UVALDE, Texas – Amerie Jo Garza, 10, a prankster who did the honor roll. Tuesday, 2 p.m.
Maite Yuleana Rodríguez, 10, who excelled at school and learned to sew with YouTube videos. Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Irma Garcia, 48, and Joe Garcia, 50, parents of Lyliana, Alysandra, Cristian, and Jose. Wednesday, 10 a.m.
Jose Manuel Flores Jr., 10, called Josecito and Baby Jose, who were picking up toy trucks and playing in Little League. Wednesday, 2 p.m.
One week after a gunman broke into Robb d’Uvalde Primary School, funerals for 19 young students and two murdered teachers began on Tuesday, as well as the husband of a victim whose fatal heart attack was attributed to his relatives to his overwhelming pain. In mid-June, the coming days will be full of services, visits, rosaries and burials, commemorating each of the victims whose deaths are the sum of the agonizing loss of a community.
Monsignor Eduardo Morales will preside over several funerals, each of them forcing himself to sit with his relatives and give handcrafted sermons celebrating the lives of short-sighted young people. Some days, parents will bury their children and their classmates and friends will cry too.
“We are not here to celebrate his death,” Father Morales, pastor of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church, told the mourners who filled the simple church on Tuesday for the funeral Mass of Amerie Jo Garza, expressing a feeling he said he would repeat every time. funeral in the coming days, including one Wednesday, another Friday, and next Monday, if not more. “We’re here to celebrate your life.”
“Don’t let her death and this tragedy define who she is,” he continued.
Uvalde has been grieving for days, with neighbors hugging and lighting candles at public vigils and memorials, gripped by anguish after so much loss and the feeling that the attack had altered the trajectory of a whole community.
Now, mourning has evolved into something more individualized.
It has come with constant reminders of the potential wasted: small coffins, one with a dinosaur, another with a Superman logo, a third with pink handles and an image of a child dancing a TikTok.
Many of the memories have recognized young lives with high ambitions: Maite Rodriguez wanted to go to the Texas A&M University campus in Corpus Christi and study to become a marine biologist. Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, known as Lexi, told her parents that she wanted to be a lawyer.
The aftermath of the mass violence has a sort of bleak pace, which is repeated across the country after deadly attacks. In Texas alone, there have been mass shootings in recent years at a church in Sutherland Springs, a small town on the other side of San Antonio; a Walmart in El Paso; and a high school in Santa Fe, near Houston.
A change has already taken place in Uvalde, a city of 15,000 inhabitants in the dirty and windy section to the west of Sant Antoni.
Shortly after the shooting, while Uvalde was still in the clutches of the clash, the city was filled with law enforcement agencies, elected officials and the media, with journalists representing news organizations from around the world.
The attention brought its own annoyances and difficulties. But it also led to increased support. An online fundraiser for the children of Irma Garcia, a teacher who died in the shooting, and her husband raised more than $ 2.7 million, greatly overshadowing the original $ 10,000 goal.
For some, the warning has also been reassuring in less tangible ways.
“This is a small town, it’s a small town, but it’s small,” said Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio on Uvalde, which is part of his diocese. He said it was a source of comfort for residents to know that people far from Uvalde knew about the situation in their community and had sympathy for them. “The eyes of the world were on his home,” he added.
The community is still struggling with the immediate consequences: Gov. Greg Abbott, who was among the officials to visit, said Tuesday he had issued a disaster statement for Uvalde, which mobilizes more state and local resources for the city.
And while state law enforcement continued to investigate why police officers had delayed entry to a classroom where the gunman was locked up with students, they said Tuesday that the head of the school district’s police department, Pete Arredondo, had not been made available for a follow-up interview by the researchers.
However, a week after the shooting, outside attention has begun to decline. Memorials have become less crowded. On the streets, there are fewer journalists, cameras and vehicles stamped with media logos.
Some are already contemplating the difficult path ahead, not knowing what kind of support Uvalde will need and for how long, especially children now growing up in the shadow of devastation.
Students are just starting their summer vacation at school, but parents are already contemplating how to help their children overcome their pain during the summer months and feel safe and ready to go back to school. , at Autumn.
But for now, much of Uvalde is struggling with a gap that has emerged: the nearly two dozen people who have died.
Sacred Heart, the parish that has been an anchor for the Catholic community of Uvalde for generations, has been a meeting place in the days following the attack, holding special masses and vigils, as well as counseling services.
On Tuesday, the church filled up again as a choir sang a hymn based on St. Francis prayer: “Make me a channel of your peace.” Many attend the funeral of Amerie dressed in shades of lilac and lavender. Others wore work uniforms, moving away from work to take time to pray and cry.
His death had aggravated a series of losses for a family that had relatives killed by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, Father Morales, a native of Uvalde who returned six years ago to lead the Sacred Heart, encouraged those who mourned her to make a decision, no matter how difficult it was: to celebrate her life. Keep in mind that his spirit and legacy endure. “Let him be with us,” he said.
Amerie was a social girl, her family said. She was a good student, but she loved lunch and recreation, when she could spend time with her friends. He also liked to express himself through art. In her obituary, her family wrote, “A protector of her brother and how we now know her classmates.”
“You raised a beautiful, loving and affectionate girl,” said Father Morales.
When he finished Mass, he prayed on his coffin.
“In peace, we take our sister to her resting place,” he said. “Let the angels take you to paradise.”
The choir, accompanied by a piano and violin, began to sing, its hymn took Amerie to that resting place, her relatives to navigate her grief, and the priest many more days to beg the weary wicked. to celebrate those who had been taken from them.
“If you are passing through the blazing waters of the sea, you will not drown,” the choir sang as the crowd left the church. Many of the bad guys had tears in their eyes.
“If you walk through the burning flames, you won’t get hurt,” the singers continued. “And if you’re facing the power of hell and death is on your side, you know I’m with you through it all.”