This time, I cannot go to a vigil.

Despite all the offers of support, I don’t really want to talk through it.

Sometimes, with some moments of grief, all I want is to be alone, at least for now.

I believe in the power of collective grief; I believe that people coming together to grieve can be a powerful beginning to healing, can be a call to collective action, but I can’t this time.

The school shooting in Santa Clarita has hit me especially hard.  I haven’t lived in Santa Clarita for over 20 years, and while I still feel many connections to that community, it’s not really home anymore.  But Santa Clarita is the city in which I first experienced my own trauma, an immediate, individual loss, that of my mother, hit by a truck as she crossed the street.

A year to the day my mother died, I sat on the corner across the street from my old house, the corner that led to my high school, the corner where my mother was trying to reach, on her way to the bus stop, when she died.  I sat with flowers and a candle, alone.  I felt so profoundly alone.

I spent many moments in the 10-15 years following my mother’s death hiding the deep and profound loneliness that I felt after her sudden loss.  I spent that time covering up my loneliness with success, with leadership, with some really poor relationship choices and some (thankfully) better relationship choices, with action.  I had to keep moving to stay alive, and to not be engulfed sometimes by the grief that had no words.

When I heard about the shooting on Thursday, that profound loneliness of grief and sudden, traumatic and tragic loss came flooding back.  I felt profoundly for the journey of loss that all of the community, affected by this tragedy, will face in their own ways.

I felt the fog of fragmentation as I tried to continue moving forward in spite of all the things crossing my mind. This was in my hometown.  The shooter is a hapa boy named Nathaniel, the same name as my own hapa son.  It was only a month before the 7th anniversary of Sandy Hook where I almost certainly would have lost my nephew if his birthday was just a month later. It was only 9 days before my mom’s birthday. It was less than 6 weeks from my own moments of sitting on the floor of my office, huddled under a desk.

All of the things.  All of the fragments.  All of the moments.

But I had to teach. I had to facilitate a professional learning session and plan another one.  I had to attend a training. I had to coordinate hospitality for church this week. I had to get new shoes for my 4 year old. I had to finish my Chinese homework. I had to grade lesson plans.

All of the things.  All of the fragments.  All of the moments.

Through the past 72 hours, what I have most wanted, but what has proved so elusive, is the comfort of being alone until I could be together. Not the profundity of relegated solitude, but the peace of chosen solitude, the necessity of being alone because I literally don’t have words for what I’m feeling.

I don’t have a solitary life. I have built a community grounded in love and support. But right now, I can’t draw from that community.  I need some time, some moments to get through it on my own before I can begin to articulate anything else. The tricky thing about grief is just that when I am ready, I’m not sure if anyone will remember, and I do not want to remind them.

All of the things.  All of the fragments.  All of the moments.

My heart is with the people of Santa Clarita, those who will go to the vigil, those who won’t, those who are grieving, those who are not.  I know how collective tragedy can bring a community together, and how it can tear individuals apart.  I am in it with you, the way I am in it with all trauma survivors.

I hope that by recognizing what I most need, by taking this moment of silence, by reclaiming my solitude as healing, by slowly bending down and sweeping together the fragments, I’m best honoring the complexities of grief and healing.  I hope that you’ll find the way you can best heal in this moment too.