Friday, July 18, 2014

Mourning: a Sense of Community


It was late Wednesday when I wrapped up my day-long research trip and returned home just before midnight. I wasn’t in the door more than five minutes when my family accosted me with the day’s news: a crime of unimaginable violence had unfolded right in our own city—along streets I drive on a daily basis—and in the space of an hour brought us as a community to a place we’d never been, never wanted to be, before.

Incredibly, only three people lost their lives in the hail of bullets showered by the roadside of an unassuming suburban neighborhood.

Though the one innocent victim—a woman taken hostage during a bank robbery gone bad—is no one I know (well, she’s become the ubiquitous “friend of a friend”), I feel violated. Though the horror didn’t happen to me, in an inexplicable way, it did.

The same crime that was perpetrated on her—and on the other two (surviving) hostages dragged from their place of employment—has happened to me. And to my neighbors. And to everyone in this city.

If you perceive the message this event is telling you, that same crime is happening to you, too.

Those of us who research family history also, by definition, align ourselves to a sense of family. We have an affinity to kinship. Whether by the nature of our DNA or the nurture of familial considerations, in our families we share a common bond.

While it is not as widely acknowledged, there is a bond one step beyond family. It is that of Community: a sense of belonging to something larger than just our own family. Community brings us that feeling of “We’re all in this together.” Community brings with it a sense of shared responsibilities—we support each other’s rights to co-exist peacefully—as well as a respect that enables us to not only work together but also value life together.

When an act so egregious in its disregard for human life is paraded out in the presence of an entire community, it is an act directed toward not just the one whose life was arbitrarily taken, but to every member of that injured community.

There are some who feel that Community is dead—that people are too isolated, too absorbed with “self” to care about any broader assembly of those neighbors with that common bond of place. But Community is not a thing of the past. It is a sense that still can revive when we acknowledge what befalls others in our vicinity as happening to us, too.

While I customarily reserve this space for daily observations about the micro-history of my own family’s stories, what our city has just gone through has knocked the words out of me. I’m sure you’ll understand—if you wonder what I’m referring to, perhaps some links will spare me from explaining the horrendous details. Our city’s newspaper has covered the event (including a photo-documentary), as has a publication in a neighboring city to the south. I’m sure other news agencies have weighed in with their own commentary. There certainly were enough of them represented at yesterday’s press conference.

What happened to those misfortunate others in our city on Wednesday has happened to all of us here, too. As we feel one family’s loss becoming our own, we revive that languishing sense of Community. Hopefully, though through tragedy, we may restore that sense of Community to its potential as an effective force for good.

6 comments:

  1. Very powerful post, Jacqi. What a shame that these things happen.

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    1. Thank you for your kind comment, Elise. I have to apologize that it has taken me this long to respond. That kind of violence, so close to home, is enough to knock the wind out of me. I just couldn't even revisit it to just say, "Thanks for your comment."

      With a little space--and a lot of connecting with people in town who are as aggrieved as I am--it's a little less awful. I can't express how deeply I hope this awful experience becomes the catalyst to knit our community back together in a cohesive way it's never been before. Beauty from ashes. It can happen. We certainly need it to happen here.

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  2. The world and it's evils seem to be everywhere nowadays. I think your reactions are normal..scary for sure:(

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    1. It seems to be so different when it happens so close to home. Not so much scary. Saddened. For everyone in this place I really love.

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  3. The sense of groups helping others is not dead - as much as the Government tries to take over this "job." I saw it people helping people during Super Storm Sandy - and the Ice Storm we had last winter. And certainly there are neighbors helping neighbors. I truly hope that the expectation of "Big Brother" will do it never takes total hold.

    The help one another thing is what makes us human.

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    1. That's a vital point, Iggy. Helping one another really brings out something that transcends everyday life--a higher dimension.

      I really appreciated your neighbor-helping-neighbor post in your own blog a while ago. I think the key is to bring this all down to the personal level when the call goes out to meet a human need. Organizations may have the "manpower" but only a person can have a heart.

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