Fifteen children, a tiny bathroom and a teacher who didn’t know if he would have another chance to tell them how much he loved them.
On December 14, 2012, at elementary school Sandy Hook, Connecticut, Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis was 29 and taught in a first-grade class.
That morning his fifteen pupils were talking about the holidays and traditions of their families.
Then everything changed.
When the attack began in the school, Kaitlin realized that he had no time to wait. At the bottom of the room there was a very small bathroom, about one meter for just over one meter. It was not meant to contain sixteen people, but at that time it was a possible refuge.
He let all the kids in and he got into her, too.
The space was almost non-existent. Kaitlin closed the door and tried to protect their hiding place. Then he asked his pupils something very difficult for children so small and terrified: to remain completely silent.
It was during that wait that he told them something he would remember forever: not knowing what would happen, he told his pupils that he loved them very much.
He would later explain that he did it because he feared that those could be the last words the children would hear.
Outside that tiny bathroom was consuming one of the most painful tragedies in recent American history. In the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School, 20 children and six members of the school staff lost their lives.
When, after the shooting, someone knocked claiming to be police, Kaitlin wouldn't risk it.
He could not know for sure who was on the other side and had fifteen lives to protect. He asked the agents to prove their identity and told them that if they were really cops, they could get a key.
The agents finally managed to open the door and reach the teacher and children.
All fifteen of his students had survived.
But surviving did not mean being able to simply return to life before.
In the following months, Kaitlin faced the psychological consequences of what he had experienced. He tried to continue his teaching career, the job he had wanted since childhood, but eventually he took leave and left teaching.
At the end of the school year 2012-2013, about six months after the massacre, the parents of his pupils organized a meeting to allow children to review their teacher.
When Kaitlin found himself again in front of those children, the same as he had stood next to him in that tiny space while outside reigning terror, he could finally be with them in a safe place.
They played and talked all afternoon. Eventually the children gave her a dish decorated with their fingerprints turned into small bees and their names. On the back there was a message reminiscent of the imprint that the teacher had left in their lives.
Before greeting them, Kaitlin once again told his pupils that he loved them very much.
They were the same words he said to them in the school bathroom when he didn't know if they were going out alive.
This time he could tell him knowing they were all there in front of her.
And perhaps this is one of the most powerful aspects of that meeting: not having erased what had happened, because such a tragedy does not erase, but having allowed to see together again sixteen people who, in that tiny bathroom, had shared minutes intended to mark their lives forever.