Two Years Later

It has been two years since that fateful April day at Virginia Tech. I wrote this then and will re-post it now. It is still unbelievable and still makes me want to cry.

"While 32 of our friends and classmates are in heaven trying to explain what a Hokie is, I stand here sure in the fact that I wouldn't want to be anything else."
So, yesterday I got a message from Kevin telling me something bad had happened at our beloved Virginia Tech. When I checked the news one was dead and one was injured- some kind of "domestic disturbance". By the end of the school day, that number had jumped to 33 dead, 20 more injured. We both sat on the couch in disbelief as we watched the events unfold on the TV and the internet.

It wasn't that long ago that I was there- walking under the arch in Norris to make it over to Hokie Grill and back (usually with Macel) before the next class started. It wasn't that long ago that we were stumbling the mile or more from the commuter lot to make it to a football game before kickoff after 8 hours of tailgating, walking right by that building. It wasn't that long ago that we had some random sorority event in the crossover lounge at AJ. And it wasn't that long ago that many of my friends sat in the very classrooms where this all went down.

Today in school was weird. Trying to pull myself together so that I could answer the questions my students had. Many of them knew I graduated from Tech, many still did not. Hearing them say they were scared to go to college now and that they didn't understand why this had happened was hard because, at 8:30 this morning, I did not understand why this had happened- part of me still does not understand why this happened. And some of them were still jerks.

I guess it is easy to try to place blame because that is what we try to do when tragedy strikes. But this person was intent on finding and killing who he was looking for. If it had not been Norris Hall, it would have been a dining hall, or a dorm lounge, or the Drillfield. The one person to blame for this is dead along with 32 innocent individuals. It is terrible and just....sad. The human stories are starting to emerge from all this...the ones that tear your heart out of your chest and make you go back to that place that you once thought was so safe.

And here we are now...both of us still staring at the TV in disbelief. Talking to our friends who maybe finally understand that once you become a Hokie you never stop- orange and maroon always match- and you still think Blacksburg is one of the best places in the world. My best friend- a diehard Hokie Hater- is dressing her son in orange and maroon on Friday My sister- a Wahoo- has put a VT logo on her Myspace. And thousands of people throughout the world have seen our tiny little Blue Ridge Mountain town pull together to get through something that no one should ever have to experience.

As cheers of "Let's Go Hokies" rise above the sea of people on the VT drillfield, I just want to cry.