The very first thing Veronica Mata sees when she wakes up every day is her 10-year-old daughter, Tess, smiling down at her from a photograph perched on her bedside table.
Speaking to the silent image of the kid she lost in one in all the United States’ most notorious mass shootings, Mata asks for the fortitude to go on and to be an excellent teacher.
“I just have a look at it and I just tell her, ‘Tess, give me the strength, baby girl. Help me stand up.’”
Throughout the day, each day, Mata carries her daughter along with her: “Tess 10″ is written on her license plate. Dangling from the silver bracelet she wears on her left wrist is a charm that reads, “Uvalde Strong.” The slogan, adopted by other U.S. cities after mass killings, became the mantra of her town after Tess, 18 other fourth-grade students and their two teachers were gunned down at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022.
In a decade replete with mass killings, lots of them involving shootings, Uvalde stands out — each for the young age of most of its victims and the abysmal law enforcement response. Nearly 400 heavily armed officials rushed to the varsity but waited greater than an hour before one in all them confronted and killed the shooter. Outraged families of youngsters slain have demanded answers and accountability. One yr after the killings, they have not gotten much of either.
Yet, just like the survivors and relatives of victims struck down in previous mass shootings, the people of Uvalde must find ways to maintain going, whilst they stop to commemorate the tragedy’s first anniversary.
Mata finds it helps to have a every day routine: During her short commute to her job at Dalton Elementary School, she listens to Olivia Rodrigo, Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift, artists featured in a playlist that Tess put together just weeks before her death.
Mata drives through the center of town: past the Civic Center where she discovered Tess had been killed, and thru the town square, where crosses memorialize all 21 lives lost. Then a few blocks behind the square to go to a colourful mural honoring her daughter’s life.
The lifelike painted portrait — one in all quite a few murals gracing the edges of buildings throughout Uvalde in honor of every of the victims — shows a smiling Tess making the peace sign along with her right hand. Just behind her is the image of one in all the players from her beloved Houston Astros baseball team and of herself in uniform, holding a bat. “I can not, I actually have softball,” proclaims a big emblem pasted next to it. A painted version of her beloved cat Oliver ambles along the wall toward her. A TikTok logo on the mural is a reminder of how Tess loved to mimic viral dances — her renditions still exist on her mother’s phone.
Mata parks, says good morning, after which drives away.
TEACHING THROUGH GRIEF
Mata, a kindergarten teacher at Dalton Elementary School, returned to the classroom at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school yr for her twelfth yr.
She wonders how she would keep her students protected if a shooter were to enter her classroom at a time when mass killings across the country are surpassing record levels.
“Where am I going to cover 20 students?” she remembers asking her husband when she cleaned out the room last summer.
She has since reorganized her cabinets in order that they could be hidden behind and cleaned out closets to create potential hiding places.
THE DAY OF THE SHOOTING
It was late on the morning of May 24, 2022, when Mata was told that each Tess’ school, Robb Elementary, after which her own were on lockdown. In and of itself, that wasn’t terribly alarming; schools often took such motion, she said, in response to frequent police chases involving people attempting to illegally cross the Texas-Mexico border just an hour away.
But when other teachers began receiving calls that there was a shooter inside Robb, her heart began to hammer in her chest. She called her husband, Jerry, who was already driving toward the varsity, and stayed on the phone with him as he moved onto streets overflowing with police and first responders.
Then, she heard gunfire. The shots, her husband told her, had come from the side of the constructing housing their daughter’s fourth-grade wing. He said he needed to go and hung up. Mata tried contacting Tess’ teachers, who were often quick to reply to texts and emails. No answer.
After getting permission from her own principal to depart, Mata raced to the town’s Civic Center, where buses were dropping off Robb students, and anxiously eyed a listing of classrooms that had been safely evacuated. Tess’ was not one in all them.
She and her husband were rerouted to the hospital, but were told no person matching Tess’ description had been admitted. An official told her she could get more information by returning to the Civic Center. There, at 11:30 p.m., she said she and her husband experienced “what no mother and father should need to undergo:” the news that Tess had been killed.
IT’S NOT THE SAME TOWN ANYMORE
Uvalde — its landscape and its aura — have been ceaselessly modified by the killings. Visitors who once passed through on their strategy to the Frio River now slow right down to view crosses arrange at the doorway to the small town; the “Uvalde Strong” written in chipped paint on storefronts; and the abandoned Robb Elementary School constructing, which stays shuttered and guarded every day by state troopers.
School lockdowns and drills are commonplace as tensions rise along the nearby international border.
“Kids who I do know that were in Tess’ classroom … they’re scared to death each day,” Mata said. “No amount of drills, no amount of coaching can ever prepare you for a style of war like that.”
On Tuesdays, Mata and other victims’ families make the three-hour trek to the capital of Austin to advocate for gun safety laws within the nation’s largest red state. Attempts to boost the minimum buying age for semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21 were shut down in each GOP-led legislative chambers, despite a number of Republican votes in support.
AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING GRIEF
Memories of May 24 haunt Mata and her husband. There are days, she says, when she must step outside her classroom to gather herself or talk out her grief.
That’s when she turns to a fellow teacher who she says was “the last one to ever give my baby a hug,” following an awards ceremony at Robb Elementary.
The friend told her: “She picked up her glasses, like she all the time does, and runs, and I give her the largest hug ever and he or she says, ‘Tell my mom I say hi and I really like her.’”
TRYING TO SAY GOODBYE
Recently, Veronica and Jerry celebrated their eldest daughter, Faith’s, graduation from Texas State University. Tess had been learning to swim in order that she could join her sister within the tradition of jumping within the nearby river after commencement.
This summer, the family plans to place every little thing in Tess’ bedroom back to the best way she left it before flooding forced them to maneuver a few of her belongings. Gifts they’ve received from people in her memory — preserved roses, knickknacks, art, a signed Astros jersey — cover every spot within the room except one, on the bed, where Oliver the cat patiently awaits her return.
A DAILY VISIT
When the varsity day is over, Mata goes home, has dinner along with her husband, then takes a visit to the cemetery.
She fastidiously cleans her daughter’s grave, a elegant gray granite headstone embellished with Tess’ photo, then sits in front of it on a black marble bench decorated with butterflies in Tess’ favorite lavender and teal colours. She tells Tess about her day, of her conversations with Faith, and the way things went in Austin that week. And she asks her daughter for advice on one of the best path forward, for strength to hold on one other day.
“All right, baby, I’ll so long. I really like you,” Mata says, walking away.
She’ll be back tomorrow.
