Tragedies in Lewiston
This week, there was a mass shooting at two locations in Lewiston, Maine, that's sent a lot of the people in our state reeling. The shooter is still at large. He is a reservist in the military who was allegedly hospitalized for voices in his head this summer.
Lewiston is a scrappy, former mill town. I lived there for six years. My daughter, Em, was born there in the hospital that reporters staged at Wednesday night, where loved ones tried to find out where their family members and friends were, their kids, their spouses. Those people went to play corn hole, to bowl, to eat. They did not come back. Eighteen died. Thirteen were injured. It's the 36 mass shooting this year. It is the worst one this year.
Zoey Levesque a little girl whose leg was grazed by a bullet said, “Like, it is something that you think never would happen. I never thought I'd grow up and get a bullet in my leg. Why? Like, why do people do this?”
That’s the question for violence in big ways like this, like wars, and in smaller ways, too. The why. It’s easy to get stuck there, to try to understand the un-understandable.
This horrifying moment for Lewiston, for the families and friends of all the people, breaks hearts. It breaks mine. I bet it breaks yours, too.
CONNECTIONS
My mom bowled in Lewiston. I have friends there who are mourning. I'm not writing that for sympathy. I'm writing that for connection. All of Maine is like me. We are all connected in multiple ways.
My friend, Kyle Shank, said this really well on Facebook. He wrote,
“Maine is a very big small place.
“Our state is the kind where driving 100 miles to visit a cousin or make a trip to Target isn’t unusual; it’s the norm.
“Ours is the kind of place where, when traveling out of state, folks who find out where you’re from will ask “do you know my friend so and so that live in Maine” and, to their surprise, we do. Of course we do.
“We all chose to live in a place that never quite makes anything easy because we love it, and by loving it we’ve tied ourselves together into this strange knitting: a people who love to disagree about everything but the weather, but a people who would think nothing of pulling over in a blizzard to help push you out of a ditch.
“Last night’s shooting in Lewiston was a horror that will touch every corner of this state. This is, and will be, an awful time for far, far too many. The only solace there will be, for now at least, is that we’ve got each other.
“Be there for your neighbor today. Check in the folks you’ve been meaning to talk to for a while now but haven’t been able to find the time. Call your mom. Take care of one another.”
Kyle's post has been shared 2,500 times. He's not a famous guy--not yet, at least. But his post resonated. There's a reason for that.
We all have choices every day. We can choose to find solace in each other. We can choose to knit together. We can choose to love. Not just here in Maine. Not just right now in Maine as our hearts ache for others and our souls call for peace, for justice, for solace for all those hurt. But in places torn apart by war, by oppression, in homes where there is no safety, in cities and towns across the world where fear walks down the streets with its head up high while love lurks in the shadows.
I hope you get to make that choice often and loudly and large.