This city will heal, we’ve heard many times after last Friday’s deadly rampage at an Aurora theater.
We will heal, if healing means learning to live with pain.
This time, 12 of our fellow citizens were taken away, and others were injured. Heart after heart was broken across our city.
Memories of Columbine, a lingering wound in this community’s soul, were loosed.
There was the same dazed feeling, the same heaviness, the same weariness. Hearing that Columbine was 13 years ago was a shock.
A vacation 13 years ago is barely remembered. But in this city, Columbine is remembered like a fresh punch in the gut.
We lived through the initial shock, and through the details of the horror.
Over the years, we saw “We Are All Columbine” bumper stickers become faded and torn.
And it never stopped hurting.
From all directions, we’ve been barraged with The Lesson of Columbine. The lesson is anti-bullying programs. Or tip lines. Or prayer in schools. Or more guns. Or no guns.
Maybe the lesson is that it never stopped hurting, and we went forward.
We’ll do that again. We’ll go to work and go home. We’ll commit acts of kindness and petty cruelties. We’ll laugh at jokes and get upset by frustrations.
When evil explodes as it did last Friday, it seems like it can stop us. It won’t.
Maybe the mundane nature of moving forward is the real triumph over evil.
Scott Gilbert is an assistant editor for Colorado Community Media and a former copy editor for the Rocky Mountain News.
