting signs of PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. You see it coming, whether it be through anger, heightened anxiety, sleeplessness, issues with eating . . . you see all those sorts of things.
‘‘As we got close to the one-year mark I started to see some of the behaviours exhibited that I’d seen immediately after the shootings. It was almost like the one-year mark was bringing people’s memories back and reopened a lot of those wounds.
‘‘Some people still have a hard time and can’t talk about it. But there are many people who do talk about it. It’s something we deal with every day. Everyone is going to work through it in their own way.
‘‘I’d encourage people to reserve judgment on themselves and to allow time to work through it and allow others to work through it in their own timeframe.
‘‘Some have found release through the arts, some have used the therapy dogs. Some have used equine therapy. Everyone finds what will help them.’’
Also not to be underestimated, says Hunschofsky, is the healing power of giving.
‘‘When I think back on how far we have come, in many ways there is always a long way to go, but our community has really focused on the healing, on giving back, and volunteering, because people feel like they have made a difference and that is very powerful.
‘‘What people don’t understand is that there were hundreds of students in that building who watched their friends or their teachers get shot and killed. Everyone who was in that building that day – and there were hundreds of them – had to walk over dead bodies in order to get out. I think people think of the number, 17, and they don’t acknowledge the ripple effects in the community. They are just incredible and completely underestimated outside of the community.’’
‘Some people still can’t deal with helicopters’
April will mark the 23rd anniversary of Tasmania’s Port Arthur shooting.
Among the 35 killed that day was Roseanne Heyward’s 27-yearold god-daughter Elizabeth Howard.
Heyward, who lives near the historic penal colony, is a frequent visitor to the memorial garden and pond for the shooting victims.
‘‘There is still, 23 years down the track, people with issues about what happened that day,’’ she says. ‘‘Everybody is different. What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for everyone else.
‘‘There were a lot of social workers and psychologists people down here after the shooting. Some people wanted the social workers to go away. They didn’t want to see them. But other people needed it. So it’s very hard to have a blanket fix because everybody’s different.
‘‘That’s what makes it really hard.
‘‘I’m one of those people who was shocked and will never forget it, and I will never forget Lizzie or the other 34 victims. But I’m one of those people who gets on. I didn’t need support or help. I’ve coped, but I’ll never forget that day or the victims.
‘‘We have Martin Bryant still alive in our jail. Many people ask why the police didn’t shoot him on the day. But everyone wanted to know why it was Martin Bryant and we still don’t know why. He was just a very mentally deranged young man.
‘‘Every time something happens, like Christchurch, it comes up again. Just a few moments ago I was driving and the radio announcer called the mosque shootings ‘New Zealand’s Port
‘‘Our community has really focused on the healing, on giving back, and volunteering, because people feel like they have made a difference and that is very powerful.’’
Christine Hunschofsky, mayor of Parkland, Florida