On mass shootings…

I was a Washington Post reporter working remotely from Orlando in 2016. We moved to Orlando for my husband’s job. Part of the tacit agreement for remote work was that if there was something happening at Disney, or if there was hurricane coverage to do, I’d pitch in. But it wasn’t a hurricane in the end.

One June morning, I woke up to head to the airport to cover the video game conference, E3. In the taxi on the way over, I heard over the radio that there had been a shooting. By the time I got to my gate, I was asked to turn around. I left after a brief word to the gate agent, and went straight to the Pulse nightclub. After covering the shooting, I flew out to E3 and penned this note to my Facebook friends. I share it again now because, well, in nearly six years nothing has changed.

I have never recovered from what I now realize was a day and a half of covering that shooting. It felt like an eternity. No family should ever have to go through what those families went through. Ever. And yet.

I actually had to cover another mass shooting, two years later. I was the damn tech reporter and I’ve covered two mass shootings. Ten days ago, there was the Buffalo shooting and I frankly shut down. Then, Laguna Woods. Today, Uvalde. And I can’t process it. My brain refuses. So here’s me six years ago, hoping things would get better. They did not.

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This is a long one. The upshot: please be kind to each other.

This is going to be a little intense.

I'm flying out of Orlando right now, off to the conference I was supposed to attend on Sunday. I was torn over what to do. But I know I leave the story in best hands, in the form of the small army that the Post deployed to find the words to cover this act of unspeakable violence.

Part of me, I'm ashamed to say, is relieved to leave. I don't know how people who cover crime and crisis all the time do it. I don't think I could.

I had little time to process what's been happening as I've been reporting, apart from a couple of controlled, momentary freakouts. But planes can be terrifyingly introspective places. And all I can think about is the fact that -- now that the list is out -- every person who was willing to speak to me on probably the worst of their lives, was hoping in vain to find someone who was already dead. All the names in my notebook were on the fatalities list.

The image I can't shake is of this teenage girl who spoke with me at the Orlando Regional Medical Center. She went out to the hospital at 7 am, after relatives couldn't find her 24-year-old sister. She spoke to me at 2:15 p.m., and still hadn't heard anything. She sat for hours in the sun and the 85-degree heat, phone in hand, talking to relatives, sometimes texting her sister asking where she was.

I know now that her sister was dead. Those frantic texts were buzzing into an evidence bag somewhere or maybe even -- I hate my brain for even thinking this -- in her sister's pocket on the floor of that club.

All day, I looked and listened for that woman's name, on every list of those released, of the wounded, of those in critical condition.

I don't usually pray. But that girl did, so I prayed.

Then I found the name, last night, on the final list of the dead. And all I can think of is her little sister sitting out there in the sun for hours, hoping against hope, like any of us would in the face of that crisis.

Look. I'm not hear to preach. Do what you like. Think what you want. Vote your conscience. Love who you love. Debate. Discuss.

But for the sake of all that's good in this world, please be kind to each other while you do it.

Just, please.