The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
FORGIVING NANCY
Families struggle with legacy of the school massacre’s other victim
NEWTOWN – The loss of 26 souls in the Sandy Hook massacre stunned the nation with its barbaric senselessness.
Support for the victims’ families flooded the town, while the families themselves sought solace in their common grief and in the cherished memories of their loved ones.
But one victim was left out of that healing process, because she was the mother of the Sandy Hook shooter.
She was the one who introduced her son to firearms. She was the one who failed to get him treatment during his spiraling mental-health crisis.
As a result, Nancy Lanza is not remembered as the single mother of a son with special needs. She is not remembered for suffering domestic violence at his hands. Her name is not mentioned along with those of the innocents 20year-old Adam Lanza murdered at the school five years ago Thursday, even though she was his first victim.
But today, as the fifth anniversary approaches of that hallowed mid-December morning, and
families continue their search for healing, attitudes about Nancy Lanza might be starting to change.
Several parents who lost children in the massacre are speaking openly about mercy for Nancy Lanza, and sharing their experience of finding wholeness by practicing forgiveness.
“People think forgiveness is a gift you give to the perpetrator, but in reality it is a gift that you give to yourself,” says Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son, Jesse, was killed at Sandy Hook. “Newtown still has a lot of healing to do, so there are a lot of courageous conversations we have to have about Nancy and Adam Lanza.” Robbie Parker agrees. “You have so much pain in your heart that it needs to receive something big to help start that healing process,” said Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, was slain on Dec. 14, 2012. “I wouldn’t have been able to get through the healing process without forgiveness. If it wasn’t for forgiveness, there would be no healing.”
At the same time, friends of Nancy Lanza are remembering her as a gentle and nonjudgmental woman who should not be the scapegoat for the worst crime in Connecticut history.
“We should certainly take lessons from this, if there are better gun safety practices or more proactive mental health treatments, but to blame somebody in hindsight and demonize them, there is no justice in that,” says John Bergquist of Newtown. “You can still say, ‘There are things we can do differently next time,’ but she is entitled to be a victim, and she is entitled to her humanity.”
Privately, other families who lost loved ones at Sandy Hook say that forgiving Nancy Lanza is not a priority, given the emotions they have to manage at this time of year.
Parents who have managed to do so say they understand that feeling, and would never presume to tell other grieving parents how to heal.
“The families all really respect each other’s different journeys, because we have this unconditional love for each other,” said Michele Gay, who lost her 7-year-old daughter, Josephine. “But we find forgiveness incredibly liberating, because it cuts this terrible tie to this awful pain and suffering by simply letting it go.”
Forgiving Nany Lanza doesn’t necessary mean putting her name on a permanent memorial along with those of the 26 slain children and educators, Gay said. Instead, the hope is to help grieving parents find peace by letting go of condemnation.
The town’s permanent memorial committee, which includes parents who lost children in the massacre, has always distinguished between what happened at the Lanza home and what happened at Sandy Hook School.
Lanza, a withdrawn young man with Asperger’s syndrome, advanced anorexia and anxiety disorder, shot his mother in her bed before taking an AR-15-style rifle from an unlocked closet and shooting his way into a locked Sandy Hook School. He fired 150 bullets in 5 minutes and then killed himself.
Whatever one’s opinion about the killer, he was not a victim in the sense that the children and educators were, said Kyle Lyddy, the chairman of the permanent memorial commission. And whatever one’s opinion is of Nancy Lanza, she died at home, and not at the school, Lyddy added.
If Nancy Lanza were to be remembered on the memorial, it would likely be in a separate feature that could provide certain historical details about the tragedy.
“We don’t want the memorial to be about the event itself, but we also recognize there is an historical component that we might want to include,” Lyddy said.
The evolving attitude toward Nancy Lanza comes as Newtown prepares for a week of special events at churches and community organizations to remember the massacre victims.
It also comes at a time of transition in Newtown, which has seen the recent retirements of the police chief, the schools superintendent and First Selectman Pat Llodra, who established the practice of deferring to massacre victims’ families about the pace and the direction recovery should take.
Although the families most affected by the massacre have formed separate nonprofits and are no longer all in Sandy Hook — Parker lives in Oregon and Gay lives in Maryland, for example — they continue to constitute the moral center of Newtown.
Because their grief has been so public, their recovery has taken on a wider purpose. A leading clergyman said as painful as it is to keep talking about a loss that breaks the heart, it’s necessary for the greater good of the nation.
“These children and these teachers left an indelible mark on hundreds of thousands of people,” said Monsignor Robert Weiss, the pastor of St. Rose of Lima Church in Newtown. “They have to be remembered if we are going to do anything about the violence in this country.”
But even more pressing than policy, Weiss said during an interview last week, is the personal call to forgive.
“Forgiveness is the only way to be fully healed from this,” said Weiss, his eyes glistening with tears. “These children taught us to live, so we have to live.”
Forgiving Nancy
The difficulty of forgiving Nancy Lanza starts with the difficulty of forgiveness itself, parents and clergy said.
Forgiveness may seem like an offense to victims and an enemy of justice, if it means absolving the perpetrator’s guilt or forgetting the misery the crime caused innocent people.
But the forgiveness that some parents speak of, and the forgiveness that Newtown clergy encourage, does not condone the mistakes Nancy Lanza made with her son’s mental health, or free her from liability for not locking up her guns.
Nor is forgiveness meant to be accomplished all in one sitting.
Instead, forgiveness is more like a daily decision – some days being better than others – to reduce resentment by recognizing the humanity of the person, while still holding the person accountable for her error.
That was something Gay and her family learned when members of a Pennsylvania Amish community visited Newtown in 2014 to share how they forgave the mother of man who took 10 schoolgirls hostage and killed five of them in 2006.
“I learned from that meeting that forgiveness does not mean taking away the responsibility from the people who committed the awful sin, but you are letting go of your anger toward them so you can function and live in this world,” said Gay, the cofounder with Parker’s wife, Alissa, of a school safety resource organization called Safe and Sound Schools. “And for me the other big part of it is I trust that God is just, and it is not my responsibility to judge.”