There Are No Answers

The first thing I did when I got a text message asking if I had seen what was going on in Newtown was check online news sources. After reading a few headlines and skimming a few articles, sparse in detail and high in speculation, I went downstairs to my family room. I sat down next to my mother, who had been staring at the television for about 30 minutes already, and started to watch the news. I didn’t move from the couch for the next six hours.

To comprehend a national tragedy is difficult enough. To grapple with the fact that it happened in a town you’ve known familiarly since you were a child, a town a mere 10 miles away from your own suburban home, is another challenge altogether. But nothing could have prepared me for the moment when I heard her name, thrown in with the other tidbits of information slowly being leaked as time dragged slowly on:

“It is thought that among the dead is Sandy Hook’s principal, Dawn Hochsprung.”

Dawn Hochsprung, or Dawn Lafferty as I knew her, had been my vice principal in middle school. More importantly, she eventually became the wife of one of my most beloved teachers, George Hochsprung, a colleague of hers at Rogers Park Middle School. I was George’s student when he and Dawn were planning for their wedding. As I heard the news of her death confirmed, all I could think of were the happy days I spent in his classroom, and her smiling face when she would check in on him and his students.

And then I sat in front of the news for hours. For hours that day and for hours for the next three days. I couldn’t pull myself away. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t leave the couch. I think now that I was waiting — waiting for some reporter to tell me something that would help make sense of it all, some small piece of information that would allow me to comprehend the meaning behind a tragedy like the Sandy Hook shooting.

It never came. Of course it never came.

A few days later, I attended Dawn’s wake with my family. Both of my brothers and I had been through school with George and Dawn, and over the years, my parents had become very fond of both of them. It seemed appropriate to see George and do what we could to share his burden.

On arrival, we saw the reporters. A group of them, standing the legally designated distance away from the wake, with their cameras and microphones. I was furious, and as someone who plans to pursue a career in journalism, deeply disconcerted. When did it become acceptable to intrude on the grieving process of a family in turmoil? And at what point does the news turn from being helpful and informative to hurtful and invasive?

I thought of my countless hours sitting in front of the television, hoping for some answers. Hoping that someone with a little more authority than me would shine light on the situation. But as I stood at the wake of Dawn Hochsprung, looking at the cold, huddled reporters at the end of the street, I realized they were no closer to understanding the tragedy than I was. Maybe they had access to people for interviews and passes for press conferences, but in the end, they were looking for answers too.

As a reporter, it’s your job to provide answers, even when they cannot be found. You are expected to produce something. Anything. As someone who, like many others in the Connecticut community, had personal ties to the shooting at Sandy Hook, I realized at Dawn’s wake that there would never be any answers. The parents of those children, and my dear teacher and mentor George Hochsprung, will never find an answer to the question that haunts all of our minds: Why?

Since that morning in December, I have quietly and solitarily mourned for those who were lost, and for those who lost loved ones. On returning to Middlebury, I immersed myself in Shakespeare for my thesis work. It was only then that I remembered the fateful moment at the end of Othello, when Othello asks Iago the question that readers have tried to figure out for centuries: Why? Why have you tormented me and caused me to kill my wife? What did I ever do to you?

In one of Shakespeare’s darkest moments, the most evil of all of his villains replies, “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak a word.”

There is no repentance. There is no explanation. What you know, you know. Six remarkable adults and 20 beautiful children were killed in Newtown, Conn. on that horrific day in December. That is what we know. We will never know the motive; we will never be able to understand why. And I believe that even if we did know the reason behind Adam Lanza’s killing spree, it wouldn’t help.

What I know is that the moment I hugged George Hochsprung, it no longer mattered why I was there. What was important was that I was there. In times of struggle and great heartache, reporters and their facts become irrelevant. Relief will not present itself in a news report. What you know, you know.