Elegy in a Connecticut Corridor

Preface: It's been a while since I've blogged or written anything for that matter, but this weekend, like so many people, I was consumed by the horrors in the school corridors of Sandy Hook Elementary and this piece wrote itself.

Elegy in a Connecticut Corridor
December 15, 2012
 Jake Miller

                Thomas Gray walked a nearby English cemetery following the loss of a good friend, trying to make sense of the seamlessly toppling world about him. Gray’s life had been wanton with woe in 1742, as most of his family and friends had been taken from him, and he lived a rather unsuccessful, underwhelming life as a failed poet. Yet after walking these hallowed grounds, he looked around to reflect on the average men and women buried there. He composed his poem “Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard” pondering that, in another life, those buried there could have been the next leaders, celebrities, and heroes. Gray closes his elegy by thanking God for taking everyone there into His arms.

                The problem with Friday’s tragic events in Newtown, Connecticut, is that the majority of the individuals slain there were very different from those buried in Gray’s courtyard. Tragically, 20 of the 28 victims were elementary students. Instead a long-life lived to reflect, we are now put in the uncomfortable circumstance to ponder who they could have been. President Obama stated that “they had their entire lives ahead of them: birthdays, graduations, weddings… kids of their own.”

As of Saturday morning, with the investigation still pending, the names of these young men and women are still unknown to the public. However, according to Twitter posts from the media on the ground in Newtown, the children’s were identified through a “process of elimination,” etching the horrendousness of this shooting into the social fabric of our nation. Most are believed to be in Kindergarten and first grade.

Some of the victims that are known, however, are a few of the adults. School psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56, was retiring at the end of the school year. She was described by members of the community as someone “who loved her job” and was “excellent” at it.

Teacher Vicki Soto, 27, was a Sandy Hook teacher “who absolutely loved her job,” her cousin stated. She was frantically trying to usher her students into a closet and, in doing so, put herself between the gunman and her students.

Principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, 47, was in her third year as the principal. She was described as a “hero” to the school and someone who cared about every student there, said many parents. She put the school in lockdown mode via an announcement and then decided to enter the hallways and save any stray students—a decision that cost her life.

The shooter, Adam Lanza, and his mother, a substitute at the school, are added to the list of lives lost. Like the 20 young children, the identities of the other 3 adults remain undisclosed.

Like a mysterious, shattered tombstone in Gray’s courtyard, we sit bewildered, befuddled, and beside ourselves as to what could have been and, for many of these young children and the heroes who tried to save them, what never was.

As a teacher, I often think to who could have saved these children from Lanza. There are many people disturbed young individuals who may follow his path. This thought promulgates a need to discuss mental illness in America, because it is sure to factor in why and how such sinister and vitriolic acts of violence occur. Treatment and understanding alone may only prevent future atrocities such as the one we’re mourning in western Connecticut; for the sake of our national elegy, we need to secure the resources to help prevent disturbed people from transforming into malicious murderers and keep children entering schools, not interring in graves.

Lastly, we as a nation need to find a way to help those grieving. The loss of life for every parent is insurmountable and irreplaceable. Thinking about it makes any parents’ stomachs churn and tough to swallow the deep despair. Our nation must help those heal the wounds. There are bound to be many, and they’ll be most exposed when anyone walks that cemetery not far from Sandy Hook Elementary School. Long be the days for those that read the names on the tombstones, seeing how short a chance they had at this world to become the next leaders, celebrities, and heroes – before taken into God’s arms.