Choose one

Each morning I wake up and for a moment I feel the joy of a new day. But all too quickly my throat tightens, and I remember what is happening here. Many people don’t have the grace of that moment. They can’t for a second forget the loss they have suffered this week.

What we know about this mass shooting is bad enough, but what’s worse, is that every day we find out more people have died. There is no digesting this news when more and more grief is added to this meal of sorrow.

Whether you have a connection to the tragedy or not, you feel this tightening, this sense of helplessness that hangs like a shroud over your eyes and heart when death and loss fill every day.

Everyone is looking for something they can do to help. It’s not within our power to bring back the people that have died but we can honour their memory. There are a lot of suggestions on what we can do to move through the grieving process —social media tributes, candles in the window, and monetary donations to the families left behind.

But one thing I know from life experience, is that no matter how much we want to help, for those of us not directly impacted by this tragedy, in the months and years to come, this tragedy will fade. And although now we say we want to remember the names of the victims, not the perpetrator, it is his name we will remember when we think of this horrible event in the years to come.

That is not because we want to remember the shooter but because the human mind can’t remember so many separate pieces of information—not without trying. Phone numbers are seven digits long because seven discrete pieces of information is what our brains can handle. We can’t remember all the names of those lost to this tragedy.

Recently I read something that, at the time, I thought I had no use for—it was a suggestion that in the instance of some mass shooting, natural disaster or terrorist attack- you choose one name to remember. When there are 10s, 100s or 1000s of victims it is difficult to remember the people behind the numbers, so choose one and remember them every day.

Choose one name and say it, write it, read it each day. Pick a time, perhaps when you first wake up, your first coffee of the day, or when you lay down to sleep—but choose a time to remember and do it every day.

I will choose one person and find out one fact about this person to remember them by. I will repeat it every day and I will not think of this person as a victim, because surely that is not how they would like to be remembered. I will think of them as the person who embodied this fact—did this job, played this instrument, was a daughter, son, mother, or father.

I will say the name, read the name, write the name --of a person I never knew. That person will be who I always remember when the anniversary of this horrible tragedy comes around year after year.

I will remember them every day and keep their name alive because it’s the one thing I can do.

Emily Tuck—fiddle player.