There’s something obscene about it.
Flowers. Trinkets. A polished stone. Praying hands. Roses. And the words “Our Angel in Heaven.”
Meanwhile, 19 children and two teachers are dead.
Twenty-one people walked into Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022, with every reasonable expectation that they would walk back out. They didn’t. Nineteen kids were denied birthdays, first loves, bad jobs, good meals, stupid mistakes, marriages, divorces, road trips, disappointments, triumphs—the whole messy privilege of getting older.
And the man who took all of that away gets called an angel.
No.
You can love your dead. You can mourn them. Grief is complicated and families are entitled to it. But words still mean things, and “angel” is doing some truly grotesque fucking work here.
Twenty-one innocent people got coffins because of what he did. Their families got empty bedrooms, unanswered questions, and a lifetime of anniversaries they never asked for.
So forgive me if reverence is in short supply.
I look at a memorial like this and don’t see an angel.
I see a grave I wouldn’t particularly mind seeing pissed on.