I’ve experienced great loss in the last 10 years. My mother and sister died of cancer in 2010 within 2 months of each other and my brother died suddenly five years ago. I don’t like to grieve but we all have to do it and we have to move on. I think that is why the story of the Anchondo family resonates with those who hear it.
I woke up Sunday morning to the news that there had been a shooting in Dayton, Ohio and there were multiple fatalities. That was on the back of the news from Saturday of the El Paso shooting that also left multiple fatalities and the number is growing from the injured. It felt September 11, 2001. For me, the grief and anger is about the senselessness of it. The loss of innocent life. People whose only mistake was being at the wrong place at the wrong time and being in the way of evil. I will never name the shooters of El Paso or Dayton. I won’t give them that respect, but they will not win.
Gilbert Anchondo ran an auto shop in El Paso and was the father of Andre. Andre and his wife, Jordan, died trying to protect their 2-month-old son from the El Paso shooter. It appears from security footage, Andre tried to stop the shooter and was shot trying to protect his family. Jordan, his wife, was shielding her son. The parents were killed, but the infant survived with minimal injuries. They were at Wal-Mart shopping for their older daughter’s birthday party that was to be held later that day.
But the response of family members who were left behind, especially the father, Gilbert and the brother, Tito, was of grace, hope and forgiveness.
Gilbert said he forgave the shooter and that he could have been his own 21-year-old son. That he was on the wrong path and was consumed by evil, so that he must forgive him. Tito said that his will always remember his brother as dying to save his family and that was noble.
Gilbert told the BBC that when they went to the family reunification center the next day because they had not heard from Andre and they were hoping against hope that he might still be alive, “…they told me I had done a good job with him, because he was a protector of his family.” He went on to say, “It makes me proud. If he died under these conditions, I can live with it.”
I don’t know if I could. I pray everyday if I am faced with a tragedy like this, I can show the grace and faith in God this family did.
There will be much debate in the coming days and it is time for it. I pray that we will remember the families involved—really remember them—and use language that will be respectful of the loss and of those families.
