CONTENT WARNING Talking about the event that unfolded after the Lapu Lapu Festival on April 26, when a deranged motorist murdered at least eleven people with his SUV.
It had been a little over two weeks since I had been at the site of the Lapu Lapu Festival, in and around the South Hill neighbourhood and John Oliver High School. Today was a beautiful warm sunny day, just like it was on the day of the Lapu Lapu Festival.
The Festival, a celebration of Filipino pride, culture, and resilience, had taken place on a beautiful sunny day spanning several streets and parking lots. Music, laughter, dancing, happy crowds, and food created a buoyant, lively atmosphere for blocks. I had too much fun, ate too much street food, but did manage to line dance with some lolas and introduce my colleagues Sean and Lucy to my favourite sweet snack, turon. I had left the festivities that afternoon for another event, only to return later that night on news that mass casualty event had taken place.
The trauma of that evening came in many forms. Of course, first and foremost the immediate victims, the survivors, and the first-hand witnesses – by the time I had arrived blue and red and white lights were strobing every surface, the last ambulances were leaving, firefighters with faces dulled in shellshock, police were taping off the streets, one was crying. A baby, a small child had been killed. I was crying. Ashen-faced volunteers marshalling amidst sequestered city buses to triage witnesses . Emergency rooms are overwhelmed at all regional hospitals. Our city and the world recoiled in horror and sadness.
How do we collectively recover, how do we individually recover? Two weeks later I’m here walking with survivors from that night, neighbours living within a block of the site at East 43rd between St George and Fraser where Kai-Ji Adam Lo deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people. We are walking slowly, the mom’s leg is in a brace from where the SUV struck her. She was separated from her son when they were hit, he was thrown and concussed. The dad shared his terror running from home to the scene to find his family. They all survived.
We walked along the block of 43rd past rows of stacks of flowers, flags, candles, teddy bears and toys, framed photos, wooden hearts, Filipino flags, mylar balloons. Markers dangle on strings attached to plywood sheets festooned with messages of hope, of sympathy, of love, of grief, of shock, of resilience. A deep growling muscle car roars by and we all flinch nervously.
The folks that live here, the thousands of young people who attend John Oliver, the local business community. Inevitably, once the flowers have wilted and the and the rains have smeared the cards into inky streaks, when the memorial has been packed up, we will need to reconcile this physical space in a meaningful way.