- Writer Jude Roth Hausen lost her friend Daniel Davis Aston to the Club Q shooting in November.
- Her post commemorating Daniel went viral, and she was swallowed in a deluge of online support and sympathy.
On November 20th, I woke up at 1:26 pm to the news that there had been a shooting in Colorado Springs at a venue called Club Q. Daniel Davis Aston, one of my closest and oldest friends, was a bartender and assistant manager there. I knew that he had been at work that night, as he was most nights. At 1:33 pm, I frantically sent him a text. I tried to remain calm.
"Hey are you okay?"
It was never answered.
I sat in bed scrolling through Twitter in a panic, trying to find information. At the time, all that had been released was that there were five dead and nineteen injured, and search results only yielded this unhelpful and sterile fact over and over again. I was searching desperately for names but found nothing. I checked my messages every few seconds for Daniel's response. Finally, after scrolling through post after post that shared the same headline, I saw what I was praying I wouldn't find: Someone had posted a photo of my friend with his arm around a fellow bartender named Derrick Rump. The caption read, "Heartbroken to share that we lost these beautiful boys last night."
The following moments were a blur. I ran to my roommate and collapsed to the floor. I sobbed with a kind of theatricality that would come to feel comical later. I couldn't breathe; I couldn't form a coherent thought. It felt as if the walls were closing in around me, like the air had gone out of the room altogether. For over an hour, I weathered the storm until I could finally catch my breath and gain control of my thoughts. Finally, I lifted my head, and I wrote. And hit publish.
I hadn't expected or prepared for the possibility that anyone outside of our circle of mutual friends would see it. My tweet that shared my Instagram tribute to him climbed in numbers across the different platforms. It was reshared, and it accrued thousands of likes, hundreds of comments, and millions of views. I received a deluge of responses, all of them with a central theme: People had been brought to tears, my words were a "gut punch", and they felt as if through my writing about Daniel, they had known him too. I was floored by the reaction — in shock and confused. I was grateful, but still in a haze of processing that obscured that anything happening was real. It hadn't sunk in that he was truly gone, even with thousands of people telling me that they were sorry for my loss.
The next few days blended together into what felt like one long night. I went through the motions. Online, the messages and comments continued to pour in. I sat motionless and refreshed my Twitter feed continuously for over 18 hours each day. I committed to liking every comment and message. It was all I could do, as I had nothing else to give. It was impossible for me to extend my genuine gratitude to each person when I had so little within myself to give. It was overwhelming, terrifying, and comforting all at once.
The chaos of my online cocoon continued to grow bigger and untethered. It was a whirlwind of interactions — likes, replies, quote retweets, journalists begging for comment, messages of love, support, and shared grief in my inbox. A poem I had written about Daniel climbed in engagement numbers as well, which only added to the sea of responses I felt I needed to acknowledge. Every post across social media platforms seemed to be about the shooting: Joe Biden contacted the owners of Club Q; Celebrities were sending me and others comforting messages; I was even approached to write an article about Daniel. I tried to be the best advocate I could be for him, a mouthpiece of sorts trying to ensure that he would be remembered as the complex, loving, kindhearted activist he was.
'Losing the attention of the public felt, in a way, like losing Daniel twice.'
Weeks crept by. The news cycle shifted away from coverage of the shooting. Daniel's funeral services came and went. The public returned to their lives. Time continued on, but I stayed in place. I thought that the loss of support would be more gradual, but instead, it was a sharp tapering off into an abrupt silence. One day I woke up and the world no longer seemed to remember or care. There were no more posts about him. No one sharing his photos. No one left to say his name but those of us who knew him.
Despite this, it still felt like a betrayal to talk about anything other than Daniel, or to give the impression that I had moved on. I felt as if I were betraying him by expressing any emotion besides sadness or anger — like smiling before the eyes of the world that had turned away from me. With the position I'd been given, the pedestal upon which my pain had been placed, it was difficult to feel as if there was anything else I was allowed to do. And that truth was something that my audience reinforced.
People didn't understand when I had to find humor in the situation I was in. They projected their own wrenching sadness onto me, and it often felt patronizing. If I tried to share funny stories about Daniel, or about the comical absurdity of the grieving process, I get comments saying it brought people to tears, and that it was a "gut punch." It seemed like those who followed me for the tragedy didn't want to see me moving on, or trying to find things to laugh or smile about. People had come for my viral posts about the eviscerating grief I experienced shortly after the shooting, and they only wanted more of the same.
From the tragedy forward, I felt I couldn't live only for myself anymore — I had to live for him. I had to be a conduit for him, a vessel through which to keep him alive, in any form. This only became harder as the public began to quiet their interest. It became uncomfortably clear that I was sharing my grief, and the process of putting myself back together, with a shrinking audience who seemed to be growing bored and moving on.
Losing the attention of the public felt, in a way, like losing Daniel twice. I experienced a second surge of grief from a mass forgetting where there had been a mass appreciation. As much of a consolation as it is to have been able to share him with the world however briefly, there's a deep loneliness when I'm reminded that those who rallied around his memory can no longer recall his name. In the week following the shooting, having so much focus on Daniel and seeing so many people celebrating him online felt like I hadn't lost him at all…because he was all around me. I felt him, I saw him everywhere I turned. The tragedy of his death reverberated across queer and trans communities worldwide.
With the world grieving alongside me, it appeared like I was surrounded by support. In reality, however, I was struggling to navigate my grief and I was counting the days until that support inevitably waned. I was left with a mess of complicated emotions; I was truly grateful for having had as much support as I did. but in its absence, I only became angrier and more isolated, coupled with the guilt of feeling greedy for wanting the world to have loved him more.
Many of us have been desensitized by the nature of recurrent tragedies and the increasing speed of the online news cycle. I knew from the start that the focus on Daniel's death was temporary, and that there would come a time that it would disappear. With the 24-hour news cycle's hunger for more information, aided by social media and how fast posts go viral, I saw firsthand just how insatiable we all were for content. I tried to console my feelings of anger and abandonment by telling myself that I was lucky to have been given a few weeks to share my grief with the world, rather than just a few days.
'Everyone else gets to move on, but those of us still mourning Daniel's absence will be left to pick up the pieces alone. '
There is only so long that an audience can vicariously grieve, especially with a revolving door of new tragedies and stunts to hold our attention. This was one of the most painful realizations: That, to many, my grief was only content to consume voyeuristically. With the demand for more of the same content they had come to see, the process of surviving and carrying on after loss is of little interest. And in a matter of weeks or days, there will be a new round of news articles and viral posts to take its place. Everyone else gets to move on, but those of us still mourning Daniel's absence will be left to pick up the pieces alone.
I am more grateful than I can express for the support I've received in sharing my stories about Daniel with the world. It's more than most people dealing with grief get to experience. For a moment, however short, he was celebrated by millions of people. That alone is a consolation, even if it was brief.
Although it may be selfish, I wish it could have lasted longer. I wish that strangers continued to check in, ask about Daniel, and repost his legacy. I wish that he was remembered more for the joy of his life than the tragedy of his death. I can't say for certain if this would bring me closure; Grief rarely responds the way we want it to. All I can do is adapt, carry on, and ask instead that people make it a point to not forget.
Think of Daniel, Derrick, Kelly, Raymond, and Ashley from time to time. Commemorate them on the anniversaries to come. Don't let this pass by as one of many senseless tragedies to be forgotten. I can't ask the world to share my grief with me forever, but I can ask that others share in the act of remembering — that no one is carrying the memory of their loved ones alone.