“How do you capture the essence of a 6-year-old in just a few words? Noah was an impish, larger-than-life little boy. Everything he did conveyed action and energy through love. He was the light of our family, a little soul devoid of spite and meanness.”
Noah's mom described how, only nights before his death, he walked down the stairs after bedtime - shirtless. When she asked him what he was doing he told her he needed one more hug. When she asked him why he had his shirt off he replied, "So I can feel your heart better."
Noah loved to read and figure out how things worked mechanically. His uncle described him as very inquisitive, and extremely grown up and bright.
Noah must have been bright, considering he was the same age as most kindergarteners. He was the youngest of the victims. Noah and his twin sister, Arielle, had only been 6 for a matter of weeks. The two of them were the best of friends and were inseparable, other than at school since they had been placed in separate classes. Arielle was assigned to a third class of 1st graders that was unharmed, and their 7 year old sister, Sophia was safe as well (they also have a teenage brother and sister).
As I have written I have focused on the victims, not the shooter. My husband even challenged me further shortly after I started writing these to not mention the shooting at all, which I have tried to do. However, upon reading about Noah and his mother's actions after his death, I think, today, I owe it to her and Noah to share a bit of her message as well.
Noah's mother has been very outspoken about how her son died. She describes how she made the impossible decision to view his body:
“I owed it to him as his mother, the good, the bad, the ugly … It is not up to me to say I am only going to look at you and deal with you when you are alive, that I am going to block out the reality of what you look like when you are dead. And as a little boy, you have to go in the ground. If I am going to shut my eyes to that I am not his mother. I had to bear it. I had to do it.”
The Governor of Connecticut attended Noah's funeral. Veronique went to him ans asked him to come with her and view Noah's open casket, in hopes that something, someday, might come from it.
“I needed it to have a face for him … If there is ever a piece of legislation that comes across his desk, I needed it to be real for him.”
Veronique told how her son, the very youngest of the victims, was shot 11 times. At close range. I won't go into the full details of what she said. If you want to read it you can find it easily, I'm sure. But it is heartbreaking - as all of this is - and I can only assume her description could be multiplied by 26, and that makes it all that more gut-wrenching. In explaining why she chose to release these details about her son she said:
"I just want people to know the ugliness of it so we don’t talk about it abstractly, like these little angels just went to heaven. No. They were butchered. They were brutalized. And that is what haunts me at night.”
And it does haunt her at night. The night of his death, understandably she hardly slept, and when she did drift off she dreamt of wandering an abandoned house on an island, knocking on doors, searching for Noah. Calling out to him over and over, waiting for him to answer. She woke from the dream screaming. Her teenage daughter comforted her.
Days after his death, President Obama came to visit the families of the victims. Veronique told him about her dream, about searching and calling for Noah and how he never answered. The President leaned over and whispered to her, "If you listen closely, he is answering you." She said that helped her a lot.
Veronique and other parents of the victims have been in contact with the White House over the past weeks and many have submitted their suggestions on the new legislative matters that were proposed today.
You might not all agree with the legislation, but in my opinion it is the very least we can do. I won't go into my beliefs on this... that's not what this is for, but I will say that in honor of Noah and his friends and educators I signed emails I received today from the White House and the Brady Campaign. I think that Noah and his mom would be pleased.
So... on to today's actual Act of Kindness. Noah was exceptionally bright and he loved to figure out how things worked and was fascinated by mechanical things. I have a feeling he might have gone into science or engineering had he had the chance.
So I decided to just call the OMSI and purchase the ticket over the phone and just have them pass it out at the cashier's desk. I called and told them I was doing a random act of kindness, that I couldn't make it down there today, but I would like to purchase a ticket for a random child who came to the museum. The girl who I was talking to said they couldn't do ticket sales over the phone. My heart sank and my mind started racing, trying to think of another possible option, but then the girl asked me if I could hold on for a minute. When she came back on the phone she said, since I was trying to do a kind deed, that instead of purchasing a ticket they would donate one of their vouchers to be used in my name for the next child who came in. I was touched. What a wonderful thing for them to do - I never expected anything like that to happen, but it's so incredible to know that other people (and organizations as well) go out of their way to do something good for someone else. It almost brought me to tears, and I was still fighting them back as I told the young lady that I didn't want my name on it, but rather that of "Noah Pozner, Age 6. Act #17 of 26"
Noah's mother described a recent dream of him where he smiled at her and said, "Mommy, I'm having fun."
I hope that he is. And I hope that he enjoys the realms of the universe being opened to him now.
"What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?" - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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