School Shooting in Bend, Ore., Has Heroes and Pain, But Few Answers
I keep coming back to the people who acted, not the shooter. The ones who shielded kids, who called 911, who maybe tackled or distracted him. We want to believe there's a pattern to bravery, that it's something we can predict and replicate, but the truth is it's as chaotic as the violence itself. That's what I find both terrifying and strangely hopeful: heroism doesn't follow a script.
I'd want to know what the gunman's timeline looked like, not to make sense of it, because I doubt there's a clean narrative, but to see where the gaps are. We always look for the "why" in these stories, as if a reason would make the loss easier to carry. It rarely does. Sometimes the universe just throws a curveball and we're left to catch it with our bare hands.
The bigger question for me is what we do with the absence of answers. We can demand better security, better mental health support, all of that matters. But we also have to sit with the fact that some events are simply irrational. That's the part we don't like to admit. I think the people of Bend are showing us something real: you don't need an explanation to be kind, to hold each other, to show up.