I'm at the Westroads Mall, site of the worst mass murder in Nebraska since Charles Starkweather 50 years ago.
I'm looking out at a makeshift memorial to the dead, a memorial that's become so big, Santa's been displaced to another corner of the mall. Around the reindeer festooned platform where his throne would have been, has come the unaccountably colorful folkart of thousands of paper snowflakes, written messages, stuffed animals and flowers.
When an addled kid took an AK-47 and killed eight people before killing himself he cast a pall on traditionally the cheeriest season at the mall.
I remember the Westroads when growing up here, a big stretch of double decker hallways connecting a Sears to a Penneys. When a multiplex opened here in 1968 (six screens then 12) it was the first around.
My first real job was here -- morning janitor at McCrory's. I had a love hate relation with the place as most teenagers too. It represented the commercial culture. But we hung out there nonetheless.
Today, nearly everything is different. The Sears is gone. The Kilpatrick's was turned to Younkers and put on the other side of the mall, an extension was built for a food court and Von Maur, the department store where the killings took place Dec. 5.
I hadn't been here for a while until I stopped here last summer, looking for a Panera Bread to plug into and blog. It was a pleasant enough place to do such work. I remember a shoeshine guy right outside the place who didn't ask if I wanted a shoeshine but seemed to sense I needed one. But he also realized I was in a rush. "Come back and see me," he said.
I meant to. And today I'm back, under odd circumstances. The reporter in me wanted to see the aftermath of the place, what the mood was like. The mall itself was closed for a couple of days after the tragedy; Von Maur remains closed. Odd that its Christmas lights blaze on the facade but the windows are blacked out by cloth; there's a printed sign on some wreaths that are half funeral and half of the season. They talk about healing and praying for the families, but won't indicate until later that the store will reopen Dec. 19, to get a semblance of a holiday selling season.
But now, on the locked doors, outside and in, came the snowflakes and tributes. Those piled up outside took on an eerie sense outside as four new inches of snow covered the bouquets. People wiped away some signs so they could be read; others in runny magic marker were already illegible.
There was a big sign on a pedestal that said Thou Shall Not Kill - Return the 10 Commandments to the Schools. (As if that would have stopped the kid). There were some of those phrases that popped up after 9/11 as well. We will never forget, several said. God Bless America, said others. Some referred to the date Dec. 5, as if 12/5 would become its trademark.
But many others referred to the dead people -- mostly workers at the department store, the people who wrapped presents up in the customer service department -- by name, as friends, aunts, uncles. Big chunks of the memorial were given up to grade schools who sent their support as class project. But there were tables up for people to make their own snowflakes and write tributes if they wanted. Fliers are out on how to deal with such tragedies, from the American Psychological Association, American Red Cross, and Salvation Army.
There are a couple of tables where people can sit and write in guest books "thoughts for the families." Pens are provided, as is a box of tissues.
There aren't obvious tears, though. But people are respectfully silent as they take in the display. And elsewhere in the mall, the only odd thing amid the usual Christmas shopping and Saturday night hanging out is that there is just the slightest unease of people as they look at you. Mortality is on the mind of the people at the mall, with the realization they could have been in the department store in this mall the moment a mind snapped and the gun went off.
But 10 days after the shooting, and another 10 before Christmas, life goes on.
The shoeshine's chairs are still here, I just noticed, buzzed up with caffeine to justify my Panera free wifi. But the shoe shine guy himself is gone.
Recent Comments