Newtown/Everlasting Arms

Newtown/Everlasting Arms

By  Gary Reece, Ph.D

It has been a week since a lighting bolt struck with unprecedented, unimaginable, catastrophic violence in a small town in Connecticut.  It was an act of terror committed by a young man who lived amongst us, not some foreign Jihadist.  His wanton act hit Newtown with shattering, traumatic force.  It shattered the security, serenity, safety, beliefs, hopes, and dreams which form the secure base that is the foundations of all communal life.

These attachments form the very essence of what it is to be human and are the vital force which make life together possible.  It is through attachment that infants are made to feel valued, safe, secure, and trusting.  It is through attachment that infants develop a working view of the world.  It is through attachment that we learn love, empathy, compassion, and the ability to intimately connect with an other.  It is our attachments which give us a sense of meaning, purpose and significance.  It is through attachment that we learn to be self reliant, regulate our emotions, and govern our impulses. And it is attachment that binds us to our family friends, community and our country.

Last Friday’s travesty followed an all too familiar macabre tableau.  A gunman enters a public building, armed to the teeth with multiple weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammuntion: ready to make war.  He begins randomly shooting, an alarm goes out, first responders appear on the scene and begin to deal with the bedlam and chaos of multiple gunshot victims.  Shortly there after the media arrive in droves.  Reporters frantically search for a story begin  thrusting  their microphones and cameras into the faces of shocked children and parents:  searching for the “epic” shot that will capture the essence of horror in the faces of the victims.  They want to display the moment on national TV.  The story goes viral. The parade of interviews of victims; talking heads telling us how horrible, shocking, and unprecedented this unfolding story will be.  “Breaking News, more at 11.”  As the memorials pile up, the President addresses a shocked nation.  He expresses sorrow and indignation:  “this is enough, this can not happen again, we must do something!”  And then the funerals begin.  The coverage continues and the media look for “Heroes.”  There is nothing like hero stories to capture an audience.  And then in all probability the media moves on to the next tragedy of the day.

Also predictably families, and the community respond with normal reactions of shock, terror, and horror to an extremely abnormal situation.  Because of the terror unleashed by such a random, horrific act of violence we all feel vulnerable and helpless.  There is a terrible fear of recurrence.  We are made to feel vulnerable and helpless, so fragile and terribly mortal.  Everyone becomes hyper vigilant and rushes about frantically trying to find a way to reestablish some vestige of control.  This is very understandable, we have experienced the worst kind of trauma:  a sudden, random, act of overwhelming violence by a member of our community.  This is the worst kind of betrayal.  It is a terrorist act perpetrated on the innocent, the undeserving, our children, neighbors and friends without apparent motive. We are defenseless.  People asking the unanswerable:  Why? Why?  Why?  It is senseless!  There is no logic; there is no answer, even so we struggle to find a coherent survival strategy in order to make sense of it all.

As a result we get responses that are driven by fear and panic.  One artifact of these attempts to regain control is very concerning to me:  gun sales went off the charts and established one day sales records.  Another proposal got publicity.  “We need to arm our teachers,” gun proponents advocated, if more people had guns these things would be prevented.”  From the NRA, “we should put armed personnel at every school.”  Not recognizing that we are having to lay teachers off because of lack of funding. It is too ignorant and frightening to seriously consider turning our schools and public places into fortresses.  Another proposal came in the true spirit of American Capitalism:  body armor for children.  For only $150 you can protect your child.  All of these are responses to the terror,  and the fear of losing more children to violence.

As a parent I know what it is to lose a child, and as a psychologist I have spent my entire career working with victims of trauma.  As part of the concentric circle of victimization this event opens wounds of all who have experienced similar wowrld changing events.  Parents, teachers, pastors, first responders, no one is exempt from such shock, terror, horror and grief.

I remember standing  with my wife and  our two children by the grave site of my daughter and looking into the grave, it was like looking into the abyss.  The little white coffin was so small.  We were surrouded by friends while a friend delivered a few words of support and comfort.  All I remember from that moment was the feeling of utter numbness and unreality.  My friend said, “you feel like you have fallen off a cliff and there is no bottom, but you must trust that you will fall into the “everlasting arms.”  It took me a long time to understand the import of his words.

In Newtown, one parent said it well as she spoke to a reporter:  “What we need is for all of you to leave so we can start to heal.”  Scott Peck once wrote, “It is only through Community that the world will be saved.”  I believe he had it right.  Newtown and its citizens will hopefully discover the power of covenantal community.  I have found that we do not heal alone.  Grief is best born by the everlasting arms of people who love and support each other.  Yes the night is dark, life feels devoid of meaning, the grief is fierce, the losses seem unbearable and the road to recovery seems only a distant possibility.

Recovery will come slowly as we do the work of community, binding up each other’s wounds with acts of kindness and sharing each other’s burdens. We discover ourselves in each other as we share our stories and create a common narrative. The nation is reaching out with cups of coffee, Penguins sent to comfort the children, and memorials spring up spontaneously.  Rituals are performed, funerals attended, and condolences offered, all are important first steps. Arms reach out from around the world to touch with acts of Kindness.

Gradually the shock will wear off and be replaced by the acute,  aching pain of grief, sadness and endless tears, only to progress on to the deep valley of despair and suffering as the moments are relived, rooms are found empty, and school lunches no longer need to be packed. And then a deep anger at the senselessness of our loss sets in. Somewhere in this bereavement process we must find faith and hope that we can rebuild as we search for meaning and purpose.  We must rebuild our shattered lives through community and a commitment to find loving ways to build a new safe base, and create secure and firm new attachments which will keep our children safe and restore our wounded souls.  Guns will not heal.

A line from an author I have been reading frames it this way:  “A fundamental and permeating strength of humankind is the capacity to form and maintain relationships-the capacity to belong.  It is in the context of our clan, community and culture that we are born and raised. . . .We each feel a need to be connected to the people of our past, and without being able to draw on this connection-the narrative-it is almost impossible to envision hopes and dreams for a connected safe future.”  Richard Rose

We must also learn from this tragedy:  it is the children who do not feel this inclusion, who have been marginalized and have become fragmented and damaged and do not feel this affirmation of community who grow up full of rage and strike back because of their wounds.  It is the failure to love them that is the source of such terrible, rageful violence.  And it is a careless, neglectful nation that allows  weapons of war to be so easily acquired by these wayward, wounded children.

Tragedy and loss is a universal human experience and in that way Newtown is every town.