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My godson moved into his freshman dorm at Virginia Tech this weekend. He goes with the very same love, support and pride that accompanies thousands of young people who are off to college this month. It just so happens, though, that he arrived in Blacksburg, Virginia, on the same weekend that the University dedicated a memorial, including 32 "Hokie Stones" for each student killed in last April's mass shooting that took 32 young lives, plus the self-inflicted death of the shooter.
Mariella Lurch, sister of slain Virginia Tech student Daniel Alejandro Prez Cueva, pauses at his memorial stone after the dedication of the memorial for the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting in Blacksburg, Va., Sunday, Aug. 19, 2007. More than 10,000 people gathered on the main campus lawn Sunday as Virginia Tech dedicated 32 memorial stones for those killed by a student in a mass shooting on campus last April. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
Grief tends to bind people together. I read a quote once that I wish I could repeat verbatim, much less attribute. It began exactly as "Pain cracks us open and is totally revealing," and goes on to say that that is when we discover what really matters, and what we will never forget. This explains the success of support groups, where people find solace in shared experience, and in survivor accounts of natural disasters and acts of violence. Who can understand but those who have been there with us, or, in the case of the horrifying loss at VT, those who were watching along and feeling even a small percentage of the community's pain.
Following the shooting, countless memorial offerings arrived in Blacksburg from around the world. The Washington Post ran a story this week on what is being done to preserve this evidence of support from the human community.
"I think there was an immediate recognition that this was important," said Eileen Hitchingham, the university's librarian. "The importance is not only what came in, but you have to picture 10 years out. What is it? It's a research project. How do people mourn, how do they come together?"...
One of her favorite items is a card from a bank, which she is including in her annual report. It is a picture of basketball shorts that says: "We hope you will bounce back and let us be your sixth man." Hitchingham said she doesn't really follow sports, but she liked that image of someone wanting to jump in and help.
"That really is the analogy that [captured what] I felt most people were trying to do," she said. It's like comfort food after a funeral. "You take the casserole over to the family, and I think people couldn't do that, but they looked to do something as close, as equivalent as they could."
Karen Mallette blogs at The Conversation. Her son Tommy died ten years ago .She responded to the Post's article about archiving grief.
The archivists from the Library of Congress noted in the WP article that VT should “try to think who in a 100 years will want to know. . .”
My answer turned out to be photography - from a camera, and a scanner. Through the ‘wonders of modern technology’, I converted 20 years of memories into a single 700MB CD. It packed much better on the London-bound pallets and softened the burden in my heart. I can look at Tommy’s handwriting whenever the mood dictates.
I don’t think, however, that archiving tokens of support or erecting monuments really pays honor to the process of grief or the ones we grieve....
Walking around the town’s WW1 monument to their “glorious dead” Irwin comments it is “not lest we forget, but lest we remember. There is no better way of forgetting something than by comemorating it.” ...
That’s what so scary to me about cataloging grief, including my own. Once it is in a box, once it is captured, once it has context, we begin the forgetting.
Virginia Tech's Center for Digital Discourse and Culture created the April 16 Archive .
The April 16 Archive uses electronic media to collect, preserve, and present the stories and digital record of the Virginia Tech tragedy of April 16, 2007. The archive is hosted on the Virginia Tech campus, and is curated by students, faculty, and staff. We welcome contributions from the greater Virginia Tech community and anyone who wants to share
