Just Pray Song by Moriah Peters and Rhett Walker
It’s been three weeks since the Aurora Shooting. Life is slowly getting back to “normal” for me. It took me one week of extreme grieving and a meeting at the memorial site to view the theater to help me through this. I still have much to get through but my family is intact, my husband is home again, and I am feeling much better. It still surprises me how much the shooting seemed to impact me.
I know my family was tied to the shooting in many different ways and it SHOULD affect me. Heck, it affected so many people! Even people who have no direct connection to the theater or to the Aurora Police Department, but there were so many degrees of involvement for us that I think they all burst in front of me when the suspect did what he did. I got free movie tickets to see a preview of the new Disney movie and I gave them to someone else. I am not ready to step foot in another theater right now.
I won’t go to a theater until I go to the re-opening of the Century 16. I don’t even know how that will go. I am not even sure I will be able to step into that theater. I am looking forward to going with my “sissy” though. “Sissy” is my sister in law and that’s what she calls me. I like it alot. I guess it’s a “pet” name. 🙂 “Sissy” offered to go with me when the theater re-opens.
I am no longer angry about what happened. My company reached out a week and a half later but it was too late and I was blamed for not being “specific” enough in my needs. There was ALOT said that I won’t post here but it was pretty bad. I was shocked this was turned around on me and I feel like there has been some retaliation for coming forward. Only time will tell.
I am still missing my theater. Every Friday night, I get a reminder message on my iPad that Jason needs to be at the theater by 6pm. We still haven’t deleted his schedule and he hasn’t been working off-duty there since the shooting even though there is round the clock off-duty there right now protecting the place.
I have had some great support from friends and family. I have talked through the incident and how it affected me over and over. I have talked about how I was called into work in the middle of the night, while suppressing all my emotions about my theater being destroyed and people dying in that theater; and my husband being called in to work for an entire weekend while he faced death several times to assist with disarming a planted bomb. I talked about how my son used to see movies by himself while we sat him in the front row so I could see a different movie and how I mourn that I will never feel comfortable allowing him to do that until he is older…MUCH older.
I know my loss is much smaller than those who lost loved ones or were hurt. I hurt too. I hurt along with them. My heart aches for the families affected directly, for the City of Aurora, but also, my heart beams with pride for the police officers and firefighters who had to face such horrifying events. These events were rarely seen but are becoming a common now. Officers should never have to see this and I pray for those officers still struggling with the trauma they saw, the survivor’s guilt, and the feelings of not doing enough. You DID enough! You DID more than enough! More people survived because YOU GAVE ALL!
The “Just Pray” song was sent to me by my friend Christine. She sent it to help me get through my grief and it helps tremendously. Thank you Christine! I posted it here for others who continue to struggle. We have many steps ahead of us but we’ll make it!