Still trying to move on
By Layla Wilder
Commemorative events are scheduled throughout the state as the one-year anniversary of the worst school shooting in United States history draws near.But many friends of the students killed at Virginia Tech are going to be doing what they've been trying to do all year: move on with their lives.
Seung-Hui Cho, a 2003 graduate of Westfield High School, fatally shot 32 people on the Blacksburg campus before he killed himself on April 16, 2007.
Shaken to learn five of the deceased were graduates of their high schools, residents of Fairfax County wore orange ribbons and attended prayer vigils for days after the massacre.
As the year wore on, services and vigils ceased and those who knew the victims best were left to suffer most.
“I'm still asking why,” said Caitlin McNabb, a 22-year-old art major at George Mason University who grew up with victim Reema Samaha in Centreville.
It wasn't until recently that she has been able to think about her friend's death, McNabb said.
After Vienna's Maxine Turner died, her friends talked about “how much it all sucked” and “how wrong it was,” Tina Diranian, her close friend, said.
Now they try to talk about moving on with their lives in a way that would make her proud, Diranian said.
“For me, it's all just something that will take more time,” said Kaitie Clarkin, who played basketball with victim Erin Peterson at Westfield High School.
The McNabbs and the Samahas lived in the Sully Station neighborhood in Centreville while the girls grew up. Their children were more like siblings than friends, McNabb's mother, Lu Ann McNabb said.
In the days following the shootings, children who grew up with and attended Westfield High School with Samaha got together to watch homemade movies the two families made.
“I couldn't watch them,” Caitlin McNabb said. Lu Ann McNabb said most of Samaha's other friends couldn't either.
“Life in the past year has definitely been hard and unpredictable,” said Emily Trumbull, 20, another close friend of Samaha and a student at the University of California. “You don't know when it's all going to hit you and you are going to be overwhelmed by it.”
“Even though a year is passed, you look back and are shocked that it all really happened,” Clarkin said.
Days after Turner's death, her friends organized a benefit concert at Fairfax Firehouse Grill for her fund featuring Sematic, a band of fellow James Madison High School graduates.
“Now we're all a family and our conversation has been less and less about how bad it all was and more about living every day for her,” Diranian said.
Thousands of people throughout Fairfax County attended memorial services at several places throughout the county after the shooting. There will be a commemorative event in Blacksburg, and smaller events throughout Fairfax County on the one-year anniversary of the shooting.
Clarkin, 21, a student at the University of Mary Washington, said she doesn't know what she will choose to do for the day. “It depends on the mood I'm in,” she said. “I may just try and have a normal day.”
After Peterson died, members of her team would meet up at her parents' Centreville home regularly to comfort her parents and to laugh and watch MTV in the basement like they used to do with Peterson.
Reflecting on Peterson's life and death this past year has taught her that life can't be taken for granted and has to be embraced, said Danielle Miller, 20, another of her teammates and a student at Lynchburg College. She plans to celebrate Peterson's life with friends on April 16, she said.
As for McNabb, she doesn't think she will be emotionally able to go to Blacksburg, or to visit Samaha's grave.
She will probably spend the day with her brother Patrick, talking about their friend, she said.