03.08.20 — The DW Sunday Column: This time — the tragedies felt too close to home
This past summer, I spent a week with my daughter Kaitlyn driving from Oregon to Michigan. It was a uniquely beautiful trip; it felt like a rite to a passage to her wedding day, which was just two months later.
One tidbit to the trip: We used to live in Milwaukee. We made a stop, and we walked through our old neighborhood, by our old house, by her old school. We completed one touristy event: A tour of where we always called Miller Brewery.
Months later, in this space, I told the story of how I visited Kaitlyn in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is the place newly married couples go to earn a living and start a family (hint, hint). Or at least for my family.
That leads to the story. Terrible things recently happened in these towns.
The formally known as Miller Brewery complex, now Molson Coors, had a tragic event where five employees were shot and killed. The shooter, who killed himself, was a former employee.
Nashville and the surrounding area had over 20 deaths from a tornado that roared through downtown in the middle of the night. My daughter and husband were maybe three miles from the tornado line; they heard the sirens and were hoping for the best scrunched up in their bathtub.
We read about, hear, and watch many tragic events each day; you move on. You have to. The alternate would not make any sense. But something is different when you have been there. You think…what was it like for the next tour, waiting in line? What about the tour that was in one of the buildings? Maybe there was a tour in the building of the shooting.
Just months ago, I was there. At that tour. With my daughter.
We read about, hear and watch many tragic events each day; you move on. You have to. The alternate would not make any sense. But something is different when your daughter is in the tornado.
My wife just visited a week prior; she and her friends spent a lot of time in Germantown, visiting the shops. As we watched the news, she pointed out all the areas that they just visited, and they are now destroyed. My visit a few weeks before that had some downtown time, which had a lot of damage too.
Also, my daughter was about three freakin’ miles from the tornado. They had sirens blaring and wind blowing. She and her husband said it sounded like the door was wide open, and the wind was blowing through it, when in reality, that noise was just wind coming through the small cracks of a closed door.
I was in a tornado. . I remember looking outside and the sky looked green, in the middle of the day. I knew it was time to run for cover. I was in the bathtub when the tornado went over me. Shingles were blown off. A semi-truck a half-mile away was blown over. Since all was well, it felt like a badge of courage; “I survived the tornado, look at all this damage.”
But when you have a loved one in the storm, you feel so relieved they are fine; you go through all the “what ifs” in your head…that you almost reach a point of exhaustion. Almost a point of being upset because you know that news was not good for many others just miles away; you feel lucky, but remember not all feel fortunate at all.
You think of the family of the shooting victims; you think about the people taking the tour, just like we did, who might be/could be traumatized for life.
We read about, hear and watch many tragic events each day. It is just so different when it hits close to precious memories and precious loved ones. But you move on. You have to. The alternate would not make any sense.
