By Ann M Lindaman
Quite often recent events will bring back past events. For me those recent events in were the senseless shootings in Binghamton NY and Pittsburg. Everyone feels for the victims and their families; that's a normal response. What is not normal is being cognizant of what they are going through and what is so extremely tragic is that nobody can figure out how to keep it from happening again. The First Shooting
In 1968 I was a teenager with a very persistent and painful ulcer. My Dad was the Medical Director of a hospital in Flint MI and decided to have me admitted to that hospital for a battery of tests to see what was causing my stomach pain. It is unclear to me whether I rebelled against going into the pediatric ward or if they didn't have room. Given the fact that I felt that I was so grown up, it could very well be that it was my bright idea not to be treated as a child. Whatever the reason was, I was placed in a room with two adult women. The second morning of my stay, the husband of the woman next to me came for a visit. He seemed pleasant enough but after showing me pictures of their children he proceeded to tell me that his wife had left him and asked what I thought of that and wanted me to agree with him that she should come back to him. I immediately felt uneasy. Why would he be asking me questions about marriage and children? I can't remember how I answered the questions; I just remember the uneasiness that I felt which I mentioned to my Dad when he came up to check on me that morning. He didn't take me very seriously and who could blame him. After all, I was only thirteen and what would I possibly know about adults and their problems. As I've come to realize, intuition at any age, shouldn't be ignored.
As the day went on, I underwent some tests and then I spent the latter part of the afternoon on the phone with a friend from school. While talking, the ladies husband returned. He pulled a chair up between her bed and mine and pulled the curtain as well, giving them a little privacy and blocking my view of the room. At this point I didn't think too much of it and continued my phone conversation. It wasn't long and their discussion turned to yelling. Then I heard her say, "So, you think you're a big man waving that gun around!" I whispered "he's got a gun" to my friend on the phone. Seconds later, I heard a nurse's voice in the doorway asking what was going on and then BANG! Then a scream, then another shot, followed by another and finally one last gunshot. Then it was quiet. So very quiet. At the time of the first shot, I had dropped the phone and crouched in my bed. I couldn't run out of the room as my bed was against the window which meant I would have had to pass by the couple. It seemed like forever that I stayed crouched in that bed, shaking, wondering what was happening on the other side of the curtain. I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't move. I was petrified, unable to move a muscle! Then suddenly I had that feeling that I wanted to run, to take flight, but I was so terrified. I sat up in my bed, very slowly reached over and touched the edge of the curtain with my shaking hands and so slowly I pulled it back. It felt like everything I was doing was in slow motion. Part of me wanted to get out of there as fast as I could and the other part of me was too afraid to move. I didn't know where to look first except that I desperately knew that I wanted out of there. The first thing that I saw was that the door was closed, and then I looked at the bed next to mine. The lady, who had been my roommate and had been talking with me earlier, was still sitting up in her bed. Her eyes were wide open but there was a small hole in the middle of her forehead which allowed blood to trickle down her face. I remember all of that like it was yesterday. I remember getting on my knees in the middle of the bed to be able to look all the way around the room. I remember wondering where the man was. I remember looking down towards the floor between the two beds. He was there but to this day I can't remember what I saw. I guess that was where my brain decided to protect me. From that moment most everything is a blur. I can almost remember opening my mouth to scream and I can sort of remember the sound of my own scream but it's like the story stops there in my head.
What I was told later is that when the nurse came in to see what was going on, she was the first victim. He shot at her, hitting her in the hand and with her other hand; she must have pulled the door shut as she ran out. They told me that the second shot was aimed at me. They were pretty sure of that as he was facing her and there was a bullet found in the wall above my bed. Then he shot her in the head and finally in his last desperate act, he stuck the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. When I began to scream, an orderly, who was one person amongst many, waiting on the other side of the door, decided not to wait another minute and came in. He carried me out; they took me to another room and gave me a shot of something that put me out for a long time. Later I learned that the other woman who was in the bed nearest the door had been walking the halls, so she wasn't harmed, thank God. I do recall the police trying to ask me questions but the drug they gave me must have been the dose for an adult because I wasn't able to get any words out and their faces looked distorted. Once I came out of the affects of that drug, my Dad took me home.
Luckily for my poor Dad, when the code was announced, the staff was understandably so shook up that they called the wrong room number, so it wasn't until my Dad made it all the way up to my floor that he realized something had happened in my room.
I have always felt fortunate that these were strangers. I have always felt like I've been able to compartmentalize the event because other than being a witness, it didn't really involve me. That sounds cold but that is how I handled it. What other choice did I have? Now I wish I had at least gathered some more information about them. But as I look back, that thirteen year old girl was traumatized and what's amazing, it was the second trauma within a year. It was like I had lived a whole lifetime in one year.
I have to say that there's probably a part of me that still has what they now call Post Traumatic Stress because knowing there's a gun around me, or seeing it, makes me clammy and I get a hyper feeling, that feeling that I had when I wanted to run but couldn't move. It must be similar to how some of our returning Veterans feel when certain noises trigger flashbacks. I think I've had one or two flashbacks, the most recent back in 1997 when I was driving home from work. A deer had evidently been hit by a semi-truck and it was literally torn in half. There was so much blood on the road. I had that same petrified feeling. I wanted to scream and I kept saying out loud, "there is so much blood". I am pretty sure that since that man put the gun in his mouth that what I saw was a lot of blood. I would think that since all this time has passed that my brain would let me recall that site, but it won't.
Many years later, after I became a parent, I tried to find out what happened to their children. I don't even have a name so it is kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack, but I do pray for them now and then. What an awful thing to live with, knowing your father took your mothers life and his own, leaving you orphans. The Second Shooting
Reliving the first shooting also makes me think of my Uncle Tom. He was kind, gentle and funny man and had a heart of gold. He believed in giving people a second chance. His way of helping was extending credit in his furniture store to people who had very little, people who otherwise couldn't get credit. He opened his Gold Star Furniture store in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Detroit, not far from where he grew up. The people in the area loved him for what he tried to do for them. Two of my aunts, his wife and sister, worked in the store with him. One day some men yielding guns came in with the intention of robbing him. We can only imagine what he was thinking. Possibly he was afraid that they would all die and wanted to protect his wife and sister. Maybe he was thinking about all the people who needed him, his three children perhaps or his parents. His parents who immigrated here in the early 1900's from Czechoslovakia and worked extremely hard to ensure their children had a better life than they had.
For whatever reason, instead of handing the money over, he reached in his desk drawer to pull out a gun. In a split second decision he had decided to fight back. He didn't win that fight nor did his family, friends or the people of Detroit who had come to love and admire him. One of the robbers shot him, they fled and he died in front of his wife and sister.
My Dad's family was very close when I was growing up. We spent nearly every holiday together either at my Grandparents place or one of my Aunt's and Uncle's. Cousin's were close, even my Dad's cousins. Sadly, not many families enjoy that kind of closeness anymore. But that was the way it was when I grew up. So, when this happened, it wasn't to an Uncle we barely knew, but rather to one we had spent much time with. An Uncle, who took us fishing, cared about us and loved us as one of his own. My cousin Thomas and I had both just graduated from high school and his two sisters, Tamara and Tracy were still in high school. Thomas had been accepted to Harvard, now he would not see that graduation. It was a gut wrenching funeral. Understandably my Grandparents very core was destroyed. My Grandmother kept saying over and over, "my son, my son". Sitting near the casket, rocking back and forth and repeating, "My son, my son, sometimes in English, sometimes in Slovak. And my Grandfather, visibly shattered and angry; nothing can prepare parents for a child's death. This happened at the end of May in 1972. It was close to Fathers Day; my cousins put Fathers Day gifts in the casket. The funeral was huge and there was not a dry eye in the place.
I can only speculate of course, but I have always wondered if he hadn't had the gun, whether my Uncle Tom might be alive today. Consequential Thinking
The constant fear mongering talk about the government infringing on our second amendment rights probably brings those two of my life experiences to the forefront of my mind as well. My two encounters with guns have not ended well. Yes, I understand completely that the guns did not act alone. There was a person at the other end of the trigger. Think about it though. This is what the Second Amendment which was written in 1791 actually says:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
The First Amendment talks about our rights to free speech, religion and assembly. The Third Amendment talks about quartering (or imprisoning) soldiers in peoples private homes. The Fourth guarantees people from unreasonable searches and seizures. The next five talk about criminals and prosecution.
We can only imagine what life was like in the 1700's. When our founding Fathers wrote the Bill of Rights, they probably started with a list of ideals that they felt were in the best interest of a Democracy in the 1700's. They could not imagine what life would be like now anymore than we can imagine what it was like then. Then they discussed, argued and finally agreed to the list. Next was the task of carefully choosing the wording. It looks to me as though they were laying the foundation to fight crime, not arming private citizens. In my eyes the sentence in that particular amendment isn't clear. Is it possible that the second amendment is actually meant for military and police or is it possible that they couldn't agree? No, I'm not advocating taking everyone's guns. I'm not a scholar or a Supreme Court judge. I'm just a woman who has witnessed first hand what happens when guns get in the wrong hands. One might argue that they could have used a knife or another means to kill. But nothing is as swift, accurate and final as a gun shot, so I don't buy that argument for a second. Yielding a gun gives a person the power to choose between life and death for themselves or for others. A person can fight against other weapons but it's pretty hard to fight against a gun pointed at your head.
I'll leave any changes to our second amendment to those who may wish to challenge it someday and to the Supreme Court. Because I love and respect our country, I'll stand up for the laws that we currently and how they've been interpreted. I'll stand up for your right to own a gun; however I do think that we need tighter gun control and a ban on assault weapons. We need to at least try to keep weapons out of the hands of violent or disturbed people.
Now and then I wonder why those violent tragedies happened to me and my family. I do know one thing, if I were to let any of these events in my life make me a victim, the perpetrator wins forever. I choose to view them as life experiences and move on. I'm only a victim if I allow myself to be and I don't want to be, so I'm not. Have they affected me? Of course they have but I refuse to let them destroy me. We have a say in our destiny. I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul. (William Ernest Henley)
