'An outpouring of love': Reflections from a caretaker of the memorial outside Annunciation
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Thousands of people around the world have sent messages and flowers to comfort the victims of the Annunciation Church and School shooting in Minneapolis last week.
One woman, Annique London, helped thousands of people pay their respects to the victims of the shooting at Annunciation. Here is her story, in her own words, about tending to the memorial.
Use the audio player above to hear London share her reflection.
Annique London, Annunciation memorial caretaker
My name is Annique London. I am a parent at Annunciation that just had her youngest child graduate. I was at home and I received a message on a group chat, and one of the moms in the group said, ‘Hey, does anyone know what's going on in Annunciation? My husband just sent me a very disturbing text.’ And immediately I saw one of the local sites say that 20 people had been injured and that there was an active shooter. And it was unbelievable to us, watching the national news and seeing people that you know walking across the screen time after time after time again. It's just surreal.
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Thursday morning, a small memorial started at the corner of 54th and Lyndale, which is about a block down from the church, and then some other flowers were starting to be left at the church. My daughters and I went down to lay flowers and immediately saw a need to get the flowers that started to arrive in water.
Then people just came and came and came and came. And so we placed flowers in buckets or mementos or things that they wanted to leave, so it was organized and honorable. Slowly but surely, we went from the church entrance to the west side of the church and basically created a pathway for the flowers on the edges of the sidewalk and the edges of the driveway. Sometimes the buckets were two to three deep, completely full of flowers of every type and every color. People were bringing self-potted plants, vases. More and more things started piling in and being placed: candles, luminaries, gifts, notes, cards, teddy bears, homemade items, paintings, pictures. Children and adults alike have written messages on the ground, on doors, on walls, with, you know, encouraging words of hope.
At night, candles were lit. It was a very peaceful place where people came to be in community, see each other, hug each other, take in the sight, cry, pray, meditate, sing. It's really been a beautiful place. Just gorgeous with all of the flowers and the gifts and the candles at night and then all the people that have come to visit. And the community just really responded. There's been a huge, huge outpouring of love for this community. So many people are giving.
While my kids were attending the school in the 2016-2018 timeframe, my husband got sick with cancer and passed away. I and my daughters and my husband received an unbelievable amount of emotional, financial and logistical support from our friends in that community and even people that we didn't know. And that experience of being supported by a community and the ways that we were supported left a lifelong impression on me. And I knew at the time, in 2018, I wanted to give back.
I've spent the last seven and a half years raising my girls alone. And on Thursday, when we went there, I was in a perfect place in my life where I could take up all of the energy and love that we had received and give it back.
We're now one week out. Since Monday night, the vigil site has changed. A group of Annunciation dads, primarily, came together and gathered all of the mementos and all of the gifts and the cards and the stuffed animals and took them from the site, because we were concerned that they would get ruined in the rain. And we also knew that many families had not had the strength to come back to the site. We were determined to save and archive all of the incredible love that's been poured out by really a national and sometimes international community.
Now at the vigil site, the flowers are approaching a week old. Donations at the site of flowers have lessened a bit. So we're going to be moving to phase two and determining what's going to be happening next for the vigil. But it has taken an entire community of volunteers to do this.
I hate that I have to love something that's attached with something so sad. It's surreal. And every single person that has ever gone to Annunciation Catholic School or been a part of that community — and that is over 100 years old — now has to carry the label of ‘I went to school where there was a school shooting.’ That's now attached, and that's not how anybody wants their school to be.
The memorial and the vigil site is a way for us to reclaim that space as ours. The shooter can't keep that. This is our community and our church and our school and our neighborhood. And by being there, memorializing what happened and bringing positivity there, that is the first step in reclaiming that space for ours.
In our series Thank You, Stranger, we hear the stories of how strangers can make our lives a little brighter, or lift us up in a difficult moment. If you have a story to share about a stranger who made your life a little brighter, we want to hear it.
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