The Legacy of Gun Violence
CAUTION: Some Readers May Find the Details in this Commentary Disturbing
A TV reporter asked me a question the other day that made me flinch.
The question came at just before a prayer vigil here in Louisville that was being held in response to the massacre at Virginia Tech.
Because I am interviewed frequently by reporters from TV and radio about events that are sponsored by Interfaith Paths to Peace, I am used to being asked impersonal questions that require me to make global comments about peace or religion or spirituality.
But that evening the reporter suddenly looked me in the eye and asked me, “Does the violence at Virginia Tech touch you in any personal way.”
I wasn’t expecting that, and actually looked away from her for a moment. I had to make an instantaneous decision about whether I was going to open my life and share my personal experience of gun violence.
Then I looked at her and I said “Yes, it does.”
I then told the reporter, and thousands of people in Louisville , that my stepbrother had committed suicide using a gun when I was thirteen, and that I had watched him die. It would be more accurate to say that I was a witness to some of his agony as he died.
Jimmy was 10 years older than me. Late on the night of the Friday before Memorial Day in 1964, after a disastrous experience in the Navy and a protracted bout of severe depression, he shot himself in the heart.
Jimmy pulled the trigger some time after the rest of the family had gone to sleep. I remember being awakened from a dream by a loud sound. I opened my eyes to the darkness and listened to the sound of my stepmother—Jimmy’s mother—getting out of bed and walking into the living room to see what had happened.
Then she started screaming. She didn’t stop screaming for a long time. My father, another step brother, and I all ran into the living room where Jimmy’s body lay askew in an easy chair. He wasn’t dead yet.
My father ordered us boys to get out of the room, which we did. But not before seeing things and hearing things that I can never forget. In the pale gray light coming through the curtains from the street lamp I could see the spreading dark stain on Jimmy’s pajama top. I could make out the barrel of the 22 rifle sliding slowly down his thigh. I hear the gurgling sound he made as he tried to breathe.
Jimmy died before the ambulance arrived. A few minutes after that a police detective apologized to me for having to ask me questions at such a horrible time. Then he asked them.
I don’t remember where we slept before Jimmy’s funeral, but it wasn’t at home. When the funeral was over, the surviving family members went to the lake for a few days so that the blood-soaked chair and carpeting could be removed and replaced.
When I returned to school, a couple of caring teachers who had somehow learned of Jimmy’s suicide asked me if I was ok. Like any 13-year-old, I shrugged. There was no counseling. No psychiatric help. After all, it was the 1960s.
The worst thing for me was that it was made clear to me that we were not to mention Jimmy’s name again; it would be just too painful for his mother. Still, the memory of him and the explosion of violence in my home that Friday night live on.
I used to delude myself with thoughts that that somehow I had dealt with Jimmy’s suicide, that I had put it behind me. Then Virginia Tech happened, (as have other acts of gun violence that I see or hear about from time to time) and the details of that May night flood back in.
And that permanent and persistent vivid memory of violence is the personal connection for me with the survivors and family of the fallen in Virginia . I fear that their lives, like mine, have been changed forever.
Of course, some of them will learn to cope with their loss (as I have). Some will steel themselves and act brave (as I try to do). But things will happen from time to time for all of them that will bring the details of that horrible Monday back to life in ways they will be unable to escape, just as I can’t escape from the memories of that night 44 years ago.
That’s the legacy of gun violence.
Terry
Terence Cozad Taylor
(502) 214-7322
(502) 299-7591 cell
CAUTION: Some Readers May Find the Details in this Commentary Disturbing
A TV reporter asked me a question the other day that made me flinch.
The question came at just before a prayer vigil here in Louisville that was being held in response to the massacre at Virginia Tech.
Because I am interviewed frequently by reporters from TV and radio about events that are sponsored by Interfaith Paths to Peace, I am used to being asked impersonal questions that require me to make global comments about peace or religion or spirituality.
But that evening the reporter suddenly looked me in the eye and asked me, “Does the violence at Virginia Tech touch you in any personal way.”
I wasn’t expecting that, and actually looked away from her for a moment. I had to make an instantaneous decision about whether I was going to open my life and share my personal experience of gun violence.
Then I looked at her and I said “Yes, it does.”
I then told the reporter, and thousands of people in Louisville , that my stepbrother had committed suicide using a gun when I was thirteen, and that I had watched him die. It would be more accurate to say that I was a witness to some of his agony as he died.
Jimmy was 10 years older than me. Late on the night of the Friday before Memorial Day in 1964, after a disastrous experience in the Navy and a protracted bout of severe depression, he shot himself in the heart.
Jimmy pulled the trigger some time after the rest of the family had gone to sleep. I remember being awakened from a dream by a loud sound. I opened my eyes to the darkness and listened to the sound of my stepmother—Jimmy’s mother—getting out of bed and walking into the living room to see what had happened.
Then she started screaming. She didn’t stop screaming for a long time. My father, another step brother, and I all ran into the living room where Jimmy’s body lay askew in an easy chair. He wasn’t dead yet.
My father ordered us boys to get out of the room, which we did. But not before seeing things and hearing things that I can never forget. In the pale gray light coming through the curtains from the street lamp I could see the spreading dark stain on Jimmy’s pajama top. I could make out the barrel of the 22 rifle sliding slowly down his thigh. I hear the gurgling sound he made as he tried to breathe.
Jimmy died before the ambulance arrived. A few minutes after that a police detective apologized to me for having to ask me questions at such a horrible time. Then he asked them.
I don’t remember where we slept before Jimmy’s funeral, but it wasn’t at home. When the funeral was over, the surviving family members went to the lake for a few days so that the blood-soaked chair and carpeting could be removed and replaced.
When I returned to school, a couple of caring teachers who had somehow learned of Jimmy’s suicide asked me if I was ok. Like any 13-year-old, I shrugged. There was no counseling. No psychiatric help. After all, it was the 1960s.
The worst thing for me was that it was made clear to me that we were not to mention Jimmy’s name again; it would be just too painful for his mother. Still, the memory of him and the explosion of violence in my home that Friday night live on.
I used to delude myself with thoughts that that somehow I had dealt with Jimmy’s suicide, that I had put it behind me. Then Virginia Tech happened, (as have other acts of gun violence that I see or hear about from time to time) and the details of that May night flood back in.
And that permanent and persistent vivid memory of violence is the personal connection for me with the survivors and family of the fallen in Virginia . I fear that their lives, like mine, have been changed forever.
Of course, some of them will learn to cope with their loss (as I have). Some will steel themselves and act brave (as I try to do). But things will happen from time to time for all of them that will bring the details of that horrible Monday back to life in ways they will be unable to escape, just as I can’t escape from the memories of that night 44 years ago.
That’s the legacy of gun violence.
Terry
Terence Cozad Taylor
(502) 214-7322
(502) 299-7591 cell
posted by Interfaith Paths to Peace at 2:13 PM
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