Columbine Aftermath: Would You Forgive the Shooters?

Columbine Memorial
Clement Park, Littleton, CO
Image From Wikimedia Commons

Awhile back, a high school student from Medellin, Columbia asked me a series of questions about 'Columbine' as part of a project she was doing in her English class.

What follows is my answer to Question #4 in the Series:

Would You Forgive the Shooters?

Oh, I don't know....

What time of day is it?

What day of the week is it?

What month of the year is it?

Who am I with, and what are we discussing?

Am I 'required' to forgive the shooters?

Will forgiving the shooters make me a happy person?

Will my forgiving the shooters make a difference in anyone's life, much less my own? I mean, they're dead, right?

Seems like the more I tried to come up with an answer to the original question, the more confused, frustrated, and emotional I became. Truth is, English is a very strange language....very strange, indeed.

In its proper context, the original question sounds as if this student was asking me to forgive the shooters.

Not "could".

Not "should".

Not "can".

Not "may" (wait...that's not proper English, is it?).

No. The question asks "would" I forgive the shooters.

Now, given that the question is being asked by someone whose English is a second language, I can certainly understand how the would could (see what I did there) be seen as asking me to do something especially by those whose primary language is English...in this case to forgive the shooters of Columbine. 

I'm not so sure that's what was being asked of me, though. In fact, I'm pretty sure that is not what was being asked of me.

The question did, however, prompt me to analyze what was being asked almost to death before coming up with anything at all that might even remotely answer it.

When I gave it some of that good old fashioned analytical thought, the list of questions above kept popping into my head and kind of prevented me from making any kind of progress whatsoever. After all, those questions weren't the ones being asked. The question was/is: "Would you forgive the shooters?"

So many things came to mind, and still do.

None of those things, however, not one single one of them, directly answer that simple, straightforward, brutally honest question seeking an equally simple, straightforward, brutally honest answer.

The thoughts were there, but the words never seemed to come out quite the way I wanted them to in order to convey to the reader the enormity of what's being asked here. I'm still not sure what I'm writing now even conveys the thoughts I want to convey.

But, at some point I came to the realization and acceptance if I didn't put something down in writing now, then it wasn't going to happen at all.

I also realize and accept the tenor of the question, itself, is directed at me and not at anyone else.

I think that's the hardest part in all of this....being asked to share feelings I'm not really actually ready to share even after all these years since April 20, 1999. 

So, I won't....share those feelings I'm still uncomfortable with, that is. 

Sorry, just can't do it, and the questions listed above will remain unanswered....at least in this blog post.

I do, however, have a bottom line in all of this, and that's that I'd really rather completely forget about the shooters, but can't by virtue of the fact this event keeps rearing its ugly head even after all these years.

That ugly head evinces emotions and mood swings in me still; some more positive than others, some more negative than others. 

So, it kind of depends on what kind of mood I happen to be in at any given time whether the shooters will be forgiven at that particular moment in time, and whether at that particular moment in time I happen to actually be giving one, or both, of them even an iota of thought.

To me, forgiveness, or the absence of resentment, isn't a one time thing. 

No sirree....not at all....especially when it comes to the two shooters of Columbine --- and especially when the actual shooting, in and of itself, isn't the only thing that arguably needs to be forgiven!

How can it be when something like the root cause(s) of Columbine are the subject of the conversation? Those root causes continue to be points of ongoing discussion and points of ongoing contention. 

Therefore, the two shooters of Columbine are....not were....are, at the very core of the root causes for this massacre by virtue of the mental illness involved, easy access to both 'legal' and 'illegal' weaponry, and their desire to be 'infamous' to name a few.

Today.

Still.

Ongoing.

Personally, root causes are the kinds of things that come to my mind almost immediately when asked any question(s) about Columbine.

Not the two shooters.

Not even what they did.

Rather:

Why they did it.

How they did it.

And, finally, what can be done in the future to help prevent something like this from ever happening again! 

Those are the things I think about....and, that right there is my 'forgiveness', if one wants to call it that and if you can catch my drift for the shooters of Columbine.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

It ain't easy. It's ongoing. It's a life's journey.

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