The little all-American town is less than fifteen minutes from Denver airport, so I wanted to go to see for myself and pay my respects at the makeshift memorial that had been put together by family, friends, and community-members of the victims.
Just approaching the exit for Aurora, I felt a really ominous dreadful feeling. I'm sure Colorado-ans will be unable to drive anywhere near or past the town without remembering what happened here for years to come.
The theater has been complete shut down and fenced off.
Directly across from it sits a mall that looks like any mall you could find in any town in America.
The town features familiar chain stores like Target, Best Buy, Barnes & Noble, The Container Store etc etc, which just serves to remind you that this tragedy really could have happened anywhere.
On an empty corner facing the theater, a memorial to the victims had been built.
All the media coverage of the event kind of annoys me because so much of it focuses on the crazy ass who committed the crime, and rarely ever do they focus on the actual victims who perished.
Walking through the memorial was a striking reminder that in tragedies like this each number making up the "body count" is an individual life, and the loss of each and every one of these lives affects the tens and hundreds of people close to them.
It's all just really really sad. Yet another reminder that life can be over in the blink of an eye and the stupid stuff we worry about or put up with just isn't that important.
