For Whom the Bells Toll Not for Adam Lanza—or his mother

[Ptarmigan]

For Whom the Bells Toll Not for Adam Lanza—or his mother
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2013/12/newtown_anniversary_should_nancy_and_adam_lanza_be_mourned.html

This Saturday, all houses of worship in Connecticut will ring their bells 26 times—once, at the behest of the governor, for each victim of the Sandy Hook shooting. But 28 people died in the massacre: 20 students, 6 teachers, the shooter’s mother, and the shooter himself. Why will the bells fall silent two tolls short?

The fraught and complex question of honoring the perpetrator of a mass atrocity along with its victims has long troubled such memorials. The 15 crosses erected to commemorate the victims of Columbine—including two for the shooters—were quickly reduced to 13, then to none at all. Following the tragedy at Virginia Tech, students gathered 33 stones as a makeshift memorial, but the stone representing the shooter was later removed. And on Saturday, the commemorative tolls will leave out not just Adam Lanza but also his mother, who died at his hands but who has posthumously been assigned some share of the blame.

It’s easy to understand the reasoning behind excluding a killer. In the aftermath of a tragedy, the shooter becomes the villain. And his family members become the accomplices. The families of the Columbine victims sued the families of the shooters, claiming they should have seen it coming, and won a settlement. In Newtown, after all, it was Lanza’s mother who bought the guns he used. But she didn’t just enable her deeply disturbed son. She was his first victim, shot to death in her bed, and it’s dishonest and unhealthy to simplify the grieving process by depriving her of her proper remembrance.