“Some find truth and purpose, and some find darkness and oblivion.”
A friend recently sent those words to Mitch Dworet, whose son Nicholas, 17, was murdered at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, last winter. The quote resonated with him. “When you lose a child, there’s a lot of dark places,” said Dworet, 59. “It leads you into oblivion and/or you find purpose and are driven to other things. But it depends upon the day.” Mitch and Annika Dworet are the parents of Nicholas and Alex, both shot at school that day. Alex, then 15, still has shrapnel in his head, and like his parents deals with post traumatic stress disorder. Nick did not live through the massacre. I interviewed Mitch Dworet not long after the first anniversary of the mass school shooting that took place on Valentine’s Day, 2018. “It’s so fresh for me even though it’s been 14 months,” Dworet said, sitting in a Starbucks not far from the Stoneman Douglas High School, where Alex still attends school. “February 14 is just yesterday to me, you know. And I’m always thinking 24/7 about my son. Doesn’t go away. He was taken very violently and very quickly and I didn’t get a chance — I told him I loved him that morning, but I didn’t get a chance to do many things.” Mitch and Nick were close, sharing music and discussing wide-ranging topics. “You know, that last hug. Who would ever think (it would be) the last time?” he asked about never seeing your child again after the ordinary act of dropping him off at school. “You’d never think that. I don’t think much about the what-ifs anymore. Because that’ll really torture you.” He does still mourn the loss of Nick for himself and his family, of course, but also for the greater world, where Nick’s adult life will never come to be. “I always told Nick how proud I was of him, his accomplishments. I didn’t lose out on that. But I did lose out on seeing my son do so many things. (Becoming) a father, and getting into his career, accomplishing his swim goals,” he said. “He was becoming just this fantastic person, swimmer. Not only did I lose that day, and my wife and my family and my friends (also did), but we as a society here in America. I hate to go so big, but we lost that day. We all lost.” Dworet, wearing one of Nick’s T-shirts, said local swimmers write, “Swim4Nick” on themselves before swim meets. Nick was captain of the school swim team. A senior, he had signed to swim at University of Indianapolis, and dreamed of swimming in the 2020 Olympics. “So many people have heard about Nick, and what he accomplished in such a short time,” said Dworet, who has a tattoo on the inside of his left arm of Nick swimming the butterfly, wearing his favorite goggles. The Dworets created the charity Swim4Nick, which offers college scholarships for swimmers, and free swimming classes. “We created, my wife and I and my family, and the community, and so many people, created this wonderful, wonderful guy. Who happened to be my son. And his impact is everlasting.” Dworet recently visited the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Temple survivors to show his support. He also makes himself available to the press and sometimes speaks publicly about what gun violence ripped away from his family. “I do speak about it because I want to remind people that this can happen to you just like it happened to me,” he said. “I’m not special. I don't want this. But it will happen to you as easily as it happened to me and my family.” Still, while Dworet greatly admires the March for Our Lives activists and the fellow MSD parents who fight for gun reform, he would rather not be doing any of that. “To sit here and say all this stuff, that’s not my job,” he said, adding that every interview and public appearance is draining, taking energy he would rather spend elsewhere. “I’m a father. I need to move through my journey and recover, and find my resilience.” He said he and Annika are working together to find their footing, and to be there for Alex, who saw fellow students shot and killed that day. The family has been to trauma therapy, which Mitch calls invaluable. “My wife and I try and continue with some kind of normality in our world, in our home. We’re trying to also find our way through this. It’s a new way,” he said. “I have to honor my wife’s grief, and she has to honor my grief. So we have to be good for each other. And respect each other. And love each other. And we hope that Alex sees that. Because your children don’t want to see you, you know, suffering. And I know in my heart that Nick doesn’t want us to be suffering.” While the family makes appearances at “Swim4Nick” events, he does not push Alex to take part. “Nick and Alex were very close,” he said. “I’m standing there and giving a speech, and I want Alex to stand with us, and with my wife, and he feels like a target. There’s a lot that goes along with balancing out the 16-year-old, and — then if we go into the loud places, you know — with the PTSD. This is our new world.” Like many gun-violence survivors, Dworet said he has been buoyed up by the kindness and love of family, friends, and literally thousands of strangers who wrote supportive letters. Still, the pain, even with the new adopted “family” of fellow mourners, is sharp and complicated. “It gets very lonely being a survivor,” he said. “The loneliness and the depression. And the confusion. Loss of focus. It’s real. It’s raw. The PTSD. You have to deal with it every day. It doesn’t go away. Looking out into the world, seeing young families, it hurts. Yes, it’s beautiful. But it hurts because that’s what I had. Now I have to live a different life.” Dworet did not want to talk about the politics of gun reform, but he did say he has had it with those who spout gun rights while refusing to consider the grief of mourning families. “You cannot imagine how much strength it takes to walk in my shoes,” he wants to tell them. “And you could be this hero and talk about guns all you want, because all your kids are in place. You have kids to go home with. You can have Thanksgiving. You can have Christmas. You can have a future with your children. I don’t have the future with my son Nicholas. “I deserve to be a father again. And a husband to my wife. I didn’t choose this. It chose me,” he said. Mitch Dworet wants more time with his younger son Alex, who he calls his hero. “That’s the ultimate: To be a dad,” he said. “I want to get back to being a great dad.”
3 Comments
Mary Beth Green
5/24/2019 06:47:54 pm
Mary Tolan, I have always admired your way with words. This interview with a grieving father gets to the heart of a very tough subject: losing a child to gun violence in a school. I will be honest: I almost didn’t read it because of the pain I knew it held. But your writing and the dad’s words helped me understand how his grief is my grief too. I feel it every time a child is lost, especially in this way. You have gone to the front lines, Mary.
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Mary Tolan
5/24/2019 09:23:52 pm
Thanks so much, Mary Beth.
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AuthorMary Tolan is a fiction writer and journalist. Her first published book Mars Hill Murder, a mystery set in Flagstaff, will be published by The Wild Rose Press in autumn of 2023. Archives
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