A tragic day…
I’ve been having a hard time finding the right words after yesterday’s tragic incident on the Brown University campus. Both my partner, Therese, and I are part of the Brown community—Therese as faculty, and me as a staff member at Brown's Warren Alpert School of Medicine — so like so many others at Brown, and across Rhode Island, this came as a terrible shock.
Almost immediately, we started hearing from family and friends checking in to make sure we were okay. Most of them probably knew we live in Warwick, just over eight miles from campus, and assumed we were home on a quiet Saturday afternoon. We weren’t. We were at a matinee showing of the movie Hamnet at the Avon, just up the street from the building where the shooting occurred.
Partway through the movie, both of us began getting alerts from Brown telling us to shelter in place. When the film ended, the situation was still unfolding and the area was locked down. We stayed in the theater for nearly two hours, along with everyone else, watching the news, refreshing updates from the University, and trying to make sense of what was happening so close by. Eventually, we decided it was time to leave and get home, so we slipped out quietly and drove back to Warwick.
Like so many others, we can only offer our deepest sympathy to the families of those who were killed, and our hope for a quick recovery for those who were wounded and to be reunited with their loved ones. For the students, faculty, and staff at Brown, the effects of this will take time to fully surface. Still, we hold onto the hope that the community will come together — and that, somehow, we’ll find a way to be stronger and better as a result.
We woke up this morning to freshly fallen snow – and took a quiet morning walk on the beach, and then around the neighborhood tonight. You have to just keep on, keeping on.
