Three weeks in Southport
I still don’t know how to write this. It was supposed to be “one week in Southport”, then two, now it’s three.
When you walk around Southport today, you will see pink ribbons on almost every gate and gatepost. I saw a house with three big ribbons, and I thought that was nice. Symbolic. I don’t know what it feels like to be a bereaved parent, but when it looks like the nation is going mad all around you, maybe it’s a homely thing, in a way, to see that everyone in your town sees your grief, and they are for you, and they care.
If you walked around Southport three weeks ago you couldn’t catch anyone’s gaze. Every look fixed on the ground; anguished, confused. Parents bringing kids home from school with the tension of un-held conversations written all over them. We all gave our kids extra-long hugs, but the emotions abraded a lot of grown-ups into a tense, curt state.
I didn’t know the bad thing was happening until a friend at the BBC texted me to check if we were ok. At that time no-one knew who the victims were. I first heard the dreadful truth from a colleague closer to events, who knew what had been the target, hours before the media could get it. I didn’t want to believe him, but sadly he was right.
The sirens and helicopters had started making a ruckus and they wouldn’t stop for three or four days. That really made it last. It doesn’t feel like it’s over if there are news choppers thrumming overhead. Every time we heard a siren it had extra significance… “what now?”. That was the start of the longest week ever.
Tuesday was infuriating. And we come onto something else that evades my grasp. I’ll say that I, in my age and state of life, didn’t have unpleasant dreams about being a victim of the attack. But I did start to have dreams about being trapped in a hotel, with a braying mob setting fires outside, throwing bricks through the windows, as I hurried to protect my family.
White Nationalism is a scourge. I am not especially a royalist, nor an anarchist, nor a republican. As a citizen of Jesus’ kingdom, let’s say I’m nation-sceptical. But here are some things patriots do not do: They do not tear down the walls and homes of their countrymen to make ammunition to throw at a place of worship. They do not abuse and attack police who are defending the defenceless. They do not set fire to vehicles of the crown, nor wreck and melt ordinary streets where a grieving people live and work.
To take the mourning of a town and manipulate it to create more pain, more loss, more sadness, sickness, and worry… is inexcusable. I think that’s definitively evil behaviour. At the same time, I see the disenfranchisement and anger of the left-behind working classes. A lot of that action is driven by ignorance. But, at the end of the day, we are responsible for our actions, no matter the motive. My window cleaner went to prison.
Wednesday, I went to see the memorials. It felt like days and days had passed, and I had seen my town on screens and feeds, but I lived somewhere else. Close yet far. So I took my bicycle to see the scenes. At first, I could only stop and watch from a distance, as though I was intruding, or perhaps approaching something dangerous - hot like a furnace. Eventually I parked the bike and walked the flower line. I started to cry when I saw all the stuffed toys; they made me think about what these girls loved. They had passions and interests, imaginations, and little games that they would play with their parents and friends. And there was a little note scrawled in a child’s hand that said, “I will miss you”.
💝
That Sunday, I was scheduled to lead a family service at church. I made a change from my prepared topic. Parents had shared a varying amount of information with their kids about the week’s events, so we had a gentle, resilient, and hopeful morning. We looked at this world of darkness where a beautiful light is shining. That we live in between a perfect beginning and a perfect end, where things are not perfect, and the world is not as it should be. Yet, we can be mirrors of the goodness of a loving God; we refract his light into its colourful components of peace, kindness, gentleness… that enrich the lives of those around us. A light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot extinguish it.
Three weeks later it feels more normal to be me. But for those more embroiled in the events of bad Monday, it has probably not finished sinking in. I know some parents are apprehending the difficulty that September will bring, when kids return to school, and assemblies are held, and conversations come home from the schoolyard to the dinner table. God bless all those peacemakers who sit to face that.
My three-year-old son and I talk about death from time to time. As a family, we took flowers to one of the memorials because “something sad happened”. He got to draw a heart on the ground with some red chalk. He’s only three - some of these things can wait ‘til he’s older. My daughter slept peacefully in her pushchair, its canopy shading her from the August sun.
When they are falling asleep, and I sing to them, and stroke their backs, I will remember.