09/06/2024
This is a really raw, long post. But it has helped me to process everything that happened yesterday. It may be triggering to some.
Growing up a coach’s daughter meant Apalachee becoming a second home for me and my siblings. Late night practices and baseball games meant running around under the bleachers with my sister and stealing snacks from the concession stands just to run up dad’s ongoing ”tab”. I have vivid memories of running around with the Shropshire, Morris, and Cooper kids in the gym after school, hiding in rolled-up cheerleading mats and getting all the giant bouncy balls out of the gym equipment room. My sister and I finding cool rocks on the hill above the baseball field, getting our feet all muddy from kicking off our shoes in dad’s office; no doubt earning some loving eye-rolls from Coach Holmes and Coach Holland for leaving them with our stinky feet-smelling shoes strewn across the floor as we ran around the campus.
Then one day, we strolled into the double doors of Apalachee High School as freshman. We made so many new friends and clung to our old ones. Boys, sports, and school dances became a priority. We found ourselves trying crazy makeup trends with the “dream mousse” foundation, layering WAY too many tank tops and rolling up our soffee shorts one too many times. Let’s not even get into our emo/ scene phases (it was never really a phase, who are we kidding lol). The late nights at school continued, but now for our own sports or for FCA Bible studies. Painting up for football games and cheering on our amazing band friends. We built love/ hate relationships with some amazing teachers, worked our tails off for that diploma, and before we knew it, we were seniors walking across the graduation stage. Venturing out to start our new, young adult lives.
Not knowing that 11 years later,
My dad would call to tell my mom - whisper to my mom - that he loved her possibly for the last time. To make sure she hadn’t already brought my brother to the school and to stay away.
My mom, drained of all color and white as a sheet, would tell me and my brother to stay calm, but that there was a school shooter and my dad had to hang up the phone just minutes before. That he was locked in the gym locker rooms, telling students to let their parents know that they were okay for now.
That I would have to call my sisters and hear them wailing, sobbing on the phone in fear and desperation of the unknown before us. Trying to remain calm myself while taking care of JD and Brooks.
That I would call my husband over and over again until he answered the phone at work to tell him what was going on, right as he saw 3 state patrol officers fly through Watkinsville.
That my family would gather around in the living room, gaping at the TV as the live news gave us the only information we had about the circumstances our father was in. Our father who had not answered his phone now for some time.
My brother would hear reports from his friends who were just classrooms away from the shooter that a coach was in fact dead but that one student was in custody. Rumors flying left and right.
What coach? Who was it? What area of the school was the shooter in? Are there more shooters?
“Mom, please tell me you’ve heard from daddy. Please tell me he is okay-“
Then we would receive messages saying our father had been shot. No one stopping to confirm anything before bulldozing us with that one.
My dad would finally answer the phone, telling us he was okay and unharmed but that they still had no idea what was going on. That they were being escorted to the football field.
Who knew that 11 years later,
All these memories below in these treasured photos would be tainted as those very halls we strode down were now on every news station. Those parking lots where we’d made so many memories, now full of every federal and state agency that existed. Those double doors we entered as hopeful freshman - now being held open for bodies coming out on stretchers. Our painted senior rock and those bleachers that creaked under the weight of our school pride on Friday nights, now looming over children underneath shock blankets and parents frantically trying to find them. The roads in front of the school that we ran down for cross country, for miles and miles, now filled for miles by abandoned cars of parents sprinting to get their kids.
That school that became a second home to us Alfonso’s was now a home under attack. A home that I prayed would hide my father and the kids in his care as we watched, unable to do anything - but watch.
The news would continue on, mispronouncing Winder; misspelling Apalachee. Every major news outlet would contact my mother and I trying to get information from us with very little respect. That same “free press” now interviewing CHILDREN who had just been released. Asking CHILDREN what it was like being in that school - SEEING THE BODIES!!!!
No respect. No boundaries.
Messages would continue pouring in, all of us not even knowing how to answer them.
I would wake my son up from his nap and sob as I held him tight, praying for the mothers who wouldn’t get that privilege again. Praying for my own son’s future in this world.
We would stay in that living room for the next 7 hours. Sobbing. Praying. Sorting fact from rumor. Checking in on each other. Leaving, one by one, at times to take a moment to ourselves. To scream. To cry. To mourn. To beg God.
Who knew that 11 years later…
I’d hear the click of the back door
Hear those familiar footsteps that told me dad was home, the footsteps I’d known since I was a child. The footsteps I probably never would have given a second thought to if it weren’t for today.
That I’d see my father’s sorrowful smile as he stood before us in the kitchen. Solemn. Hollow. But strong - for us.
“Dad-“
We would be on him in a heart beat. Sobbing into him as the arms of a father held us strong and kept us from falling to the floor. Dad, being the jokester that he is, making some silly comment about how he should get this type of treatment every day and we were just being big babies.
A comment that would have us smiling through hot, teary eyes and pounding headaches; looking up to see the love and pain in his eyes. Dad was home. Thank God above, my father was home.
-
I look back at all these high school memories and hold them a little tighter now. I see that 14 year old freshman smiling back at the camera, goofing off with her friends without a care in the world. Happy. Safe. Exactly as a 14 year old should be.
What pictures will today’s freshman have to look back on? To smile at? What nostalgia has been forever ripped away from them before they ever got to experience it? What will they think and say when they drive past this school as an adult? What innocence was stolen from them today? What people in their lives will have to forever try to make them whole again?
We need to do better. MUST do better. This isn’t a matter of weapons, it’s a matter of the HEART. It’s a matter of these children not receiving the love and adoration they deserve in this life. It’s the result of evil creeping in on innocence and NOTHING being done to stop it. It’s the result of divorce rates being almost HALF of all marriages - and that many broken homes to follow suit. It’s technology being constantly in our faces and too much of the world at our fingertips - “Looking through the eye of God” as my sister would call it. Too much for these innocent minds, these shiny new souls.
It’s the absence of Jesus.
So it is our duty - no - our privilege, to stand in the gap. To pray over our babies. To speak life into them and over them. To point a finger back to the Heavenly Father who loves them - who knew them before they were knit together in their mother’s womb, who has loved them before they could even love Him back. To tell them that the burden they will carry in this life is too heavy; but that there is a Savior who will carry that cross for them.
And if they don’t accept Jesus for who He is just yet, that’s okay. If you, dear reader, do not accept Jesus, that’s okay too.
I will stand in the gap.
I will speak your name and the names of these lost children into the Heavens, declaring that evil will NOT have a foothold in this community. Claiming in Jesus’ name that every burdened and weary soul will find peace, rest, blessed assurance, hope, comfort, and salvation in this short lifetime.
Stand in the gap. For our teachers. For our children. For our officers. For our first responders. For our coaches. For our lunch ladies. For our janitors. For parents. For our community.
If you’ve read this far, I’m sorry for such a long post. But thank you for reading it. It’s 2am and my insomnia forced me to write this. To get it out.
I don’t know how to end this post, so I’ll leave you with this quote,
“Be the change you want to see in this world.”
Avery Alfonso Clem
