Choosing Hope: Moving Forward from Life's Darkest Hours

by Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis

  This is a mistake, I thought. I shouldn’t have come. I need to go back home.

  Nick held a protective arm around me, urging my every step forward. Finally, we reached the school. I wished there were police officers standing guard, but there were none. We headed to the school library, where the meeting was being held. It was already a full house. I was relieved to see that most of the staff had shown up. The e-mail had said that following the meeting, a bus would take us all to the high school where President Obama was scheduled to speak later that day. Even though it was the president, I couldn’t bear the thought of going. The whole town had been invited, and the idea of being in a crowd that size sent waves of panic through my body. I just wanted to grieve with my fellow teachers and go back home.

  As we walked in, I hugged some of my colleagues and Nick and I took our seats. A moment later, the superintendent walked in with a group of people I didn’t recognize. When she spoke, she introduced them as a team of mental health experts from Yale. They were there to talk to us about how to proceed when we returned to school. Children are resilient, she said. The sooner they were back in their routine, the better for them. We could have the day tomorrow, she said, and if we wanted to attend any of the twenty-six memorials, the district would provide substitutes for our classes. But school would officially resume on Tuesday.

  Tuesday? I tried to process what she said. She was giving us a day to breathe. Then we were all going back to school, and God knows where. And I was expected to leave my students with a substitute, a stranger, after what they’d just been through? Where was the compassion or empathy for our grieving community? The superintendent was telling us, two days after a tragedy of epic proportions, that it was time for us to get back to the classroom and for our students to be back in school. My body shook uncontrollably and I bit my tongue to keep from lashing out, from saying what was on my mind.

  We’re going back to school on Tuesday? Where are we going back to school? How can anyone possibly think our kids are ready to get back to their “routine” after what they’ve just experienced? I’m a grown woman and I’m falling apart. I could barely make myself leave my house today. Perhaps if you’d been there you’d understand. How callous and insensitive, I thought. Twenty-six of us were savagely killed. My students and I barely escaped. Is this how much their lives are valued? Our lives are valued?

  My blood boiled and I couldn’t stay quiet anymore. “Excuse me,” I said, raising my hand and speaking through gritted teeth. “This is my fiancé who is here with me. His boss has told him he can take an indefinite amount of time off to be with me because I’m too afraid to be alone.” Because his boss understands the magnitude of what has happened here, I thought. His boss understands that, at this dreadful moment in our community, the right thing to do is comfort our loved ones and one another. But here, where everyone has lost so much, no one seems to understand that. “You expect my students and me to be back—to get back into a routine—on Tuesday?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not!” I said.

  Grabbing Nick’s hand, I turned and walked out of the library, and out of the school.

  In the days that followed, I learned that many of my colleagues felt as I did. That we just weren’t ready to go back. I don’t know exactly what happened after I left the meeting, but some of my colleagues e-mailed and texted to let me know that our return date had been extended through the holiday break.

  Months later, a union representative came forward to say publicly that neither the teachers nor students had been emotionally prepared to return to school so soon, and that asking us to do so had been a mistake.

  The superintendent had become the target of feelings I didn’t know what to do with. I’d spat out some of my emotional turmoil at the first person that gave me provocation, but what had I accomplished?

  She hadn’t been in our school when it was under siege. She hadn’t witnessed the frozen faces of sweet little first-graders who thought they were looking at the last moments of their lives. She hadn’t heard the sounds my students heard. How could she know how to manage such a horrific tragedy? After all, there was no precedent to follow, no model in place for how to recover from a mass murder at an elementary school.

  Who would know the right way to handle that?

  Amazing Grace

  As afraid as I was to leave my house, I felt I owed it to my courageous colleagues and the beautiful children we lost to dig deep for enough strength to pay my respects and say my good-byes. I’d planned to attend all twenty-six memorials. Tuesday was the first service, the wake for the teacher whose classroom adjoined ours, Miss Soto. We’d often open the door that connected our classrooms to ask quick questions or share supplies. She was an extraordinary young teacher. Everyone thought highly of her (including me), which was evident at the wake.

  The funeral home was overflowing with mourners, and as I made my way through the crowd I caught a glimpse of her casket at the front of the room. How can she be in there? I asked myself, choking up. How is that fair? How did this happen? I couldn’t move. It almost felt as if my feet had melted into the ground. My hands shook and my face flooded with tears and I couldn’t catch my breath. I wasn’t even able to compose myself with her family members. I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t possibly have been helping her loved ones, who were already in such terrible pain. I felt like I was a reminder of how unfair it was that she was gone, because I was alive and there.

  Leaving the funeral home, I decided I would not attend any of the other memorial services. The idea of not being able to pay my respects to the others was devastating, but my presence wouldn’t be of help to anyone. I retreated back to the refuge of my own home, heartbroken, guilty, and with such a heavy heart that I couldn’t even say good-bye the way I wanted to.

  After that, my family and friends began building a protective cocoon around me. I was paralyzed by fear and melancholy and shuddered at the thought of going out in public. The world was a scary place and I couldn’t imagine it ever feeling safe again. I couldn’t even drive to the store to pick up groceries. So loved ones came to me.

  My closest friend, Casey, and her husband, DJ, surprised Nick and me one evening with a Christmas tree, complete with ornaments and garland and lights. They played Christmas music and decorated the tree while I sat on the couch and watched forlornly.

  Another friend dropped everything on Christmas Eve to stay with me and help me wrap gifts while Nick finally got away to do his shopping.

  People called and texted and e-mailed. They picked up groceries and dropped off meals. When Nick ran errands, someone was always there to “babysit” me until he returned. I couldn’t stay home alone. Most times I couldn’t stand to even be in a room by myself. I whiled away hours watching movies to avoid the news. The endless coverage of the shooter sickened me, and I couldn’t bear to see the pain on the faces of the parents who had lost their children, although I certainly admired their courage for speaking out. In those early days, I desperately wished for courage. The courage to walk into a grocery store. To close the bathroom door. To sleep in a darkened room.

  My thoughts haunted me. Why wasn’t I stronger? What had happened to me? On December 13 I was strong, independent. I had a purpose. Now I was afraid of everything. I felt useless. How would I be able to help my students when I couldn’t help myself? They were suffering as I was. They were having problems sleeping. They didn’t want to be alone. They were afraid of their own shadows. Would they ever be carefree first-graders again? I wondered. Had their childlike innocence been taken forever? Because we survived, people said we were lucky to be alive. I took that to mean we weren’t entitled to grieve. Were we all supposed to just get on with it? To thank our lucky stars that we were still here? Did we even have a right to our pain? I had a million questions and not a single answer.

  My friends tried to help me by talking about anything to get my mind off the shooting. Small talk worked for
only so long, and then my mind had its way with me again and I was back in that tiny bathroom, listening desperately to the cries of the people who were being hurt, praying for mercy for my students and me. As kind as everyone was being, as much as they did to try to help me work through the quagmire of emotions I was feeling, I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin. I slept with the lights on and the TV flickering. I showered with the bathroom door open (still do) because our bathroom doesn’t have a window and I feared being trapped. I was afraid of every sound, every stranger, every knock on my door. I dreaded nighttime, when Nick was sleeping and I was alone with my thoughts. When I had nightmares, they sometimes awakened me with loud cracks of gunfire. The life I loved had turned to dark and I feared I would never see light again. How will I recover? I wondered. How will I ever get out of this place I’m in? A place where everything was murky and frightening and wrong.

  I pleaded with God to intervene. Prayer has always played a central role in my life. As a little girl, I knelt by the side of my bed and said the same prayer every night: “Lord, please let me get married and have children, and please let my parents be around to see both.” I was seven when I prayed to find my lost doll, Jill. I tore my room apart looking for her, and worried that maybe my mom had mistakenly included her in a bag of used clothes and toys we’d donated to the Salvation Army. When I asked Mom, she said she didn’t think that Jill had been donated, but she couldn’t be absolutely sure she hadn’t accidently tossed her in one of the bags. I’d had Jill since I was a baby and I was really worried about what had happened to her. When all else failed, I sat down and wrote God a letter, asking for his help: “Dear Lord, please bring Jill back. She is very important to me. Love, Kaitlin.” I hung the note on our front door, and that night, for extra measure, I also said my bedside prayers asking for Jill’s return. It took a few days, but I finally found her, tucked behind a corner of my bed. For a seven-year-old, that was proof enough that God had been listening (or reading).

  Growing up, I usually prayed in generalities, but when something particularly troubling was happening in my young life, I’d tailor my prayers to include whatever it was that was going on, whether it was about a spat with a friend or a math lesson I couldn’t master. I remember I prayed my entire sixth-grade year for the mean girl in my class to stop bullying me. I was twelve years old, in a new school, and trying to make friends, but that girl picked me out and taunted me every single day. One time, she knocked a book out of my arms and then stepped on it so I couldn’t pick it up. When I grabbed her foot to try to move it off my book, she shouted for everyone to hear that I was feeling her leg (insinuating that I was a lesbian). After that, whenever she saw me in class or in the hallway, she called me Feely. “Oh! There’s Feely! Who’s Feely feeling now?” It sounds funny now. But you remember how it was at that age. All you wanted was for everyone to like and accept you. I was devastated by the mean girl’s words and said the same prayer every night: “Please, Lord. Let her stop picking on me and please let everyone else like me.” The girl called me Feely for the rest of the year, but I felt better knowing that at least God was on it.

  As an adult, I’d strayed from organized religion, but my belief in God and the power of prayer never wavered. I believed in this Bible verse that talks about prayer: “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.” I prayed every morning and every night. After the tragedy, I prayed four and five times a day. I prayed for the twenty-six people we lost. I prayed for everyone who knew and loved each one of them. I prayed for our school. I prayed for the strength to be able to carry the heavy burden of grief I felt. I prayed for salvation, and the courage to be able to be home alone, and sleep in the dark, and stop being so afraid. I prayed that my students and I really had gotten out of that bathroom alive, and that I wouldn’t suddenly wake up from a nightmare to realize that I hadn’t been able to save them and we were all dead. I thanked him for hearing my prayers. It was no use.

  The only thing that gave me brief moments of solace was when I was singing “Amazing Grace,” the famous folk hymn and African American spiritual. I’d learned it in church as a little girl and always found it comforting. Now it was becoming my lifeline. I’d started singing it on the first morning after the shooting. The moment I woke up and my feet touched the floor, it came to me. At first I hummed it. Later, I sang the words, sometimes softly, sometimes to myself.

  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

  That saved a wretch like me.

  I once was lost but now am found,

  Was blind, but now I see.

  ’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear.

  And grace, my fears relieved.

  How precious did that grace appear

  The hour I first believed.

  The lyrics resonated with me. It was comforting to think that someone who was once lost was found, that someone who was blind could see. Perhaps there was hope for me. Hope that one day I would again be the independent woman I once was. A woman who took charge of her life, who was in control of her feelings and emotions, who lived her dreams. But how would I ever be that woman again when the thought of performing the simplest tasks made me freeze? Getting on an airplane. Going to a shopping mall. Walking back into the classroom. It just didn’t seem possible that I would ever be able to conquer the fear that was suffocating me—except when I thought about those lyrics. They helped me to breathe. I was once lost, but now I’m found. When I was at my lowest, they sustained me, if only momentarily. In a world that seemed so suddenly dark, that song provided a glimmer of hope. But now I’m found. But now I see. I needed to believe that I, too, could overcome. So I’d sing and sing until I finally fell still. Except that when I stopped singing, the turmoil started all over again. “God,” I prayed, “please save me from this bottomless pit of despair.”

  So it went for days, then weeks.

  I don’t want to live this way, I thought. This isn’t living.

  This is a living hell.

  I have to find a way out.

  Am I Really Here?

  Iwas able to visit with my students in the week after the shooting. Our room mom invited all of us to her home to make the gingerbread houses we were supposed to make in school that week. Being with my class allowed me—and, I believe, them—a welcome respite from our despair. I knew my students were suffering. It broke my heart to think about first-graders burdened by memories that would paralyze most adults. I thought I’d scream if I heard one more person refer to children as “resilient,” inferring that they’d bounce back quickly and with relative ease. If you’re talking about recovering from normal childhood setbacks, children are generally pretty adaptable, yes, resilient. But I didn’t know of a paradigm for first-graders who lived through what ours had. At least at our room mom’s house, my students and I were able to allay our anguish for the few hours we were together. If only it could have lasted.

  Almost every day, I had those moments when I asked myself, Am I really here? Did my students and I really survive? Were we shot and killed like the others, and is this some parallel universe I’m living in? Maybe heaven means everyone knows I’ve passed except me? I asked my mom the same questions relentlessly. She patiently assured me that yes, we all got out of the bathroom safely. We were all alive and I was really there, in the present, with her. Her reassurances satisfied me for a little while, but then I’d start doubting again and ask Nick or a friend the same set of questions. “Are you sure my students are alive? Can you prove I’m really here with you?”

  I heard from parents that my students were struggling with similar repercussions. Some of them were in treatment for trauma-related stress. Some were plagued by vivid, terrifying nightmares and intrusive thoughts. Others spiraled into panic from sudden sounds: a loud clap of thunder, a slamming door, a police siren. Their wholesome first-grade way of thinking had become infected with the harsh real
ity that the world could be a very scary place. I often heard about students who were experiencing “irrational fears,” for instance, they were terrified that the bad guys were going to return. That didn’t sound unreasonable to me. Before the tragedy, worrying that a gunman would go on a murderous rampage in our suburban elementary school would surely have seemed like an “irrational fear.”

  Our kids were no longer like other kids. Their childhood normalcy had been stolen from them. How do you reassure a first-grader that the monster under their bed isn’t real when they’ve met the monster? How do you tell a child that it’s okay to go back to sleep, because it was just a bad dream, when they’ve lived a nightmare? How do you soften a six-year-old’s fear of death when they’ve seen hell? How in God’s name do you help a little one put into any kind of perspective the horror that took place in our school?

  I think when you survive a catastrophic event in which so many others have lost their lives and you can’t fathom how you didn’t, it’s hard to grasp that you’re still here. You’re caught up in a roil of emotion you don’t understand. You can feel grateful but still guilty that you survived. You want to appreciate life, but fresh memories of sights and sounds that no one should ever hear or see keep you trapped in a living hell. You need to express your suffering, but you feel unworthy because, after all, you are still alive. I didn’t know what to do with all of that turmoil, so how in the world could a first-grader be expected to cope?

  I worried that the community—and not in any way out of cruelty or malice, but from a lack of understanding—might not appreciate the intensity of what we’d experienced or the seriousness of the fallout from it. I understood the collective thinking: You are the lucky ones. You survived. But it just wasn’t that black-and-white. We had been gravely injured emotionally and we needed time and help to heal.