On those who are gone

This morning I woke up early to attend the Saturday morning session of the GenAI course I am taking. I did what I normally do when I am up first: fed the cats, made coffee, and read the news. I first saw mention of a shooting overnight in a comment on a blog, then quickly turned to the local TV stations and MPR to read more. It was there that I saw the initial reports that two lawmakers, Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman, appeared to be targeted by a killer. I also nearly simultaneously heard from my stepfather that he and my mother, being Brooklyn Park residents, were in the lockdown zone due to an ongoing manhunt. It was almost unbelievable to wake up to.

As more and more information trickled in, the news seemed to get worse. Then, as I watched the news conference with Governor Walz even as I had my class on in the background, the disbelief turned to shock and anger: Melissa and her husband had both died at the hands of their attacker, in what can only be described as a political assassination. The Hoffmans, through gravely wounded, were in the hospital and expected to survive.

I worked at the House of Representatives from 2000 to 2011. I learned working in politics that a person’s political beliefs and how nice a person could be were not particularly correlated, like X and Y axes that could divide a group of something into four quadrants. Some people whose politics I agreed with 95% of the time were giant jerks, and others who I strongly disagreed with politically were genuinely nice people who would give you the shirts off their backs. Melissa was one of the rare people who I thought was right on the issues and was just a wonderful human being in the truest sense of the word.

As a random staffer doing IT I had various levels of interactions with legislators, but Melissa definitely stood out as somebody I enjoyed working with. I remember all the times I helped her sync her Palm phone to Groupwise Calendar, two things that I’m sure kids today have never even heard of. Another memory is writing an analysis of the 2010 election results that got shared among some party leaders, and she took the time to meet with me and really understand what it meant.

I left the legislature in 2011 and since then have become less involved in politics, but it did not surprise me one bit when she became Speaker and we were all better off for it. Since John Hoffman was elected after I left, I never had the chance to meet him, but from all accounts it sounds like he was also well-loved at the Capitol.

What happened today was a tragedy and I am outraged by it. My heart goes out to everybody impacted, especially the Hortman and Hoffman families. We’ve lost two wonderful people who were trying to make the world a better place, and nobody should be targeted for that.

Last weekend was the 25th anniversary of the loss of another wonderful human being: Sam Keaveny, one of my best friends. I went to his gravesite last Saturday because it had been too long since I had been there. Even though this was not planned, I had the wonderful luck to run into his mother Jan and brother James and talk about the person that we lost whom we loved. Now, a week later, as so many people experience yet another heartbreaking loss, I can’t help but think that our time on this Earth is too short, and to cherish everybody that we can, because you never know when they will be taken from you.

I wish I had answers for what happened, or could even comprehend it. All I know is that we need more peace and love in the world, and what happened today is the opposite.