Get Busy LivingActive Shooter

“An active shooter has been reported at the Elkins Rehabilitation and Care Center in Elkins, West Virginia.”

That sentence landed on my phone and, for a few seconds, the entire architecture of my life collapsed into a single thought.

My mom.

Within minutes, police cars were racing toward the facility. Workers barricaded doors. Nurses and staff moved residents into rooms and away from hallways. Law enforcement flooded the scene. EMS staged nearby for what they feared might become a mass casualty event. In the end, thankfully, it was a false alarm. A resident had made the call. No shooter. No attack. No bloodshed.

But the body does not care that it was a false alarm. The body considers “active shooter” and “mother” in the same sentence and immediately begins preparing for grief.

I am at the age now where life has become emotionally crowded.

I don’t have any kids of my own (at least that I know of), but there are those in my life I worry about constantly. My nieces. My nephews. The sons and daughters of my closest friends. A younger generation stepping into a world that feels simultaneously full of possibility and coming apart at the seams. School shootings. Anxiety. Phones. Isolation. Nobody really prepares you for this sandwich of caregiving. The moment when you begin parenting in both directions at once.

Your children, or the children around you, still need guidance, structure, protection, and love. But suddenly your parents begin drifting into a stage of life where they need something from you too. Advocacy. Coordination. Patience. Decision making. Presence. The roles quietly begin to reverse themselves. The people who once carried you across parking lots are now living in facilities where someone else helps carry them to bed.

My mother has now spent years in a care facility. She is fed three times a day, bathed several times a week, and cared for with real compassion by people doing very hard work. And still, every visit can feel emotionally surreal. There is something difficult to fully grasp about watching a parent exist inside the rhythms of institutional care. Many of those taking care of her are friends that I held hands with in nursery school, stumbled with through the age of puberty, and even took to the prom. They are a family in and of their own.