The Day the Bubble Burst

Three years ago the unthinkable happened. That Friday started off just like any other. I was sitting at my desk working, hadn’t yet made it to the shower, so I was in my pajamas. When my kids left for school I was distracted with work and didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t tell them I loved them.

Right after my husband and son left to drop him at school I felt an immediate sense of dread. But I shook it off and got back to work.

At 9:11 a.m. I received a text from my daughter who was in 9th grade at the time. She asked me what was going on, as they were on lock-down, Code Red, at her high school. I told her that I had no idea but I would find out. I assumed there was a robbery nearby and that the school went on lock-down. That kind of thing happened from time to time while the police searched for their suspect.

I ran out to the hallway and told my husband to get on social media and see if there were any posts about what was going on.

A few minutes later I received a call that would change our lives forever. It was my neighbor calling from a nearby gas station to tell me there was an active shooter at my son’s middle school. In that moment, panic took hold as she described to me that children were seen running from the school. I had been a substitute teacher and knew the training the teachers and administrators had. I knew that he was in the safest hands possible for an incident like this. Having had that same training I had always told him to run to our boat that was in storage nearby and get under the cover, and that my husband or I would be there as quickly as possible to get him.

Well, that was not how the scenario played out. I realized in that moment that I had no idea where my son was. I had no idea if he was safe. My husband jumped in the car, since he was dressed, and headed to the middle school. By that point, the school had evacuated the students to the high school where our daughter was.

I called my son over and over and over without a response. I texted him over and over and over without a response. There is no greater sense of fear than not knowing if your child is safe.

We received updates from the school and from the news that a student was shot and that the parents of that student had been notified. I will readily admit that I was thankful to not have been the parent that received that call. So, I knew that my son was safe but still had no idea where he was and couldn’t reach him.

My son had followed the school rules that day. He put his phone in his locker and didn’t have it in the classroom. While other students borrowed phones to reach their parents my son didn’t have my phone number memorized so I never heard from him.

My husband waited 5 hours at the school that day to get our son. Five hours to know that our child was safe. I spent that 5 hours pacing, praying, begging God for him to be safe.

Meanwhile my daughter kept me apprised via text of what was going on in her classroom. The high school had received a threat in between all of this chaos and so the students were locked in their classrooms hiding under tables. These poor teenagers were terrified. They were in the middle of a situation they should never have had to experience.

Later that evening, when I asked my son about it, he told me how cool it was to see the SWAT team. At the age of 13 I don’t think the true reality of the situation was comprehensible to him. He explained to me his classroom was on lock-down, as they weren’t quite sure where the shooter was, and he was standing there with his iPad ready to throw it if that person came to their room. As a mother, my heart broke at that moment. The reality of the fact that I cannot protect him from everything hit, and it hit hard. I told him how proud I was of him and how much I loved him.

That day the bubble burst for all of us. We were that city on the news saying “If this can happen here, it can happen anywhere.”

That weekend my husband and I decided to get the kids out of town so that we could get away and regroup. We went to an amusement park to take everyone’s mind off of what had happened.

Both of the kids stated they didn’t want to talk about the incident any further. So while we were at the amusement park I did a little investigation. Since I can no longer ride roller-coasters I held my daughter’s phone while she was on a coaster with my son and husband. I read through her texts with her friends from that day and watched a video she made. I was proud to see how she supported her friends and how they protected each other.

The video made me cry. She sat there under a table with trembling hands not knowing what was going on. She just got up and went to school that day. That’s all she did. How did it turn into everyone’s living nightmare?!

The following week I went to a therapy session for parents. The psychologist said something that really resonated with me and something that I want to share with others. Every time one of us asked our kids about the incident or how they were doing we were met with the same response. “I don’t want to talk about it.” “I just want to move on.” “I’m OK.” We all felt inept as parents, as we didn’t really know how to handle this subject with our teens. The psychologist told us to think of it this way. We were all sitting there as grown adults struggling. We were angry, sad, frustrated, we didn’t know how to articulate our own feelings and we are grown adults with fully developed brains. She told us that our kids would process it in their own time in their own way and that at some point they would want to talk and that at that point our job was to listen.

Three years have gone by and we still don’t talk about the incident. But we NEVER leave the house without saying goodbye and without saying I love you. We respect each other’s right to know that we have safely arrived at our destinations. We carry our phones ALWAYS.

Raising teens is hard in so many different ways. Make sure your teen knows you love them, TELL THEM. Hug them, pray for them, and never miss an opportunity to support your child. They need you regardless of what age they are.