In the Face of the Unfathomable
I should have known better than to believe that I would actually wake up at 8:00am this morning and start working. Then again, when this day began, there were lots of things I thought would actually happen. None of them did. And what has ultimately consumed the last six hours of my life is something that neither I nor anyone else could have possibly imagined.
After guiltily resetting my alarm a few times, I finally crawled out of bed shortly after 10:00am, and went to the computer to check my e-mail. All of my meetings that had been scheduled for the day were cancelled on account of the Nor'easter that roared through yesterday, so I had every intention of returning to the blissful world of slumber. But I noticed that Danielle was awake already, and decided to drop her a little note to let her know what was happening.
I was met with one word: "babe." This was most assuredly not the response I was expecting, and upon probing a bit further, I was asked if I'd seen the news lately. When I checked, the top story was a state of emergency over New Jersey -- old news, for those of us around here who have seen the damage the storm has wrought. But she said that this was not the story, that the story to which she was referring hadn't made the news yet (at least not on the internet).
In the bits and pieces that she could derive from having heard from friends and fractured news reports, she told me that there had been a "shooting incident" on the Virginia Tech campus, and that there was at least 1 dead and several injured. I quickly realized that I would not be returning to sleep, and instead got myself situated in anticipation of being a sounding board and comforter. At the time, she didn't seem too shaken up -- in fact, she encouraged me to return to sleep, an offer I flatly refused -- and after about an hour during which the only new fact was that there was not one shooting but two, I figured it was a safe time to head downstairs and have some lunch.
I chatted with some friends about the incident. I told them all I knew, assured them that Danielle was okay, and tried in vain to figure out what would drive someone to do something like this. But eventually, the conversation drifted elsewhere and the story slipped by the wayside. And why not? School shootings, while undeniably tragic, had taken many more victims before, and things seemed relatively sedate when I left, so why would things have changed, right?
Right?
It wasn't until after lunch that the proverbial shit hit the fan. Suddenly, the number of dead had skyrocketed from 1 to 22. Suddenly, the roommate of Danielle's that had class in the engineering building where the second shooting had taken place, the roommate that she and her friends had been trying to call but could not get ahold of, was of a much more paramount concern than before. It was like a punch to the gut to hear about it, even though I don't know Caddie all that well. The closest I can remember to feeling this way was during 5th period on September 11, 2001, when I suddenly realized that my uncle had worked in the World Trade Center for quite some time, and that I didn't know whether or not he had been working in the building that day. That Tuesday morning, when I'd called home to check on him, my fears were quickly allayed with word that he hadn't worked in the towers for years. But that moment when you expect and can reasonably consider that the worst happened -- that moment, even if it's only an instant, lasts for an eternity.
It may have been no more than a half-hour or so before word on Caddie finally came in: she had been in Norris, but she had escaped by jumping out of a second-story window. She was a little banged up, and had been taken to the hospital with some aches and pains, but she was okay. With that came the near-certainty that everyone that Danielle knew on campus, that everyone I knew at Tech, was okay.
The problem with things like this, though, is that there are going to be hundreds, even thousands, of people who will not be so lucky to get the all-clear. Far too many people are going to get the phone call to let them know that their roommate, their friend, their colleague, their significant other, their brother, their sister, their daughter, their son...won't be coming home again. It's an illusion. It's a nightmare. It can't actually be happening, right?
Right?
And why? For what fucking reason? It's the most asinine question to ask at a time like this, but it's also the most pressing. It's as if we as a culture could have, with the right information and under the right circumstances, have prevented this. It's as if we are, in our sadness, our grief, our anger, our frustration, reaching out at straws, looking for any reason at all to justify when something like this happens. In the aftermath of something that can't be taken back, we seek out the solace of a comforting friend and we seek out the truth. And sometimes that truth becomes an even darker tragedy than the kind perpetrated today in West Ambler Johnston Hall and Norris Hall. And then we wonder why we never had the answers to that tragedy until now.
It's to be expected. It's what we do. It's why there are reporters swarming the Tech campus right now, as they will, no doubt, for days. Maybe it's not so much cheap voyeurism as it is the fact that when shit like this goes down, we sit on the edge of our seats for some explanation because our minds can't possible grasp what could have -- and did -- go wrong. Maybe we'll know, maybe we won't. Either way, it's impossible to turn away and even more impossible to try and forget.
I wasn't there. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like to be there. I can't tap into Danielle's fears as she sat in her house and waited for someone to declare with certainty that it was all over. I won't ever know what Caddie was thinking and feeling when she leapt out a window in what she perceived to be the best way possible to save her own life. I can't even begin to wonder how anyone who was there in any of those rooms could have begun to consider how radically the next few seconds of their lives would play out.
I wasn't there. Most of us weren't there. But we all want to know the same thing. Why? When things like this happen, there has to be a reason, right? There has to be some sort of logical explanation, right?
Right?
After guiltily resetting my alarm a few times, I finally crawled out of bed shortly after 10:00am, and went to the computer to check my e-mail. All of my meetings that had been scheduled for the day were cancelled on account of the Nor'easter that roared through yesterday, so I had every intention of returning to the blissful world of slumber. But I noticed that Danielle was awake already, and decided to drop her a little note to let her know what was happening.
I was met with one word: "babe." This was most assuredly not the response I was expecting, and upon probing a bit further, I was asked if I'd seen the news lately. When I checked, the top story was a state of emergency over New Jersey -- old news, for those of us around here who have seen the damage the storm has wrought. But she said that this was not the story, that the story to which she was referring hadn't made the news yet (at least not on the internet).
In the bits and pieces that she could derive from having heard from friends and fractured news reports, she told me that there had been a "shooting incident" on the Virginia Tech campus, and that there was at least 1 dead and several injured. I quickly realized that I would not be returning to sleep, and instead got myself situated in anticipation of being a sounding board and comforter. At the time, she didn't seem too shaken up -- in fact, she encouraged me to return to sleep, an offer I flatly refused -- and after about an hour during which the only new fact was that there was not one shooting but two, I figured it was a safe time to head downstairs and have some lunch.
I chatted with some friends about the incident. I told them all I knew, assured them that Danielle was okay, and tried in vain to figure out what would drive someone to do something like this. But eventually, the conversation drifted elsewhere and the story slipped by the wayside. And why not? School shootings, while undeniably tragic, had taken many more victims before, and things seemed relatively sedate when I left, so why would things have changed, right?
Right?
It wasn't until after lunch that the proverbial shit hit the fan. Suddenly, the number of dead had skyrocketed from 1 to 22. Suddenly, the roommate of Danielle's that had class in the engineering building where the second shooting had taken place, the roommate that she and her friends had been trying to call but could not get ahold of, was of a much more paramount concern than before. It was like a punch to the gut to hear about it, even though I don't know Caddie all that well. The closest I can remember to feeling this way was during 5th period on September 11, 2001, when I suddenly realized that my uncle had worked in the World Trade Center for quite some time, and that I didn't know whether or not he had been working in the building that day. That Tuesday morning, when I'd called home to check on him, my fears were quickly allayed with word that he hadn't worked in the towers for years. But that moment when you expect and can reasonably consider that the worst happened -- that moment, even if it's only an instant, lasts for an eternity.
It may have been no more than a half-hour or so before word on Caddie finally came in: she had been in Norris, but she had escaped by jumping out of a second-story window. She was a little banged up, and had been taken to the hospital with some aches and pains, but she was okay. With that came the near-certainty that everyone that Danielle knew on campus, that everyone I knew at Tech, was okay.
The problem with things like this, though, is that there are going to be hundreds, even thousands, of people who will not be so lucky to get the all-clear. Far too many people are going to get the phone call to let them know that their roommate, their friend, their colleague, their significant other, their brother, their sister, their daughter, their son...won't be coming home again. It's an illusion. It's a nightmare. It can't actually be happening, right?
Right?
And why? For what fucking reason? It's the most asinine question to ask at a time like this, but it's also the most pressing. It's as if we as a culture could have, with the right information and under the right circumstances, have prevented this. It's as if we are, in our sadness, our grief, our anger, our frustration, reaching out at straws, looking for any reason at all to justify when something like this happens. In the aftermath of something that can't be taken back, we seek out the solace of a comforting friend and we seek out the truth. And sometimes that truth becomes an even darker tragedy than the kind perpetrated today in West Ambler Johnston Hall and Norris Hall. And then we wonder why we never had the answers to that tragedy until now.
It's to be expected. It's what we do. It's why there are reporters swarming the Tech campus right now, as they will, no doubt, for days. Maybe it's not so much cheap voyeurism as it is the fact that when shit like this goes down, we sit on the edge of our seats for some explanation because our minds can't possible grasp what could have -- and did -- go wrong. Maybe we'll know, maybe we won't. Either way, it's impossible to turn away and even more impossible to try and forget.
I wasn't there. I couldn't imagine what it must have been like to be there. I can't tap into Danielle's fears as she sat in her house and waited for someone to declare with certainty that it was all over. I won't ever know what Caddie was thinking and feeling when she leapt out a window in what she perceived to be the best way possible to save her own life. I can't even begin to wonder how anyone who was there in any of those rooms could have begun to consider how radically the next few seconds of their lives would play out.
I wasn't there. Most of us weren't there. But we all want to know the same thing. Why? When things like this happen, there has to be a reason, right? There has to be some sort of logical explanation, right?
Right?
posted by Dave at 4/16/2007 04:08:00 PM
3 Comments:
Regarding the West AJ crime scene:
Before assuming that both this incident and the Norris Hall scene were perpetrated by the same person, think about this scenario...
A disgruntled boyfriend goes upstairs to the 4th floor of the West AJ dorm. He kills his girlfriend, then commits suicide. In that circumstance, the two incidents would most likely not be related at all.
Both incidents may be related, BUT we are NOT sure just yet...
That is entirely possible, but the current belief among law enforcement officials is that there was one shooter, who ultimately committed suicide in Norris Hall. If that ultimately gets disproved, it still doesn't make the cause of this tragedy any clearer.
I'll strive for objectivity just as much as the next guy, but this just hit way too close to home for it not to strike a nerve.
I know I complained a lot when the media was hounding us (i.e. Rutgers) over something that was completely trivial, but I would gladly have the media back here over something trivial than having them down there for something serious.
I know I didn't talk to you (or Danielle) to check on Danielle and her friends sooner, and I'm sorry about that, but I was busy with a small flood in my house. I was very happy when I noticed her away message had changed, although I wasn't happy about any of the situation in general.
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