My Home, Our Home

The line didn't seem too long, they probably didn't mind the wait. Even on a Saturday it was worth it to them. They wanted the Congresswoman to know that they thought she was doing a good job. That they were grateful she was a leader in their state.

Like something out of a love story, Dorwin and Mavy were friends during High School in Tucson. They graduated, moved on, married and raised families elsewhere. When their spouses had passed they reconnected, fell in love and decided to spend the rest of their lives together. A life that the whole world would forever remember.

On a crystal clear Saturday morning a gunman opened fire in a parking lot. His gun turned towards the line which Dorwin & Mavy Stoddard stood. Bullets hit her legs, but when the gunman went to shoot again Dorwin protected his wife by taking a bullet for her. Hitting him in the head, he passed at the scene, the love for his wife was worth everything, including his life.

In the midst of this horrific story Dorwin's unselfish love give us hope. Hope that where there are moments of horrible darkness there are moments of glimmering love. Love that we can never really realize until we are faced to do the unthinkable, to take a bullet for the one we love.

I cried a lot this weekend, but this story hit me the hardest. True love is something only the lucky find and how beautiful the love story of Dorwin and Mavy is. How beautiful and strong real love is.

To Dorwin, nothing was more important than Mavy.

If we are only so lucky that we can be the Mavy to someone in our own lives.

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I was born in Tucson. It's there that I learned to ride my first bike, where my four younger siblings were born to complete our family, where my dad woke me up the 2 times it snowed to sit outside in blankets and watch, where I built forts in our backyard, where I became one of the captains of my cheer squad, where I went to prom, where I graduated from high school.

Tucson is where I left to go to college, where I call when I need my mom, where I return for holidays, where I go to visit my best friends.

No matter where I go or what I do, Tucson is home.

You were most likely not born in Tucson, but it's your home. Arizona, the United States, it's our home. And when this awful, horrible moments occur, it breaks our hearts....it hits home.

AT 10:10 Saturday morning my parents had just pulled into the Ina & Oracle intersection, a family friend watched outside Safeway as the bodies fell to the ground, and my brother, working across the street just sat at a table and watched as the victims were taken away.

That Safeway is where we shop, only a quarter of a mile from my parents house I have been there hundreds of times.

I don't think there are words for anyone of us to explain how a sick person can destroy the lives and memories of so many. How one minute can change the course of so many things.

There are words, however, for where we go from here. Love, Peace, Hope.

Words that can bring true change if we put them to work.