everybody lives for the music-go-round

breakthecitysky:

When Virginia Tech happened, I ran the public affairs shop for a national association of funeral directors and I managed the response. Sometimes I think we forget about the power of communal grief, of creating space to share anguish and sorrow even if your connection to what was lost is tenuous at best. 

I’ve worked with DMORT teams and sheriff’s departments and DHS. I know what a body looks like when it’s been decomposing in water. I know what it looks like when it’s been harvested for organs and tissue, without the family’s consent. I know what it looks like after a suicide, and after it’s been riddled with multiple rounds.

When Sandy Hook happened, it felt personal in so many ways. Kid A was the same age as those kids. Later I’d learn about Dylan Hockley, a little boy with special needs who was very much like A, who died in the arms of the teaching aide he loved and it was like being one-step removed from a horror story, the roles cast with someone else’s child. I knew every funeral director who served those families, who did the best they could to put those tiny bodies back together.  I still have nightmares about it, on the regular.

My mom taught school for 40 years. I remember, when Columbine happened. I was a senior in college and I told her I wanted her to be done and she told me to stop being so dramatic. When they started doing lockdown drills she knew her time was coming.

Vegas happened, and it barely held the front page for 48 hours and I thought, you know, I actually like shooting guns, I have the receipts, but what’s it going to take for any of us to say something here is so beyond fucked up we need to change.

Then there was Florida, the kids who were old enough they could speak for themselves. Speak for the dead, all those who had come before them. Call us to the carpet, the ones charged with protecting them. Call out the people elected to keep them safe, who failed them over and over. They won’t be quiet.

This time feels different.

I don’t want to go, baby
New York to east California
There’s a new wave coming, I warn ya
We’re the kids in America (whoa)