For about a week, maybe ten days, there was nothing that existed outside of what happened here.
For some around town, the outside world probably still does not exist, as the horror and terror of that day settles into an ongoing sense of grief and loss.
But as the days go by, the outside world is starting to creep in. The Olympics. Both Canadian teams losing their Gold Medal games to the US. Donald Trump’s alienation of the gold medal winning women’s team.
More than that, I started to hear about other shootings elsewhere in Canada and (mostly) the US.
And then, on February 28 as I started working on pulling the paper together, the US and Israel began to bomb Iran. That made it through this shell that I have about me.
More than that, I heard about the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school in Minab. Missiles, apparently fired from Israel, hit a primary school in southern Iran, killing at least 153 people, many of them students, and wounding 96 others.
News like this hits a lot differently in the wake of what happened here.
Because, having lived through what we experienced last month, I can begin to imagine the pain and sorrow that must be causing, to the families, to the friends, to the people of that area.
Never mind that—according to the UN—pupils in a place dedicated to learning are protected under international humanitarian law, and that “attacks against educational institutions endanger students and teachers and undermine the right to education,” I can’t get past the fact that these people are, well, people. The students are just like the students here in Tumbler.
I’m not trying to draw us away from our own tragedy. I’m just trying to share that, for me, having lived through a tragedy like this, I can start to understand and sympathize when things like this happen elsewhere in the world.
There are two reactions we can have in these situations. We can seek vengeance, and retribution. We can try and find someone to blame. We can lash out and seek to hurt those who have hurt us.
Or we can chose to find sympathy with those who also suffer. We can use our pain as a way to reach out. To understand. To build bridges. We lost eight. 153? Is nearly incomprehensible.
It’s so easy to read about these numbers—555 dead in Iran, ten in Israel and four American servicemen—and just treat them as numbers.
But then, if we hadn’t been here in Tumbler last month, would the shooting here have hit so hard?
Last year, for instance, 78 people were killed in the US in school shootings. Can you name one of the victims? Can you even name one of the locations where one of the shootings took place? Yes, we remember Columbine and Sandy Hook. But do we remember the Annunciation Catholic School shooting last year when two students were killed?
Again, I’m not trying to trivialize what we’re going through, I’m just trying to show that—unfortunately—what happened here was not unique. We join an unfortunate club, where we feel our grief deeply, but for many, it is just another statistic. Since 1884, there have been 74 school shootings in Canada, 30 of them in the last 26 years.
This is how the majority of people will remember this event, if they remember it at all: as just another statistic. Deadliest shooting at a primary or secondary school in Canada. Second deadliest after the École Polytechnique shooting.
Statistics stand in for lives, numbers for the faces of people we knew and loved and lived and breathed.
And so when I hear about the kids killed in Iran, I can’t help but imagine what those people are going through. What the parents who lost a child, what a student who lost a friend, what a teacher who lost a student, is going through right now.
Death is a part of life. But that doesn’t mean that it is any more welcome because of it’s ubiquity. And—as a lifelong pacifist—I am finding death through violence: shootings, bombings, war…all that stuff—is becoming harder and harder to tolerate.
*****
I’m going to shift topics because there’s so many things going on that I haven’t touched upon. I’d like to say that you can find all the latest at our website,
www.tumblerridgelines.com, but truthfully, a lot of stories are just being shared on Facebook, if you want the latest.
One of the most common question I have been asked is: how is Paige?
She’s doing fine. I posted an interview with her mom and sister (who was also in the building when the shooting started) on YouTube and Facebook and yes, even the website. Paige doesn’t appear in the video, as she didn’t want to and that’s her right, but it’s a harrowing story.
The other question I get is: how is Maya? The answer to that one is a lot more complicated, and so I cede the floor to Cia, Maya’s mom.
“Maya’s progression in the initial phases were leaps and bounds, day by day. We were told on multiple occasions she wouldn’t make it.
“At some point, the reality of our situation started to settle. My baby has a direct bullet hole in her brain. We’ve defeated odds, but how far will we go?
“Simultaneously in the gravity of acceptance, Maya’s health took a turn for the worse. Pneumonia with MRSA, a very resistant strain of meningitis, a cerebral leak, and two brain surgeries in 48 hours.
“My stomach was in knots, and I don’t think I was able to process a coherent sentence for anyone to be able to understand.
“Day by day though, she’s coming back to the place she was, the swelling is going down again, and her eye is open during the day.
“Shes able to squeeze our hands and wiggle her toes when we ask.
“She has a long road ahead.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
