Where do I start when it comes to the heart breaking events that have happened this past week? Tonight the TV show The Voice started their episode with the most haunting version of "Hallelujah" sung by all of the contestants holding up the names and ages of the people killed at the school in Connecticut. No lights, no production, no crazy dancers, just darkness with candles and a beautiful song. By the end of it, tears were streaming down my face and this entry had to be written.
Friday when I found out about the mass shooting it transported me back to April 20, 1999 and that week that followed it. I was a Sophomore in High School when the Columbine shooting occurred. It's funny how there are details about this week that I can't remember, but some that are so fresh in my mind. I don't remember where I was when the shooting happened, how I reacted, or basically anything except the aftermath. But I vividly remember that all of the sudden people in trench coats were evil, that we had a bomb threat in the high school and at the elementary school where my little sister went. I remember we suddenly got a security guard. I remember seeing the awful videos in the news and thinking that those kids looked just like me and my friends.
But what I remember most about this awful week was that it started on Tuesday, April 20th and on Tuesday April 27th it got even worse. That whole week was filled with anxiety and teenage confusion about what it meant to be in high school when that school shooting occurred. Our high school was shaped like an upside down U and during the bomb threat we were evacuated to the middle of the U sparking debates on safety. I remember having 5th period free and almost leaving the school on Tuesday. There was an announcement for everyone to go to the gym and over 10 years later I remember my exact thought, "I can't believe we are having a bomb threat and they are putting us in the gym."
After we had all gotten settled I remember my principal going up to the microphone and saying welcome and then turning around to compose himself. He told us that Brent had left a suicide note in the library and had taken his own life. I can remember the way he turned around like it was yesterday, the image of him crying while telling an entire gym full of people that knew and loved Brent, that he was gone. Moscow is a small town, there were less than 400 kids in my entire high school and the majority of them knew Brent.
Brent Reynolds, I danced with him at Prom that Saturday night, he wore a bow tie and he smelled like Calvin Klein cologne. He sat behind me in Mrs. Milligan's math class in Jr. High and when we graded each other's papers loved putting giant black marks on my wrong answers. There were a handful of Asian kids at MHS, me and Brent being two of them. We always had a special bond, not because we were Asian, but that we were adopted kids that were just from Idaho. He was so vibrant and full of smiles. He was the first person I knew to die, the first person I knew to take their own life, the first funeral I attended, the first time I had seen grown men cry, his loss was felt everywhere in that school. I remember going to Mountain View Park and hurling rocks at the creek with so much anger. It was beautiful on the Palouse that day, winter wheat growing behind Mountain View with the sun setting and me sitting on the swings knowing the world was a different place.
My point is, that after all this time, tragedy like Connecticut always bring me back to that week. The first school shooting I can remember and the first time I lost a friend. But 13 years later, I think back and remember how awful it was, but I can also still see my friend Brent's smile and hear his laugh and smell his cologne, and see his little wire guys and hear him play music. Sometimes I can't remember where I left my keys, or if I turned off my kitchen light before leaving for work, but other memories are forever in my mind as clear as the day it happened. Any kind of loss is tragic, but I will never forget him just like no one will ever forget those beautiful children and teachers.
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