cccolumbine - Tumblr blog

cccolumbine · 5 years

Text

forever missing him.

11 notes · View notes

cccolumbine · 5 years

Photo

Daniel Mauser (June 25th, 1983 - April 20th, 1999)

1K notes · View notes

cccolumbine · 5 years

Photo

Nearly two decades have passed. Christine, struggles to remember the sound of Daniel’s voice, their shared moments and conversations only come to her in snippets. But the memories surrounding the school shooting that robbed her of her innocence? Those will never go away.

She was only 13 when the quiet and exceedingly normal life she and her family enjoyed in Littleton, Colorado, shattered.

Seventh-grade Spanish was letting out when an administrator at her middle school herded Christine and her classmates back into their classroom. It had to do with something that was happening at the nearby high school, though no one would say more. Eventually the teacher turned on the television. With the rest of America, Christine and her classmates watched the breaking news with confusion. She saw students being escorted out of the high school.

“There could be up to 20 fatalities,” Christine remembers her mom saying hours later, when she was picked up at school. “I didn’t know if fatalities meant deaths or injuries, and I was too afraid to ask.” The house filled with neighbors and family friends. The neighbors set out to distract her. She remembers her father making repeated drives to the high school, desperate to pick up his son. Returning from one of his last trips, he dissolved into screams and tears.

The neighbors set out to distract her. They ordered pizza and turned on movies. Though it became harder to do so as the hours passed, she tried to convince herself that Daniel was just hiding in a closet, too afraid to come out.

Reality hit the next day around noon, when officials showed up at the family home.“They told us my brother was among the dead,” Christine says. “I don’t really remember anything they said after that.’‘

In an instant, she became an only child. It was a role she hated, not least of all because she couldn’t bear to see her parents in so much pain.

For a while, she insisted that a friend sleep over every night. "It sounds horrible, but you almost don’t want to be alone with your parents,” she says, “because watching them go through that is the worst thing in the world.”

Sometimes she’d overhear them losing it in the next room. She didn’t have the words to comfort them and feared that anything she’d say would make matters worse. So she sat frozen, wracked with guilt for ignoring their cries.

At first the kids in school showered her with kindness – even stuffed animals. But they couldn’t really look her in the eye. Truth is, she didn’t want them to. She had changed overnight.“I remember just how awkward I felt, and how different I felt,” she says.

And in middle school, being different can mean trouble.

There were students who stared, watching her every move. If she cracked a joke or laughed in a desperate attempt to feel human, they looked at her stunned. On field trips, if the school bus rolled past Columbine High, their heads whipped around to monitor her reaction. She refused to be a mess in front of them, but the more she tried to act normal, the weirder she seemed – which only increased the gawking, her anxiety and, eventually, their bullying.

Unlike her brother, who didn’t like to be filmed or photographed, Christine was into acting and enjoyed being on stage. She surrounded herself with a bigger group of friends than he did. But after Columbine, she withdrew from others and gave up the stage. The last thing she wanted was to be the center of attention.

It wasn’t that she was “all sunshine and rainbows” before her brother’s killing, but she emerged someone else. Irrational fears consumed her, as did an obsession with death. Like many children who lose a sibling, she convinced herself she wouldn’t live beyond the age her brother died.

She knew her concerns were illogical and didn’t want to alarm anyone, so she kept her dark thoughts to herself. Still, rumors circulated at school that she was going to kill herself.

Her mother, an introvert like Daniel, often retreated. Her father became an activist, rallying for better background checks and protesting the National Rifle Association. While she was proud of his work, it brought new forms of unwanted attention. She answered the phone when the first hate call came in and was cussed out by a stranger.

Some kids at school lectured her about the Second Amendment and told her what her dad was doing was wrong.“I was so taken aback I just didn’t know what to say.”

Near the end of middle school, when being there became unbearable, she was pulled out and home schooled for the rest of the year. There was no way she could attend Columbine High, so she was given a special provision to attend high school outside the district. She craved anonymity. She needed people to know her for who she was, and not for what her family had been through. By 17, she says she began to find her footing again.

A big part in helping Christine and her family was Madeline, the 11-month-old baby they adopted from China a little more than a year after they lost Daniel. "We still felt a lot of the same pain and heartache and everything like that, but she was kind of just a different force,“ Christine says. "I was so grateful to have her there and to be a big sister.”

When her stepdaughter, Bethany, mentioned having “intruder training” at school, she held her tongue. The 9-year-old explained it was done in case “a robber comes to your school.” Christine didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth. Christine still holds onto Daniel’s copy of J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye.” It’s stamped in the back with “English Resource Center Columbine High School.” She didn’t go to that school, nor does her sister Madeline. All these years later, her parents still can’t bear to pick up a child there.

Her brother has been gone longer than he was here, and Christine feels as if she’s lived two lives. She’s not who she was when she lost him. When she sees adult siblings being best friends, she can’t help but feel a bit bitter. She can’t help but wonder what might have been had Daniel lived.

445 notes · View notes

cccolumbine · 5 years

Photo

Based off the evidence collected at table #9, it seems that Daniel Mauser was reading a Seinfeld book in the library that fateful day :(

78 notes · View notes

cccolumbine · 5 years

Text

twenty years and four months💛. you’re the reason i’m living right now dan, i live because you don’t get to. doing it all for you. i miss you sweet angel.

0 notes

cccolumbine · 5 years

Text