UVALDE – He had three names joined like charms on a bracelet.
Amerie Jo Garza was buried on Tuesday in the eyes of God, her broken family, a shattered people and an ashamed nation. They spent three weeks the day after their 10th birthday.
On a sunny Tuesday afternoon, his funeral Mass at the Catholic Church in this small town began a mourning procession that will last for two weeks, while services are held for 18 of his classmates and two of his teachers murdered at Robb Elementary a week ago.
Mourning will include at least two funerals and joint services for two groups of cousins because the murdered children were often family members and classmates.
Amerie’s body arrived at the Sacred Heart Catholic Church on Tuesday afternoon, a 114-year-old parish in a quiet neighborhood a mile from elementary school. Its sanctuary rests on a wide canopy of old oaks that offers shade to a statue of the Virgin. Look at just one of the city’s many memorials to the lost in Robb: 21 framed paintings hung from a metal barricade with stuffed animals and flowers for all children.
The bad guys started arriving as early as an hour and a half before Mass began, some dressed in black but many dressed in shades of lilac and lavender, Amerie’s favorite color. The media stayed across the street.
A silver hearse arrived at the church shortly before 2 p.m., and Amerie’s family followed him in an equal car. Six wearers wearing white gloves with pink flowers nailed to white shirts with buttons carried the casket — gray with a hint of lilac — through the wooden doors of the church, beyond two flowerpots in which the stems of lavender echoed the purple tribute.
Some members of his family advanced, putting on delicate bouquets. Dozens of others followed, leaving the church as officials worked to make room between wooden benches for all who had gathered.
After Mass, the procession of Amerie made the short journey to the Hillcrest Memorial Cemetery, where the wicked crossed the gaps in the thicket of sage bushes bordering the grounds to the site that would become their home. tomb. A few hundred had gathered, wrapping their families around the ark for a brief burial ceremony. Then his body fell to the ground.
When most of the bad guys were scattered, his family threw a dove-shaped bouquet of white balloons into the wind.
During the days following the shooting, Amerie’s loved ones, like the families of the other children, did not remember her for the last day of her life, but for everything that happened before.
Amerie had been kind but cheeky, her family described her as a little diva with a heart of gold. He had loved and loved, smiling sarcastically at the photos hugging his parents and loving his little brother Zayne from the beginning.
She dreamed of channeling her creative energy to become an art teacher. The day after her death, her mother, Kimberly Garcia, posted a photo of Amerie holding a certificate in recognition of joining the AB honor roll. “You didn’t deserve this sweet girl of mine,” her mother wrote. “Mom needs you, Amerie. I can’t make this life without you.”
Amerie was also brave and defended the others.
While his family was mourned at a funeral home on Monday, the Treviño family visited the town square where the white crosses around a fountain have become a monument visited daily by distressed locals and outsiders who make the funeral. solemn walk to pay their respects.
The assortment of daisies, mothers, and roses that stood in front of the cross bearing Amerie’s name was so high that the pyramid threatened to fall over the edge of the white prayer candles that closed the tribute.
David Treviño, his wife and 11-year-old daughter watched Monday before Amerie’s memorial, the girl’s body trembling with sobs as she rested her head on her mother’s shoulder.
Standing for her age, the 11-year-old girl had faced severe harassment by some of Robb Elementary’s other children, Treviño said. Where the family had struggled to find help to protect her, Amerie stepped in to wrap her up with her protection.
“She would advocate for the thugs to stop hooking her,” said Treviño, who was also Amerie’s cousin. “[My daughter] it is being taken very hard. She would protect her from the bullies. “
The day before Amerie’s funeral, a visit was held that included an evening rosary at the funeral home across Robb Elementary Street. Some bad guys were also wearing purple there. Others wore bunches of purple hydrangeas.
Some were strangers who stopped just to pray for her. Others wore T-shirts with photos of Amerie smiling at everyone who passed them as they entered.
Even at death, Amerie continued to give to others. The children who attended early in the day appeared at each outing grabbing brown teddy bears.
Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home, which Robb Elementary neighbors and had brought in piles of pizza in the past for students to celebrate their last day of school, hosted children who fled to save lives across Geraldine Street last Tuesday. reach the doors of the building in the middle of the shooting. .
At the end of this school year, funeral home staff are helping to prepare the bodies of the murdered children. They helped families choose coffins that looked unfathomably small. They printed prayer cards with dates that barely spanned a decade of life. They organized the recitation of the rosary so that parents could offer their children’s souls as they prayed for their eternal rest with God.
From the funeral home, families and mourners can see the back door that the shooter used to sneak inside the school. A row of open windows through which the children escaped also faces the funeral home, the patterned curtains adorning a classroom window fluttering in the breeze.
To start clearing the horror, there have been countless gestures of sweetness over the last few days.
Clinging to her cross at a memorial, balloons marked the 10th anniversary that Ellie Garcia would have arrived on Saturday. He left a purple softball glove with pink dots on top of a pile of flowers for Eliahna Torres, who was number four on the softball field.
At the second funeral in Uvalde, loved ones on Monday remembered 10-year-old Maite Yuleana Rodríguez on the first of two days of visiting. Maite had long since set out to become a marine biologist, and her preference for green was evident in her affinity for lime green Converse shoes.
When the sun finally set enough to give them some shade, a couple of boys juggled again with a soccer ball outside the funeral home. They wore lime green shoes.
The overlap of Amerie and Maite’s visits captured the relentless march of grief that will follow: a child is buried while another family has a visit while another prays the rosary and so on.
When Amerie’s body was lying on the ground, the Garcia family began to mourn a visit to Irma Garcia, one of the teachers who died in the shooting, and her husband Joe, who died suddenly within days. after losing his high school sweetheart. .
There will be 11 funerals this week alone. Maite’s funeral will take place on Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, a bright purple bow will adorn the black mailbox on the outside of a house on Hillcrest Funeral Home.
The house belongs to another devastated Robb family, who is waiting their turn to bury the child who never returned home.