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UVALDE, Tex. – The family of a 10-year-old victim of a shooting made a prayer circle in the courtyard this Monday as temperatures rose and mourning came.
The relatives of Jayce Luevanos did not know what else to do, that of the child said the uncle in a brief interview. “With funerals getting closer and closer, it’s getting harder and harder,” the uncle said. who spoke on condition of anonymity out of respect for his nephew’s memory.
American flags fluttered in the warm wind on Monday as Memorial Day dawned in Uvalde, a day of mourning and remembrance that this year had an unfathomable overlap of grief for this united city of 15,000 people near the border with Mexico was beginning to bury its dead: 19 students and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School last Tuesday.
The first days of anger and grief over the meaningless tragedy, made worse by the catastrophic errors by law enforcement, gave way the difficult but necessary period of mourning: a relentless cycle of visits, rosaries, funerals and receptions that began on Monday and will run until June 16.
Priests who last week consoled children still bleeding and pastors who prayed with restless parents on Monday resorted to family rituals surrounding Christian burials. Volunteers flew in and drove from all over Texas and across the country to help with various aspects of the funeral. Food truck operators handed out food and water. Coffin-shaped florists “sprays”. The head of the Texas Funeral Directors Association brought in an additional funeral coach along with other funeral directors (some experts in the art of facial reconstruction) to help.
Uvalde’s shooting “stirred something” in him. So he dropped his gun.
As a priest of the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart, the only Catholic church in Uvalde, Father Eduardo Morales was preparing for a calendar of incessant mourning, a kind of schedule that can only follow an event of victims massive ones like the one that shook the nation here lately. Tuesday.
Morales, known as “Father Eddy,” will host funeral after funeral for victims virtually every day starting Tuesday, sometimes two in a day, a dozen in all.
“Everyone here knows someone who was murdered,” he told the church after Saturday’s Mass. “There will be many tears and a lot of sadness … but as we continue to celebrate their lives, they will turn into tears of joy.”
Before returning to his hometown to lead the Sacred Heart six years ago, Morales buried parishioners he knew, he said. But never like that.
“I’m burying parishioners, but they’re people I’ve known all my life, and that’s what makes it hard,” he said.
Morales is constantly looking for the right words to say. In the conversations he has had since last week’s massacre, and in the words he said at Mass, Morales has said he has tried to underline one thing: “It’s okay to be angry,” he repeated. “But that anger can’t hurt in hatred.”
On Monday, Hillcrest Memorial, Robb Elementary’s white funeral home within walking distance of injured students fleeing gunfire, reopened for an all-afternoon visit to 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza . Garza was an honorary student and remembered as a creative child who kissed her 3-year-old brother every day on the way to school. That little boy is now crying, confused by the absence of his older sister, his family said.
Outside the funeral home, however, temperament erupted as the villains tried to negotiate a group of international media. A journalist tried unsuccessfully to enter the building, and police officers – some of the many law enforcement agencies outside Uvalde who have come down to the city to help local authorities – pushed reporters into the street. . Authorities have ordered the families of some of the victims not to speak to the media; the city’s other local funeral home, Rushing-Estes-Knowles Mortuary, posted a note on its website that said, “We do not respectfully ask NO journalists or photographers on land.”
A 10-year-old Maite Rodríguez, an honorary student who dreamed of becoming a marine biologist, was also visited on Monday.
Police opened the road around Robb Elementary for the first time since the killings on Monday. A constant stream of mourning, curious and curious seekers, most from outside the city, came to cry or to see and photograph the impromptu memorial that has sprung up around the primary school sign, where white crosses mark the names of the dead. . The area was covered with thousands of bouquets and toys, and on Monday, people carried even more. A woman arrived with a plastic bag full of stuffed animals. Groups of worshipers prayed in both English and Spanish, with a man carrying a tall wooden cross on his shoulder.
What do school shootings do to surviving children, from Sandy Hook to Uvalde?
The grandmother of one of the survivors cried as she described how she and the others just want to move on and get away even for a day from the constant reminders of last week’s horror: the media, outsiders well-intentioned, the families of the victims.
“It’s too much for a little boy to go through,” said Betty Fraire, with tears rolling down her face, referring to her 9-year-old grandson. “Adults are also trying to stay strong, for them, for our community, but it’s too much.”
His grandson, Jaydien, who is only identified by his name because he is a minor, said he survived the attack by hiding under a table. Now Jaydien, who has a naughty smile and who loved going to school and his math classes, no longer wants to go to school. He also doesn’t want to talk to the other children who survived.
When she hears a loud bang, she is distressed and frightened and has not been able to sleep well, her grandmother said.
“We’re just trying to keep him busy and distracted, so he forgets the horror and becomes a happy child again,” Fraire said.
At Country Gardens & Seed, three San Antonio volunteers who had driven 80 miles to help store owner Yolanda Moreno they were busy shaping flowers arrangements in white bow baskets for funerals. They were out of breath, but on the ground around them were buckets of thousands of donated flowers: fragrant lilies, roses and carnations, blue delphinium, allium pedunculate, and green Irish bells. Moreno’s husband, Johnny, 64, came in and out several times picking up bouquets for the delivery van.
Moreno, 62, showed a heart-shaped arrangement for Rodriguez. the aspiring marine biologist, who was sent by a florist elsewhere in Texas with a small fishing net and small sea urchins hidden among the flowers, a tribute to the dream of a career that now the 10-year-old never it will come true.
All funeral services will be free, Moreno said, and he makes cash donations to the local library to buy books on behalf of the dead students.
“That’s for the little boy, isn’t it?” asked volunteer Amanda Melton, 37, an event planner in San Antonio, gesturing to one of the arrangements. “And what do you want me to say on the card?”
“Made with love,” Moreno said.
As the timeline unfolded, police criticized the response to the school massacre
In the early hours of Monday morning, a carpenter named Robert Ramirez, 47, was making his daily pilgrimage to his father’s grave in the cemetery in the town of Uvalde, where the graves were lined with small American flags. Ramirez, whose carpenter’s pencil was placed behind one ear, had brought his father two Miller Lite beers and placed them in his grave in honor of the day. The beers were still cold.
Ramirez said many people in Uvalde are disappointed and angry with law enforcement’s response to the shooting, and that people in the city want officers who have been unable to stop him to quit their jobs.
“They gave the shooter 90 minutes to do whatever he wanted, and he killed all these boys and girls,” Ramirez said. “It was very sad. They were just getting ready for summer. Two days.”
While visiting his father, Ramirez said he had to think about all that dirt and grass in the back of the cemetery, where many of the burials will likely take place in the coming days. They should bury all the victims there, he said, and build a large monument with their names.
“This is the perfect space,” he said, gesturing to the patch of uneven grass. “They all died together; they should be together. “
Paulina Villegas d’Uvalde contributed to this report.