Ten years ago this week, Christine Leinonen woke up at 3 a.m. in her Polk County home to news that changed her life. It was a Facebook post from one of her son Christopher’s friends talking about an attack at Pulse Nightclub. Leinonen didn’t know it then, but Christopher had been shot nine times. He was amongst the 49 people killed in the Pulse shooting on June 12, 2016.
“When I think about that, what is so painful,” Leinonen said, reflecting on that night. “How painful a bullet (from a semi-automatic rifle)is to the human body, just how much gunpowder is in one piercing, and for him to have nine, and none of them hit major organs. He probably wasn't dead. He probably was alive, and who knows how long he was alive. He could have been in shock, and his body protected him from it. He could have witnessed a lot, and then to know that he lay there…”
Friday marks the 10-year remembrance of what is widely considered Orlando’s darkest day, when a gunman stormed Pulse, killing 49 people and injuring 58 others. It may seem like a long time ago for some, but for many others, the grief remains strong.
“I still think of my son, who was 32, but I still think of him as a little one. He's my little son, he's my little baby, he's my little fourth grader, lying on the floor of that club,” she said.
Milestones
As the City of Orlando prepares to honor the 49 lives, as well as the survivors, many people in Central Florida may start to unearth unresolved feelings.
“I think for some people they're going to have maybe a little bit of a shock, because as we all talk more and as we get close to that date, people who think that maybe they were over it are going to find they have some symptoms again,” said Deborah Beidel, the executive director of a University of Central Florida’s RESTORES program, a research center working to better treat people with posttraumatic stress disorder.
Beidel said the Orlando Fire Department called her on the day of the shooting, asking her to come to the hospital. On that day and the days that followed, she worked with families, 911 dispatchers, and other first responders.
“Very few people had seen something of this magnitude before, and so we needed everyone to understand that not being able to sleep, not being able to eat, having nightmares was actually considered pretty normal, or is considered normal after an event of this type in those beginning days,” Beidel said.
Over time, those affected by the tragedy may learn to live with their pain, but milestone remembrances, like 10-year anniversaries, cause people to talk and reflect about the day in ways that can stir up old wounds, according to John Super, a psychology professor at UCF.
“When we start to see those anniversaries coming around, the first year, the second year, five years, 10 years, like we're coming up on, we see a lot of that resurfacing,” Super said.
That’s been happening to Leinonen recently.
She works with her grief through activism within the LGBTQ+ community, safe gun laws, and investigating the City of Orlando’s institutional procedures on the night of Pulse , even having recently co-authored a book about what she and others believe led to the shooting.
She keeps busy.
But last week, while driving, she thought about the upcoming 10-year remembrance.
“And I was transported right back to 10 years ago, and I started crying, as if I was like, come on, Christine, it's 10 years,” she said.
She was transported to a memory of herself standing on the corner near a 7-Eleven, a block away from the club. She was trying to call her son, according to a 2017 post she wrote on Moms Demand Action.
She remembers asking the police for any information they had.
She remembers standing in a crowded hospital for hours with hundreds of others looking for their loved ones.
And she remembers waiting 33 hours before finally learning the truth. Christopher wasn’t coming home.
“I'm a little sadder than most years. I don't know if 10 years is just piling on the. The gravity of 10 years is just feeling heavier on my heart this year than most years,” Leinonen said.
That’s normal, according to Beidel. Everyone’s recovery, especially for a mother, is going to be different.
“I think this idea that there's a certain pathway, and that there are certain milestones that we all have to reach at the same time. I think that's one of the biggest misunderstandings,” Beidel said.
Community trauma
Survivors, families, and medical professionals are likely to feel the pain of that day resurface, but there are those who were indirectly affected on June 12th who experience old feelings returning as well.
Ten years ago, Super was working on his doctorate and volunteering at an LGBTQ+ facility called The Center, providing counseling services. On the morning of the Pulse shooting, Super had multiple texts asking if “he was OK?” He saw the news and drove to The Center. When he arrived, The Center put him to work, contacting television stations to let people know grief counseling was available.
“We had people just starting showing up,” he said. “People who left the hospital and came there, people who were in the club that night, people who were just in the community…”
In that time and over the years, Super had many people come in to express grief, even if they weren’t directly involved. Some found that confusing. Super understands it, though.
“As a Central Florida community, there was a sense of grief, of trauma, of crisis that occurred during those few days,” he said.
Some folks reported living near victims or survivors, or even just living near the club, provided a sense of fear.
If they didn't know that neighbor, they knew they were close; they were two degrees of separation from the massacre itself,” he said.
Others reported being triggered by sirens, flashing lights, and even the sound of helicopters.
“Those few days, helicopter sounds were a constant, and even when they started to go away, it reminded them of how unsafe their neighborhood was,” he said. “It wasn't necessarily PTSD, but it was that recurring feeling that they weren't safe in the community they lived in.”
Many have carried the fear of that time since, but that isn’t the only way Orlando had changed.
Despite fear and pain, there was a kindness that spread through the community, observed in many ways not often seen in times of tragedy, Beidel said.
“I've responded to a number of mass shootings around the country after the Pulse shooting, and I can tell you that I've never seen a community come together in the way that Orlando came together and has stayed together.”
After the Pulse tragedy, Central Florida responded in a big way. Roughly 28,000 pints of blood to blood banks. When families gathered for funerals, a group of rotating 49 angels arrived, donned large white, angelic wings made from PVC pipe, and blocked anti-gay protesters from disturbing the peace. That included the funeral of Christopher Leinonen, for whom hundreds gathered at the Cathedral of Saint Luke in Downtown Orlando.
But perhaps the largest image of love and community coming together was the crowd of 50,000 people standing around Lake Eola for a candlelit vigil honoring the victims, creating an orange glow that defiantly lingered around the heart of Downtown Orlando, as the sun set and night fell.
The mourning community echoed a chorus of “love is love is love.”
“I think that this community's response was just beautiful, and I think the sentiment still exists,” Beidel said.
In the destruction, a flower
Among the throngs of people who had come Downtown to mourn was a large group of Muslim women.
“For a lot of us, we were like, we want to go, but how will that make people who are there feel if a bunch of Muslims showed up,” said Fatima Sadaf Saied, co-founder of the Muslim Women Organization.
The shooter claimed allegiance to the Islamic State. Central Florida Muslims were hesitant to come out and support, especially in a post 9/11 world. The women were afraid they would be met with anger.
But that didn’t happen.
“There were people giving out flowers, and they turned to us and gave us flowers, and gave us hugs, and I think everybody needed that,” she said.
That shared pain, that grief, broke down walls between different communities. Saied said that the group was welcome at churches and at LGBTQ+ functions following the days of Pulse.
“Honestly, not really having interacted much with the LGBT community until that moment in time,” she said
That was difficult for the Muslim group, she said. Gay and trans people are not typically seen in a kind light in Muslim teachings, Saied said, but after being welcomed by the churches and LGBTQ+ groups, parts of the local Muslim community are evolving in their views.
“I think we are a much better community because of it. We've been able to navigate issues about trans Muslims in the community, and queer Muslims, all kinds of things that have come up in those days after,” she said. “We’ve been able to navigate it in a way that’s much more compassionate, merciful…”
The Muslim Women Organization’s movement to be more open with LGBTQ+ in this direction has been met with pushback in the Muslim community. Still, she says, more women have approached her with questions about sexuality and faith. Saied said ultimately the community has become kinder and more inclusive.
“Disasters and hardships sadly bring people together,” she said. “As with any disaster, the flower that has bloomed right after.”
Going to a remembrance ceremony
Christine Leinonen has never gone to a remembrance ceremony.
She has nothing against them or anyone who chooses to honor the 49 people killed and the survivors.
But it’s a charged day full of dark memories for her. On days that remind Leinonen of Christopher, like holidays, Leinonen treats them like any other.
“Making them into days is just so painful, it's just more pain than my heart can handle,” she said.
But with time, she thinks that could change.
“I just choose not to go, and maybe one day I will go, maybe even this year. Who knows, I could change my mind,” Leinonen said.
The City of Orlando is holding its annual Pulse Remembrance Ceremony at 5:30 p.m. Friday at the First United Methodist Church… All are welcome.
