Nows and Forevers

It’s horrible when a mass shooting occurs, anywhere in the United States, which is where it happens so frequently. It’s even more tragic when it happens in a place you know well.
That’s happened to me three times in a little more than a decade: Newtown, Connecticut, near where I grew up; Pittsburgh, where I’ve lived; and now Maine. Newtown and Pittsburgh were deep blows to people I knew who lost loved ones and friends. That it happened in a town I knew well, in a school I had been to, the whole thing shook me in a way that few other things did. And, six years later, covering the Tree of Life murders, which I did five years ago yesterday, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in a career where I’ve seen a lot of pain and tragedy.
And then it happens again. Because it always seems to happen. But the location of Wednesday’s murders was another gut punch to those of us who know and love the state. It’s a magical place, closeknit, and one where I have spent both happy and sad times. I’d like to think it’s pretty special.
Except that it’s not. A mass shooting happens there, just like so many other places. And it leaves behind shock, horror, sadness, and empty spaces where friends and loved ones used to be. The pain lives on, layer upon layer.
And, as the Maine native Steven King pointed out in a brief and depressing op-ed piece in The New York Times today, things don’t seem to ever change. I thought, in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, that 20 murdered first-graders might wake up our nation.
I was wrong.