If I Don’t Make It, I Love You

I FIRST LEARNED about the New River Community College shooting when Megan Doney, an English professor who worked at the New River Valley Mall campus at the time of the shooting, submitted a letter for publication to the book through an open call. In this letter she writes to teachers about living in the aftermath of the Santa Fe High School shooting, she writes This experience is lonely and isolating. It halts conversations, even with family members. What I loved about her piece was her advice to teachers: Others will encourage you to move on, to let it go, to not let this event define you. Resist this distracting discourse of triumph. May 18th will not be the sum of all your years as teachers, but it will not leave you unmarked. Nor should it. I’d not come across teacher-to-teacher advice in my research, yet. I knew this was a perspective we needed in the book.

Upon reading her piece, I reached out to Megan through email asking her permission to publish. In that same email, I asked if she could connect me with more survivors from that shooting. While she couldn’t directly connect me, she did recommend some newspaper articles that might point me in the right direction. Through reading these articles, I discovered Taylor Schumann, a part-time employee at the College’s New River Valley Mall campus who was shot as she attempted to hide in a closet. I wanted to hear her story, and invite her to contribute.

I finally found a “Taylor Schumann” on Twitter. Hoping she was the right person, I tweeted her if we could Direct Message (DM) about a project I was working on about gun violence. A few minutes after that initial tweet, she messaged me Hi Loren! How can I help? Excited that it might be the Taylor Schumann, I wrote back quickly Hi Taylor! Thank you for responding. I admit, I am not entirely sure you are the correct person, but I wanted to reach out anyway. I am working on a collection of primary sources written by survivors of school shootings. I wanted to check if you were at New River. If not, I am terribly sorry. Thank you so much for your time, and quick response! I anxiously waited for her to write back. Five minutes later and no response. Then. The three dots: Hi! Yes that was me! I was shot through my hand. I’d be honored to contribute and help however I can! After a few more DMs, we coordinated a time to talk on the phone the next day.

On Tuesday morning, October 9, 2018, I called Taylor. Over the phone, her voice was cheerful and had a Virginia, Southern like drawl. I told her more about the project, including deadlines and scope of the project, and ask if it’d be something she’d like to contribute to. Yes, absolutely! She said. But I’m not sure what I’d write about it. And I’m scheduled to deliver my baby boy tomorrow. I asked her are you nervous? The question created a ripple effect. She told me about being shot through the hand. The surgeries and painful physical therapy she had to endure, and how still, today, she struggles with mobility in that hand. She added, sometimes I worry it will affect the way I can care for my son. Like would I be able to hold him, hold his head up, feed him? I sighed. I think you should write about this, I said. I think you should write a letter to your son about the shooting, all of your fears about the use of your hand. This way you can give it to him when he’s older.

The next day Taylor delivered her son. A few weeks later she sent me the first draft of her letter titled “What He Doesn’t Know about His Mother.” She writes to him He doesn’t know it yet, but his life is already affected by gun violence. Specifically, school shootings. That line chills me from my lower back to my neck. Her letter is evidence to the power of gun violence, its ripple effect through generations, but also shows her courage, her ability, as sociologist Brené Brown would say, to speak from the heart. I have to believe it’s this type of vulnerability that help others who’ve endured the same horror.

LOREN KLEINMAN, EDITOR

OCTOBER 2018

No one was killed at New River Community College,
but two women, including Taylor Schumann, age 22,
were wounded.

WHAT HE DOESN’T KNOW
ABOUT HIS MOTHER

By Taylor Schumann

Taylor Schumann was a 22-year-old, part-time employee at New River Community College satellite campus at the New River Valley Mall in Dublin, Virginia. After hearing commotion at the front desk, she hid in a closet. As Schumann tried to hold the closet door shut, the shooter shot her in the hand.

I laid on my hospital bed, fresh from what would be my first of four surgeries to repair the damage from the gunshot wound to my left hand. I still hadn’t regained full vision from the shard of wood that had cut my eye. Through my blurry vision I looked at my fiancé, now husband.

“One day, I’ll tell our kids about how brave and strong their mom is,” he said.

All I could think of was How on earth am I going to take care of a child if my hand never works again? Will I be able to pick them up? Comfort them? Nurse them? What happens if my limitations are too much and I fail them?

Now, five and a half years later, I’m sitting on my bed. It’s 1:00 a.m. and I’m staring at our new baby. A boy. He doesn’t know it yet, but his life is already affected by gun violence. Specifically, school shootings.

He doesn’t know that his mom is still afraid to go to the movies. Or that she has to sit in restaurants and coffee shops facing the door so she can assess any danger that might walk through. He doesn’t know she shakes when she hears a loud bang. He doesn’t know that large crowds scare her because she can’t see what everyone is doing. He doesn’t know she wakes up from nightmares or that she sobs when the news of another shooting or another victim finds their way to her.

He doesn’t know that sometimes her hand aches in pain when she tries to maneuver his small, newborn body, and that the nerve endings are still raw when he innocently scratches her bullet wounds with his brand-new fingernails. He doesn’t know she’s afraid of failing him in the everyday mundane activities that make up life, which started because someone brought a gun to her school.

He doesn’t know that it scares her to think that these anxieties might be forced onto him, and that he may grow up in a shadow of her fear that he didn’t ask for or deserve.

Maybe he’ll never have to know. Maybe all he’ll know of his mom is that she loved him with everything in her being. That she did everything in her power to keep him safe. That she worked hard to make sure none of this ever had to be his fate. Because as his mom, I never want to look in his eyes and tell him we didn’t do anything to stop it.

A LETTER TO THE FACULTY
OF SANTA FE HIGH SCHOOL

By Megan Doney

Megan Doney is an English professor who worked at the New River Valley Mall campus at the time of the shooting.

Dear Colleagues,

I am a community college professor, and I too am a witness to a shooting on my campus. Afterward, like a good academic, I scoured every database I could find for research on what happened to educators who’d lived through rampage violence. I needed to know what had happened to all the people who had been burned in this fire before me, because I didn’t know whether I was normal. Were my nightmares typical? Would they stop? What should I say to my students about what had happened? Was this the price of being an educator in the twenty-first century?

I was dismayed to find out that there was hardly any information on people like us. The absence of firsthand narratives of educator witnesses to school shootings felt like an inexcusable, baffling elision given the public and psychological power shootings exert. We argue ad infinitum about guns, and mental health, and security measures, all the logistical and political flashpoints that catalyze public discussions about gun violence. But when it comes to the people who are in the classroom with their students when the shots pierce the air, educators who have to decide in an instant whether to flee or barricade, open the door or lock it, our voices are absent from academic literature and from public discourse. We are ciphers.

I address this letter to you, not to the students, because I know that while you have been preoccupied with caring for them, I want to reassure you that I, and others who have been on this journey, are caring for you. I offer you the following small sentiments of consolation and perspective.

Others will encourage you to move on, to let it go, to not let this event define you. Resist this distracting discourse of triumph. May 18th will not be the sum of all your years as teachers, but it will not leave you unmarked. Nor should it. How could you be human beings otherwise, if this event didn’t rattle your bones with its senselessness? Writing for the website Return Yoga, Karin Burke reflects, “It isn’t the passage of time that heals us, but the passing through experiences.” People who encourage you to move on are talking to themselves, not to you.

This experience is lonely and isolating. It halts conversations, even with family members. Most people won’t be able to say more than, “That must have been scary.” That is as far as they can follow you into the experience. You’ll feel like there is no one you can confide in, no one who can bear the additional burden of listening to you and helping to carry your grief. In his excellent book The Evil Hours: A Biography of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, David J. Morris, writing about his experiences in Iraq, reflects, “At times, my sense of alienation was so strong I seemed almost radiant with it, as if a stranger could look at me and tell that something was wrong.” You too will walk through the world feeling as though everyone can surmise what has happened to you, as though the wreckage is scattered across your faces. You’ll see your classroom in a different way; you’ll wonder how strong the glass is, or which direction you need to turn the lock in order to secure the door. You may look at your students’ faces and wonder which of them has the potential to do this. You may unconsciously look for the exit signs in every classroom, restaurant, and theater. You will learn to live in this new world where safety is an illusion.

If you’re like me, you became educators because you recognized something sacred in learning; you experienced the challenge of changing your own mind, the revelation of new knowledge, the expansive worldview that education allowed you. And now, the place where those transformations take place has been violated in the worst way. The sanctuary is in ruin. But you can rebuild it, and in this endeavor your students are your allies. When you return to your classroom, you’re taking a public stand. You’re choosing to live and to honor learning. You’re choosing to arm yourselves with faith in your students and in each other. Instead of shutting down, embrace vulnerability, because in doing so you’ll fend off cynicism, resignation, and fear. What do you have now to be afraid of?

Finally, it’s possible to integrate this experience into your lives, in your own time. Morris writes, “Part of trauma’s corrosive power lies in its ability to destroy narrative,” and Isak Dinesen says, “All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.” There’s fertile ground for meaning and transformation in this experience. My mission now is writing the book I needed to read in the days and weeks after my school’s shooting, so that all the educators who come after me—like you—won’t do fruitless online searches and wonder why their experience isn’t worthy of inquiry and respect. You may discover a calling of your own, one that you could not have imagined before. You can choose how to tell this story of what’s happened to you and your campus.

Whatever you choose, however you cope, you’re not alone. I see you. I honor you. I understand.

MEGAN DONEY, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
NEW RIVER COMMUNITY COLLEGE
CHRISTIANSBURG, VA