For most people, Columbine doesn’t bring to mind the state flower. It’s a high school near Littleton where Hell came to Earth in 1999, leaving a school-full of kids dead, injured or traumatized.
Virginia Tech? Shooting. Newtown, Conn.? Shooting. Aurora? Say it isn’t so.
Maybe it’s not. Not because there are teams of people out there trying to change the conversation every time someone mentions James Holmes or the Century 16 theater. But in the year since Holmes opened fire inside that cinema, killing 12 and scarring dozens more, Aurora has come to acknowledge, accept and in many ways embrace the horror Holmes brought to town.
One year after the shooting, writers here talked to dozens of people connected to the massacre, as if any of us aren’t direct-wired to that cataclysm. What we found is that Aurora is far from cured of the disease that Holmes unleashed on July 20, 2012. But the prognosis is good.
After talking with people from here and other places where horror overwhelmed a community, we began to understand there is no cure. Instead, Aurora is clearly in remission. The loss of so many people who just went to the movies on a summer night is still agonizing after a year. But we’ve found a way to keep the pain in a place that allows individuals and the community to move on. Amidst the wracking details unfolding from Holmes’ murder trial are stories about theater victims going to college, getting promotions at work, taking vacations and returning to the life that Holmes so violently interrupted.
All of Aurora is moving on. The city is busy with building two-massive light-rail projects, dreaming up a spaceport and completing a new veterans hospital. Like anyone in remission from a devastating disease, we carefully and dutifully treat the malady but refuse to let it overshadow our lives. There’s a new center created just to focus on recovery for everyone. The issues of gun control and mental illness are in the political forefront. The entire Aurora community is looking closely at the response to this disaster, and what needs to be changed. We’re all asking ourselves how this might have been avoided, and how other communities can stop it from happening there. I have no doubt we’ll find real solutions. But the price for anything we can offer ourselves and world was too high. The tally of what Aurora paid for Holmes’ act of madness is still growing. Read on and find out why.