Life’s tragedies leave a much-too-painful mark

The last thing I did, before I locked the door and called it a day, was to stop and read the headlines on my computer.

Sitting in the dark study, in a room lit only by the glow of my monitor, I read the account of last week’s siege at Colorado’s Platte Canyon High School where a man walked into the school, singled out female students, assaulted them and held them hostage. Just as police stormed into the building, one of the students – a 16-year-old girl the man was using as a shield – broke away and tried to flee. The man shot her in the back of the head and then turned the gun on himself.

The last contact the family had with the girl was a text message.

“I love u guys,” the message said.

Less than two hours later she was dead.

I shouldn’t have stopped to read the headlines before bed. I was left queasy and sickened. I couldn’t sleep.

Still sitting in front of the computer, I thought about a girl who haunts me sometimes.

She died years ago, when I was a sophomore in college and she was a senior. She was quiet and smart and very pretty. We spoke a few times and I watched her occasionally as she walked across campus or leaned against a tree while she talked to her boyfriend. She was petite, and fair, and there was something about her that caught you and held your attention.

One December day, as the campus emptied for Christmas break, the girl drove down to the convenience store a couple of blocks from school to pick up a bottle of salad dressing for dinner with her boyfriend.

We never saw her again.

As she got back into her car in front of the store, she was abducted by a group of men. They drove her to an isolated area and did cruel, horrible things to her. And after they were through with her they put her out of the car to run for her life. As she fled through the scrubby underbrush, naked and injured, branches and briars tearing at her, her tormenters shot her again and again. “You’re killing me,” she screamed. “You’re killing me.”

And that’s exactly what they did.

The next morning, her battered, frozen body, curled and defenseless, was found. She looked, one of the policemen who worked the scene said, like a doll.

The campus was blindsided. For most of us, it was a first, bitter taste of real horror. It was the first thing that had ever happened to make us realize that we weren’t invincible.

We were in shock.

Then, a week or so after the girl was killed, when we were back at school and trying to inch our way toward normal, I walked through the hall of a friend’s dormitory.

As I passed a door, a movement caught my eye and I glanced that way. I immediately turned my head away but I’d already seen too much.

Inside the small room, a man and a woman, moving slowly and heavily like they were walking underwater, were silently opening drawers and closets, placing clothing, papers and mementos into boxes. I’d never met them but I knew instantly they were the girl’s parents.

I had to fight the impulse to break into a run. The room was so full of pain and anger and despair there was no air. Moving down the hallway, I had to fight for breath.

I could only imagine the girl’s suffering, but theirs was right in front of me. I can still see it when I close my eyes.

Sometimes, when I’m crossing a dark parking lot, or walking down a shadowy street, a sharp fear – planted by a girl’s death – crawls into my brain and I get afraid.

It happens every once in a while.

But the image of her parents, broken by grief, comes back to me more often. When I wonder where my children are and what they are doing. If they are safe and on their way home to me.

That was the image that came to my mind as I thought about a family waiting desperately for word from a child.

This morning, when I dropped my 16-year-old daughter off at her high-school, a busy campus boiling with students, my mind was still on what happened in Colorado.

I thought about the girl who died so long ago, about her parents and about the family of the child killed last week.

I thought about lives cut short, or cut too deeply to ever heal.

I lowered the window of the passenger side of my car and called to my daughter just as she melted into the crowd.

“I love you,” I said as she turned to me. “I love you.”