Subtitle: How soon we forget, or Reason #614 why I don't want my kids in public school...
Yeah, like private school's any better nowadays...
I saw Dawn Anna last year when it first came out on Lifetime™, I'm guessing around the 5-year anniversary of Columbine. Dawn Anna is the true story of a mother of 4 who contracts a form of cranial vasculitis and the resulting surgeries force her to relearn everything from talking to eating. Fast-forward 5 years, she's recovered, but still symptomatic (severe vertigo, concentration issues), engaged to be married, and her youngest daughter, Lauren Townsend, is ripped from her by Klebold and Harris at Columbine.
I remember being impressed with this movie when I saw it last year, how it managed to give us the whole fighting-through-life-with-the-help-of-her-amazing-kids storyline without being saccharine or schmaltzy about it. So when it was on TV last night, I kept it on because we're in the midst of the summer TV drought of decent shows, and with the beers I was imbibing, I thought I could use a little uplift. Thing was, I'd forgotten about the Columbine link until it was almost on top of me, as the youngest daughter is walking away from Mom's car with a friend in a Columbine letterman's jacket. I was surprised that it happened back in 1999. I'd forgotten that the little bastards killed themselves and saved taxpayers the trouble of doing it for them. How in the world do you reconcile yourself to a death that random? I really need to compile thoughts like these into a book of essays, because there's a bunch of different tangents going off in my head, as I sort through the impact that movie had on me. How sad that the movie and not the act itself is what I remember. And how easy it is to forget.
There's still this cold spot in my belly as I think about it. I really need to get a copy of the Pagan Book of Living & Dying (M. Macha NightMare & Starhawk). I've always had a problem with the concept of death; not a fan of the fact that we can't remember what happens from one life to the next, plus the implied/assumed permanence of it, and I think that's one concept I need a grip on before kids enter the picture, so that I can eventually let them outside the house without going apoplectic. Probably smart, since I already recognize that one of the reasons I want to homeschool them is to shield them maybe too much from what's "out there."
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