Life is precious. My Personal Vigil after a Tragedy.
Gratitude Just Might Save Us. Here’s how.
The above picture was taken on April 24 from our home just off Yonge Street, in Toronto, Canada. In the photo, twenty-two police officers are painstakingly combing a mile-long crime scene where, the day before, a 25-year-old man suddenly commandeered his white van onto the sidewalks, killing 10 innocent people and critically injuring 16 others.
Up until this day, like most people, I had only read about tragedies like these or watched them on the news. These kinds of horrors always seemed to happen ‘somewhere else.’ But not this time. This time it happened right on our doorstep.
It’s hard to describe the exact flood of thoughts and emotions that run through you when something like this happens. But I’ll try.
If you’re a parent, you can’t help but first think of your children. My God, I thought, today was the one day my daughter Jacqueline was to go for a pizza lunch near Yonge St.
She goes to nearby Claude Watson School for the Arts, a truly incredible school. And she normally has lunch in the lunchroom, but April 23rd was an exception. She was to go outside near Yonge St. with her friends.
The telephone lines to the school were jammed. ‘Was she safe? Was she okay? What if?’ We could only confirm about two hours later that she was safe.
Then I thought of Michael, our awesome delight of a nine-year old. I recalled that he was to have a class trip very soon to Gibson Museum, maybe that Monday. Gibson Museum is just off Yonge St., a few blocks from the beautiful multicultural school he attends, McKee Public School. So there was a chance he’d be walking along Yonge St. that day.
Michael is the little blond guy in the above photo. His smile can melt even the coldest heart.
‘What if?’
Thankfully, his trip to Gibson Museum wasn’t that day. He was safe in his school.
And then I thought of our oldest son, Jonathan. He’s 15 and wise beyond his years, so I felt confident. But then again he often goes with his mates over to Yonge Street’s food shops for lunch. ‘What if?’
Thankfully, not only was he kept safe in his school’s lock down at Earl Haig High School, he was interviewed the next day by a reporter from the Toronto Star, and he was featured the next day in the paper:
And of course, the final big question: was my wife okay? She had gone to Whole Foods at Yonge and Sheppard right around the same time as the van attack. It turned out the killer’s van came to a final stop just outside Whole Foods. It turned out my wife was inside Whole Foods just before that happened.
Thankfully, she was okay.
Then a whole new flood of emotions ran through me as they ran through virtually everyone: Why?
Perhaps my son Jonathan put it as well as anyone can: “It’s insane, why would somebody do this?”
I gave him my own clear answer. I said: “I don’t know. I wish I did.”
When you live along this stretch of Yonge Street for thirteen years, as we have, you are filled with so many memories of how great life can be.
One happy memory is the wonderful mini-marathon sponsored each year by RBC called the Race for the Kids:
Our whole family takes part in it, and we love this event. Above is a picture from our home of some of the 8,000-plus runners who take part each year. A sea of joggers running up and down that very stretch of Yonge Street where the unthinkable happened. We run to raise money for kids in need. It’s a reflection of society’s collective will to improve ourselves and help others. It’s a celebration of hope.
But on that evening of April 23rd, after the tragedy, Yonge Street was a ghost town cordoned off everywhere and guarded by police at every corner.
Why did this happen?
I don’t know. I wish I knew.
Will we ever have answers? Maybe the first step toward answers is to just keep asking the right questions.
The images come back of the thousands of runners running together along the same route, running to support lives, on the very same path where a van took lives.
The images come back of how every runner then gathers in a spirit of camaraderie on our central square, Lastman Square.
It’s a second celebration of life. You feel exhilarated. You are full of joy.
Endorphins dance in your brain and you are full of life.
But this time, after the April 23rd tragedy, the city gathered on Lastman Square to mourn the incomprehensible. The mood was sullen. The Square was packed. Thousands came to pay their respects, or to seek answers, or both. Personally, I can’t begin to imagine the pain the families of the victims must be going through.
In the days leading up to the vigil, while I looked forward to going, I also kept feeling a deep sense of foreboding. I still do.
It’s a deep feeling that we’re handling tragedies like these all wrong. A tragic event occurs somewhere in the world, and we immediately react with the usual ‘our hearts go out to …’ and ‘our thoughts and prayers are with …’, but then a week or two goes by and nearly all is forgotten.
So the feeling ran through me that, somehow, this is not enough. We can’t just treat tragic events like these as the new normal. They are not normal.
I began to feel a different kind of ‘What if.’ What if we all, every one of us, made just a little bit more of an effort to be a better human being? What if we all worked harder on improving ourselves before we cast stones against others?
So before I went off to the public vigil, I wrote down five paragraphs that I now think of as a personal vigil.
I want to share them, but I also want to say that I wrote them down first as a reminder to myself. The ‘you’ in the text is you if you want it to be, but it’s first just me speaking to me. It’s a personal vigil, a prayer of hope, and a reminder to myself. It’s a reminder that gratitude just might one day be the one thing that lifts us up again, out of our negativity and back up to where we should all be in this century:
My Personal Vigil, after a Tragedy:
The Next Time You …, Try Gratitude Instead
The next time you see someone whose skin is a different colour than yours, rather than feeling the fears of racial difference, feel gratitude instead that the human race is so richly filled with diversity.
The next time you’re inclined to rant or criticize what’s out there, be grateful rather for this one moment today where you could choose courage instead and pour your energy into that positive solution you think is better. (Courage is always the harder choice.)
The next time you meet someone not as smart as you, try not to look down on him or her — feel gratitude instead for the great education and learning opportunities you’ve been blessed to receive.
The next time you feel the rumblings of anger, let gratitude stop them in their tracks so they never turn into rage- and feel grateful that you have the very power to direct your mind this way, in a different direction, in the direction of growing a little more each day.
And, finally, the next time you see someone all alone who looks on the surface to be self-absorbed and not so friendly, remember all the times that you were self-absorbed and not so friendly- and be grateful instead that you have this one moment in time to reach out to another person, and do that, and so take the chance that you might just be the person who today brings a smile to that person’s face.
May the force … of gratitude … be with you.
By the way, I just dropped off my son Michael at his school this morning.
He said, “Have a great day!”
I think he meant it as a wish for everyone.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on May 23, 2018.
