On a cold March morning, both in weather and melancholy solace, dozens of students left their second-period classes at Gresham High School and joined each other’s presence outside the building. On that morning, I saw a union of students coming together for what they nobly knew to be honorable; coming together to mourn the loss of so many vulnerable students like them. Students just like them.

Perhaps it was from remembering the gravity of the situation, or perhaps it was from feeling the collective sorrow that practically emanated from each and every person there; but it was very much inevitable and important that tears would be shed, and they very much were.

  In a silence as deafening as the news of the Parkland shooting was that tragic day, heads bowed in a human showing of respect as old as time. No-one said a single word, in understanding that those victims of a mass murderer can no longer do just that; we need to be their voice. This statement was heard in the silence. In a moment and place devoid of words or sound, I heard it undeniably.

  In that moment we all understood what we had to do. In obligation to those who suffered so much, as much as a conscious choice to do so: we simply knew that then and there we had to do something. Lucky us, because we also knew we were already doing just that. What we could, what we had to, and starting the change we all begged for.

  In the quiet, an unease flowed through us. An unease not uninvited. An unease that needed and deserved to be felt. That demanded to be felt.

  In the quiet, we felt the primal biting fear of the fact that this could happen to each and every one of us; so fast, so easily. We felt the empathy living in us never letting us forget the mass heartbreak that was felt around the world that day. Never letting us stray from wanting to understand why and how this was allowed happen.

  In the quiet, we tried to understand.