may 31st, in kansas.(/missouri)
I've shared this story before. My "where were you when" story. We have a lot of those in our shared history, this nation. Big, national shared traumas. We heal from trauma by talking, by writing, by sharing, by loving. (By loving, by loving back. Like this thing that a Colorado state senator wrote on his facebook / turned into a blog post / turned into an op-ed / shared on NPR after the Aurora movie theater shooting.)
And so I share again. My "where were you when." My "I was there" story. My "this was my state" story.
I was working my one-day-a-week barista shift at this sweet little coffee shop in Kansas City. Being an organizer for Planned Parenthood of Kansas & Mid-Missouri, as I was then, required me to find some supplemental income (par for the course for organizing jobs), and so I worked Sundays at that cute little cafe. It was quiet, as usual on Sundays, and so I got my friend Christene's text right away:
"Dr. Tiller was shot. He was just killed."
I didn't believe it at first. How could I? For one, it was a Sunday. His clinic wasn't open. Where could this have happened? For another, ok, maybe he was shot, but he's been shot before. I kind of thought of Dr. George Tiller as superman at this point. He was shot in both arms in 1993. He returned to work the next day. So maybe he was shot, but he couldn't possibly be dead.
My response to her showed my disbelief. I asked where she'd heard it. I told her she couldn't be serious. I assumed her source was some crazy thing like Operation Rescue, bragging about something that didn't happen. I assumed she'd heard wrong, that she'd heard he'd been shot but not killed. Her text had startled me, but I didn't believe her. I went about making a customer's drink, steamed the milk perfectly and made a pretty little leaf in the top of their latte. I checked my phone after they left.
"It's in the Wichita Eagle."
I stopped in my tracks. That's a reputable source. That's Wichita's newspaper. I don't remember how I got to the back of the cafe or pulled out my computer, but I did. I pulled up the Wichita Eagle. Right there. Big letters. Bold and huge and terrifying. Not a ton of details yet, but it was there. It was real.
I was shaking. I couldn't breathe. My eyes welled up. I couldn't see. The headline, which I can't remember now, blurred and I sat there, frozen in space, staring at nothing and panicking about everything.
It was only a few minutes later that my friends Victoria and Justin walked in to the cafe for a mid-day coffee. Vic also worked at the cafe for extra dollars and also worked with me at Planned Parenthood. She had held my job as organizer before moving to the clinics, where she was currently a clinic assistant. She'd lived in KC for much longer. She'd worked directly with Dr. Tiller on an event we'd had in Wichita a few years prior.
Her face was bright. She and Justin were laughing about something, Vic's big staccato laugh creating some kind of beautiful harmony with Justin's snicker. She greeted me with an enormous smile. I didn't return her smile. I was still frozen. Still operating on some other plane, floating through my motions, my vocal chords forming sounds and my mouth forming words that I only had a distant relationship to.
"Vic. Dr. Tiller was just shot. In church. He's dead."
I have never seen someone's smile fade so fast or the color drain so quickly from their face. She looked like a ghost. We were ghosts together. She fumbled for the chair near the door and sank into it. She cried. I cried, a little. Justin cried, but tried to hold back and be strong for Victoria.
The next day, we all reported to work at the admin office at Planned Parenthood in Overland Park, Kansas, walking into air that was thick with unease, fear, utter despair, and a tinge of anger. For most of us, the anger hadn't set in. During an all-staff meeting, the anger crept in, touching one or two of us lightly on the shoulder at a time. Our CEO was told that he would have to wear a bulletproof vest, and anger exploded into my heart. These are my people. This is my state. No more. No more.
