my name is doreen dodgen-magee and i believe that i was put on this earth to love and celebrate everything that breathes and blinks. i grew up in a large extended family with almost 30 uncles and aunties who provided all kinds of love and support. as i grew up i longed to have nephews or nieces of my own.
my tender, quiet, and generous sister-in-law laura came through for me when my niece, sarah, was born on valentine’s day, my favorite day of the year. over the course of the following 5 years i was honored to add rachel and april to my quiver of nieces.
my sister and brother-in-law’s marriage was not a safe one for laura or the girls so they left their home in washington to move into my mother in law’s home near us in oregon. i loved being nearby and relished celebrating the mundane and milestone moments with them. the last celebration i planned for them was on the evening before sarah’s first day of kindergarten. we had a backpack packing party and blessed her in preparation for the next day’s big adventure.
the next morning, returning from my first few hours back at work after my own maternity leave, i put my 3 month old daughter and two year old son down for a nap. in my silent kitchen i pushed “play” on the answering machineto hear my aunt’s voice shaking as she said that my “brother-in-law had shown up at the house with a gun and that laura and the girls were dead.”
desperately angry over missing his daughter’s first day of kindergarten my brother in law purchased a gun, despite a restraining order, drove across state lines, and killed his entire family in front of my mother in law who remained at the site with him for nearly 30 minutes until a neighbor restrained him.
my strongest memory of that following year is not of the many grand juries, press conferences, meetings with district attorneys, or even the evidence list peppered with body parts. it is, instead, that of cleaning my niece’s blood out of my mother in law’s hair and re- bandaging the wounds from the shot she took while trying to protect her granddaughter. as my mother-in-law’s caregiver for the remainder of her life i can tell you that witnessing the brutal murder of your family is torture and the ripple effect for her, for me, for our extended family, and the entire community in which the murders happened was massive.
after spending 22 years caring for my traumatized mother-in-law and raising my own children amidst the disruption, i have arrived at a time where i can honor these lives lost with action!
at the time of my family’s deaths, mass murders were not common news stories. stigma, isolation, and fear of my imprisoned brother-in-law clung to me and kept me small. i thought our story was just that, our story. but now i know differently.
our story is america’s story. research tells us that 54% of mass murders are related to family violence and that, in an average month, 50 women are shot to death by intimate partners. every day countless women like laura, take appropriate steps to protect their children yet cannot because of easy accessibility to firearms.
i must honor laura, sarah, rachel, april, and the 96 other people killed every day in the u.s. by fighting against a system that privileges power and disregards the reality of gun violence as a preventable public health issue. i must stand up to a political system that allows the gun lobby to sell fear and lies. i must do this so that no other auntie or uncle or grandparent or parent has to choose a coffin…or coffins…like i did, in bulk, for a 37 year old, a 5 year old, a 3 year old, and a 6 month old baby.
i must tell you my story because auntie love, and every other kind of love, must win and can only win by us working together to pass common sense gun laws and to enforce those that exist. the auntie in me sees the auntie and uncle and mother and father and daughter and son and cousin and friend and human in you and begs you to join me in this work by joining moms demand action. to protect your role as auntie or mother or friend, and to learn more about how to end gun violence and to honor the children in your lives, please get your phone out now and text HONOR to 644-33 and join me in saving lives.
