American flags fluttered in the hot wind Monday as Memorial Day dawned in Uvalde, a day of mourning and remembrance that had an unfathomable overlay of grief this year because this close-knit town of 15,000 near the Mexico border was beginning to bury its dead — the 19 students and two teachers gunned down at Robb Elementary School last Tuesday.
The first days of anger and grief over the senseless tragedy, made worse by catastrophic mistakes by law enforcement, gave way to the difficult but necessary period of mourning — a relentless cycle of visitations, rosaries, funerals and receptions that began Monday and will stretch until June 16.
Priests who last week comforted still-bleeding children and pastors who prayed with anxious parents on Monday turned to the familiar rituals surrounding Christian burials. Volunteers flew and drove in from across Texas and all over the country to help with various aspects of the funerals. Operators of a food truck handed out food and water. Florists shaped casket “sprays.” The head of the Texas Funeral Directors Association brought in an extra funeral coach along with other morticians — some experts at the art of facial reconstruction — to assist.
As the priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church — the only Catholic church in Uvalde — Father Eduardo Morales was bracing for a calendar of incessant grief, a kind of schedule that can follow only a mass-casualty event like the one that shook the nation here last Tuesday.
Morales, known as “Father Eddy,” will host funeral after funeral for the victims practically every day beginning Tuesday — sometimes two in one day, about a dozen in all.
“Everyone here knows someone who was killed,” he said at the church after Saturday Mass. “There’s going to be a lot of tears and a lot of sadness … but as we continue to celebrate their lives, they will turn into tears of joy.”
Before returning to his hometown to lead Sacred Heart six years ago, Morales buried parishioners he knew, he said. But never like this.
“I’m burying parishioners, but it’s people I’ve known all my life — and that’s what makes it difficult,” he said.
Morales finds himself constantly searching for the right words to say. In the conversations he’s had since last week’s massacre, and in the words he uttered at Mass, Morales said he has tried to emphasize one thing: “It’s okay to be angry,” he has repeated. “But that anger can’t hurt into hate.”
On Monday, Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home — the low-slung white mortuary just steps from Robb Elementary that had sheltered injured students fleeing the gunman — reopened its doors for an afternoon-long visitation for Amerie Jo Garza, 10. Garza was an honor student and remembered as a creative child who kissed her 3-year-old brother every day on the way to school. That little boy now weeps, confused by his big sister’s absence, her family has said.
Outside the funeral home, however, tempers flared as mourners tried to negotiate a gaggle of international media. One reporter tried unsuccessfully to enter the building, and police officers — some from the many law enforcement agencies outside of Uvalde that have descended upon the town to assist local authorities — pushed the journalists back to the street. Authorities have instructed some victims’ families not to speak to the media; the other local funeral home in town,…
Read More: Rosaries, bouquets and tiny caskets: Uvalde begins to bury its dead
