Sagamihara Anniversary

One year ago, a eugenicist prick killed nineteen disabled people and critically wounded more at a care center in Sagamihara, Japan.  The ideology and identity of the murderer was given more media attention than the survivors... any of them.  The victims became a number, nothing else.

The ripples through the disabled community were widespread.  It was horrific and sad.  But, it didn't surprise us.  Ableist beliefs have lead to the deaths of our people before...

A year has gone by.  No updates about the survivors are readily available.
A year has gone by.  No details on any increase in security have manifested online.
A year has gone by.  We still don't know their names.

It almost makes it unreal, to not have names or faces.  The public isn't owed the information.  But, are the victims owed the acknowledgement?  Shouldn't they be worth more media coverage than a vile piece of scum?

A year has gone by.  And we still remember.

Sagamihara: Fear and Anger

The second the news hit, the media put the butcher in the same category as his victims.
He's sick.  He's mentally ill.  We should pity him, really.  He's just like them.

No.  He isn't.  Don't twist it so that he's "a victim himself".  To describe a horrible person's actions as mental illness harms the disabled/neurodivergent community.  We needed the focus on the true victims.  Things like ableism are due to ignorance, hatred... but not mental illness.  This attitude makes it easier for future violence against disabled/neurodivergent people because it paints us into "the volatile other".
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Then, there are the people on the perpetrator's side, people who see disabled people as having a partial life (as though having no life is more merciful-- better than having limits).  People who see disabled people as leeches who give nothing to the world.
The people who think disabled/neurodivergent people don't deserve something as vital as breath scare me.  People who don't see the humanity in others should scare everyone.
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All these months later, and I still haven't found one update on the survivors.  I haven't heard if any new security measures were added to care centers.  No one outside of the disabled community spoke up after the attack beyond the usual words of "terrible", "tragic", "poor people", or similar.

Maybe things changed that I didn't hear about because I'm in America.  Maybe people are more protected now.  I can hope that's the case-- hope and remember what happened.

Sagamihara: Time

Time dilutes the potency of grief, of shock.

Memory and mind erase the impact of time, dragging us backward.

We never know what will send us to the place history rubs upon us.

Distance dulls the initial feeling, blunted.

Those not ours, not close, feel more abstract than essential.

How can we hold onto strangers, then?  Those so far?

We understood the sadness, it brought our fears home.

Are the ones who claim us able to fight if we can't?

Will it bring our family more grief than relief to lose us?

How will our nations (and community) respond?

Are we so forgettable?

We pause as the world changes each day.  And we fight when we can.

We remember you as we'd want to be remembered, as humans deserve to be.

Even past time and separated by distance and beyond our fears because you are never forgettable.  You were ours, too.

Sagamihara: Tapestry

Beautiful humans:  Somewhere, for someone, you changed their life.  Everyone who ever existed has made an impact, our threads in the tapestry of this world are adjacent to others... complementing and contrasting.  You were important.  You were vital.  

Those who love you the most will be your historians in this world, reminding it of you... sharing you with those who haven't known you.  This is the gift they can give.

Thank you for your presence.  May those you loved carry your stories in their hearts, so they may be repeated back to you when you reunite.

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Sagamihara: Family

We feel your presence

Gentle rain tickling leaves

Disappears too soon

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Today, I am with my family.  But my thoughts drift towards Sagamihara.  

Did each victim have at least one person who mourned them, who lost something fierce and precious when they died?  Everyone should have someone who would miss them, who knew them personally.  Someone who knows just what the world lost, even when the world doesn't. 

Sagamihara: Lighting Candles

A photo of a lit candle.  Credit to Shawn Carpenter on Flickr.

We remember you today, each life a lit candle in the darkness.  Each flame a hope, a soul.  A small trace of love in cupped hands.

Our prayers and wishes for you rise up like the smallest whisper of smoke.  The wax running over like our tears.  You brought light to the world, regardless of if anyone ever told you.  You are missed, no matter how many people don't say the words.

Sagamihara: Month Two

Two months have past since you've left us.  Your names and personalities are still in shadow.  The world is spinning onward with other news, other deaths, it is the way of things.  Sand blown from the hourglass by a gale.

I wonder about those left behind, the survivors of the night.  Has another person died from wounds sustained without media giving attention?  Would the toll be updated?  Are those on the road to recovery healing well?  Are they still living where they were?  Are they afraid of the place they thought of as home?  Does anyone care if they can't sleep at night?  Did they receive new blankets, or do they sleep on bloodstains, unable to be fully removed?

I say the name of the place on the map where you lived, my white tongue clunking against the syllables in ways they're not meant to be pronounced.  It is the only way I can mention you and be understood.
It is one of the few things we're allowed to remember.

Sagamihara: Remembrance

Light danced on my skin today, an experience you'll never have again.  My breath catches a little when I think of you, all nineteen, and the things you'll never have again. Or never had to begin with.

Did your families visit often?  Which seasons made you feel most alive?  Did you have a secret crush across the hall, burning your ears with secrets and tingling your lips with kisses?

Who were you?  Who would you have become if given the chance?

Today is the anniversary.  The day a hole was torn through your community.  The day you slipped away, faceless and unnamed, while your assailant smiled for his fifteen minutes.  Well, more like two minutes.  Not everyone spoke of it.  Most did not.

But we did-- we do.  The members of your extended community, the disabled community.  We have cried for you, screamed, raged.  We love you.  Love you still.  We hold you in our hearts and minds.  

I will never speak your murderer's name.  The vile scum will slip into the rot of forgetting and I'll leave him slide there... into the cold darkness where he belongs.  

I will never speak your names, but I want to.  I want to shout them out as a cry for justice and as a reminder of wretched ableism.  I want to whisper them to the stars so I can imagine you as light, happy things.  I want to say them, because you were important and worthy people, the kind of people deserving of remembrance that includes names and faces.

But I will remember you, regardless.  Always...