Remembering Tuscon

And what is the best time for remembering? At noon
when shadows are hidden beneath our feet, or at twilight
when shadows lengthen like longings
that have no beginning, no end, like God?
-Yehuda Amichai, Who Will Remember the Rememberers?

Tragedy often numbs us. It numbed me on January 8. How could this happen?

A bullet. Thirty-one bullets. Six lifeless, nineteen injured. A nation devastated. A brave congresswoman fighting for her life. Making strides that leave the doctors speechless. We are wise to acknowledge miracles, they say. Yes, you are.

I tried to enter the mind of Jared Loughner, but failed. I wanted to understand, but I could not. Instead, I found solace in the stories of heroism: a judge who shielded a staffer from imminent death; a mother who dove in front of her daughter; everyday Americans who wrestled to the ground a deranged gunman and impeded his attempt to reload with an extended magazine—men and women who, when the stakes were highest, sacrificed their lives for their fellow citizens. These are heroes, I thought.

But some were beyond their reach. Some had died. And families and friends were called upon to mourn the senseless passing of the victims. But how does one mourn? And for what purpose? When President Obama addressed the nation a few days after the shootings, he put stories to the faces, to the names, to the ages. He attempted, with his words, to remember the victims for what they represent in the lives of us all. But what especially struck me as key was the connection he made between memory and action: beyond our reflections, Obama contended, our conduct must subscribe to the victims' legacies.

Does it? And what, after all, are the obligations of those left behind? Many understand the concept of commemoration as honoring the legacy of the dead. Have we done that? And if we haven’t, how do we?

Remembering Tuscon must ultimately be a difficult undertaking. Memory, by nature, binds the past and the present. Memory is a recollection; the thrust of a moment, a person, a feeling, into one’s mind. The task and challenge becomes carrying memory into the future. It begins by transcending what we know and assuming what we must.

To me, the only way to keep the victims of the Tuscon tragedy alive is to live in the way that they would have. While meritorious, reciting psalms does not constitute due service. It’s not enough to gather under the roof of a basketball arena one winter evening. It’s not enough to visit a make-shift memorial. Or to write on a Facebook page. Or to cry.

Perhaps the first step is to imagine. Perhaps the first step, as many have well done, is to tell the stories—to humanize the victims and the values for which they stood. But beyond that, commemoration must be constant and forever. It must reconcile the loss, embrace it, and then internalize it. And once it has been internalized, it must be transformed. Into kindness, into respect, into civility—into what a Jared Loughner tried incomprehensibly to take away on that heartbreaking Saturday morning. That, we must redeem.

In the end, memory calls upon our conscience. To act. Not out of remorse, but out of determination. To undo. Not our ethical temperaments, but our ethical lapses.

In the end, memory calls upon our image of a nine year old Christina Taylor Green. The youngest of the Tuscon victims, she had just been elected to the student council at her elementary school and had gone to visit Congresswoman Gabby Giffords to learn more about the political process. A dancer and a swimmer, she represents, most unbearably, pain at its sharpest. But she also represents the imperative at its highest. For her, we must live—we must live in the way that she would have.

So do it for Christina Taylor Green: blossom. Bloom. Rent a yacht and do the things you always wished to do out at sea but never had a chance.

Stop.
Breathe.
Dance.
Swim.
Run for student council.

Dream.

Christina: I hope that we, in our small way, in the hallways and classrooms and streets of our country, find your courage. That we aspire like you, and push bounds like you. That we are never afraid to follow our hearts like you. And that we smile because you were, and because you are, and because you will be.

If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina, I hope you’re jumping in them now.


This post is dedicated to the victims of the Tuscon shooting tragedy of January 11, 2011. May they rest in peace.