Students who survived the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre are reflecting on the horrific mass shooting that forever changed their young lives as they prepare to graduate from high school.
“I’m happy to be graduating but there’s a lot of emotions going into having people that are supposed to be here not graduate with us,” 17-year-old Emma Ehrens, who ran from her classroom where her teacher and friends were killed when the gunman’s rifle jammed, told NewsTimes. “I get to graduate so I should be happy but … it’s still a heavy feeling on my shoulders. I can’t sever the connection between being happy and sad for graduation.”
The Sandy Hook massacre was the deadliest shooting at an elementary school in US history. Twenty first graders and six educators were killed when 20-year-old Adam Lanza stormed the Connecticut school and opened fire. Twelve years on from the events of December 14, 2012, the survivors of the shooting are preparing to begin their adult lives.
But although high school graduation is meant to be a happy day, for the Sandy Hook survivors, it will be shrouded in sadness.
“We have to share the stage with them; we have to celebrate everyone who is graduating this year but for me at least this is not even about me. I know it should be, but personally I can’t think about anything other than the fact that they’re not graduating,” Ehrens said.
Meanwhile, Grace Fischer, 18, said she is “excited for the next chapter,” but feels it is important that those who are “not here with us” are honored at graduation.
“Obviously, graduations are bittersweet because you don’t want to leave your best friends but for us there’s that whole extra layer of, ‘Oh, but our best friends aren’t even there,” Fischer said. “I’m excited for my next chapter but for graduation there will be something to honor the victims who aren’t able to be there — honoring them while celebrating our accomplishments is kind of a good balance because we don’t want to forget about who is not here with us.”
A group of five students will honor the victims at their graduation from Newtown High School by distributing green and white ribbons for graduates to wear as a sign of solidarity.
Aside from graduation, many of the survivors have found their own unique ways to remember the victims since the shooting.
“I have my friend’s name tattooed on my shoulder so he stays with me every day,” Henry Terifay, now 18, told Good Morning America in a separate interview, adding of all his classmates who were killed, “I just try and remember them every day.”
Others hope to carry the memories of the victims with them into their chosen career paths.
“I’ve basically known that I wanted to be a therapist since I was eight, which was really only a year after the shooting,” Ella Seaver, who was 7 at the time of the shooting, said.
“I have been in and out of therapy almost my whole life, especially after the shooting, and it’s really just helped me cope and helped me learn about myself, so I want to try and pay that forward and help people who have gone through gun violence, or even people who haven’t, who are just struggling in their daily life.”
Ehrens added that she plans to attend Roger Williams University in Rhode Island to study pre-law to “either stop this from happening to anyone else or help people who are going through the same thing we did, and just make sure that they know they are not alone,” she told News Times.
Another group of survivors has sought to keep the memory of their classmates alive through their work for the gun violence prevention club Jr. Newtown Action Alliance.
The club, which includes younger high school students, lobbies lawmakers, participates in vigils and reaches out to communities torn apart by tragedies. The club’s leadership told News Times it is their way of honoring the memory of their slain classmates while moving on to the next chapter of their lives.
“For the past 10 or 11 years that it’s been since in Sandy Hook, we’ve grown so much and we do so much work to fight for (the 2012 victims) and for other people because we don’t want other people’s lives to get robbed like theirs did,” said Fischer, who plans to attend Hamilton College as a pre-law and justice studies major. “That’s why I think walking across that stage will be a very victorious moment.”
While many of the survivors are using their traumatic experience to make positive change, the terrible memory of the day of the shooting still stays with them.
“The tragedy never ends,” Matt Holden, who was six at the time of the shooting, told Good Morning America. “The friends, family who were lost that day, the smiling faces that should be filling the seats in your classroom, the parents who should be able to watch their kids graduate, get married, the kids will never be able to hug their parents again. It’s never over.”
