Prayers for NIU
Posted
Saturday, February 16, 2008 8:10 AM
I'm wondering if I should be ashamed that this one is getting to me a little more. I mean, over the past dozen years or so whenever something like this would happen, I would feel sad, I would say a prayer and I would offer my condolences because, really, that's all you can do. This time, it's so close to home I actually had to take moment to myself yesterday afternoon. Good thing my office mate was out and my door was closed because I was surprised at how emotional I became.
I am not a graduate of NIU but a lot of friends and family are. When the details of those that were witnesses, injured or killed began to come out, it started to hit me that these are not strangers in a far off land, these are my neighbors. These are kids that grew up just like I did, and expereienced the same things I did. It just breaks my heart that bright, intelligent, dedicated students doing what it is good students do (attending lecture) had to be taken like this. Prayers go out to the entire NIU campus, it is going to take a long time to heal even if they were nowhere near the scene.
Then shock became horror when it came out that the gunman was in fact a grad student currently enrolled at the Univeristy of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. My beloved alma mater. A place that is so near and dear to my heart. My blood runs thick Orange and Blue and does as it does for some of the people who are most important to me in my life, including DH. It literally made my stomach turn over when they said on the news he had his UIUC ID in his pocket.
My head became full of the "what if's?" and the "why's?" What was it that made this guy go up to NIU and do that and not stay where he was at? Where my BIL is still in school, where many, many friends are continuing their education, where professors and faculty that truly touched our lives still teach. What if something had happened? Wow. Just wow.
There's slight relief there...you know, that he didn't but it's not fair to NIU to feel that way. It almost feels, to me, like it's happened on both campus's...because everyone at UIUC knows someone at Northern and vice-versa. The state schools are very intertwined in Illinois because every kid in state goes to one of them. We all had friends at all of them. I can count on one hand the number of people I knew in high school who went to college out of state...it just doesn't happen. That why it feels like it was neighbors who were taken, even though I do not know them personally.
So I guess I just felt like I needed to get that out there. Talk about how I was feeling a little bit. I just hope they know at NIU, that the ENTIRE Illini Nation (and it stretches from coast to coast and beyond) is with you and praying for you during this difficult time.
We will NEVER forget.