‘Mommy, What If I Die When I Go Back to School?’

Published by Rolling Stone, Commentator Representative Justin Pearson – May 17, 2023

Mary Joyce’s daughter witnessed the unspeakable. “The day after the children were murdered at the school, grief therapists passed out ‘Feelings Cards‘ with faces on them to help the children identify what they were feeling,” she recalled. “My nine-year-old daughter, Monroe, who saw the shooter, the barrel of the AR-15, and her friend get hit and die, chose the ‘Proud’ card. Puzzled, I asked her why she chose that card. She told me that she chose it because she was proud that she managed to sit so still and not make noise so the shooter wouldn’t see her. She is nine years old.”

This is some of the heartbreak that Mary Joyce shared with me about her experience in the wake of the Covenant School shooting March 27 in Nashville that killed three of her daughter’s longtime classmates, along with three extraordinary and beloved staff members.

Mary said her child, in her third-grade innocence, believed that her friend had fainted from fright, but was going to be OK. Death never occurred to her. She described the moment her child understood that her friends had actually died: “I saw the exact moment her childhood innocence disappeared forever.”