IF I DON'T MAKE IT, I LOVE YOU-Words of School Shooting Survivors

The play IF I DON'T MAKE IT, I LOVE YOU is an adaption of a book of the same title which is taken from transcripts of family members and survivors of school shootings.  This is a grueling play of grief and and horror, terror and guilt experienced by innocent children and adults whose loved ones were shot while attending school.  This resounding production is persistent in my mind.  It lingers still, long past the minutes in which I watch the aftermath on the news.  These assassinations have become for frequent as to become mundane.   Many (myself included) are becoming inured to these atrocities.  Perhaps, in part, it's a means for survival because to really acknowledge these tragedies portends suffering.   It does mean assuming accountability for taking action towards gun violence protection and for laws restricting gun access.  It's easier to pray for the victims and their families, leave flowers or shed a tear and then return to our lives in a bubble of ignorant bliss for having dodged another bullet.  Seeing the play last night at the Raven Performance Theater left a searing impact that has tattooed the pain felt directly by thousands by the perpetual slaughter of young people and mentors upon my chest?  One mother said, "I am now a member of a club no one wants to be a member of;  the initiation is the slaying of my child.''  What of the students who closed doors on their classmates fleeing the massacre?  What of the siblings who ran for their lives and their siblings didn't make it out?  What of the parents waiting anxiously for their child to emerge who never will appear to them again? What of the survivors with shrapnel permanently embedded in their bodies?  What of our first responders and their families? What of the acceptance of lockdown drills now incorporated in schools?  The exponential ripple from mass shootings has become a tsunami razing the naive notion parents dropping their children at school will be coming at the end of the day. What of the loved ones who received texts saying, "If I don't survive, I love you?"   None of us have dodged a bullet.  There are no innocent survivors.