'Grief is an expression of love': Boulder women grapple with the mass shooting's impact

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BOULDER, Colo. — How do we imagine a future after the unimaginable happens? How do we speak of meaning after an unspeakable tragedy? People in Boulder and beyond are facing those questions after Monday's mass killing. 

Questions like these haunted two women among those who gathered outside Boulder's police headquarters, where the vehicle of fallen Officer Eric Talley — among the 10 people who died at the hands of a lone gunman — has become a shrine. 

Merryl Rothaus, who has lived in Boulder for almost 25 years, said she's in shock because "something like this happened in my town."

"We really need to help each other out right now," she said. "We need to lean in on each other. We need to grieve together as a community. We need to realize that grief is an expression of love."

And then, Rothaus said, "I think we need to really get to work as a community, as a country, to stop this kind of thing from happening." 

That, she said, means changes to gun laws, including background checks, and more mental health services

Another Boulderite, Kaycee Jacobson, brought her daughter and her daughter's friend to the police station.

"It's heartbreaking to see the children go through something like this and to see the little seeds of fear and doubt," she said. "I wanted to bring the girls here so they could see that Boulder's safe, we're safe, and that one person doesn't define us or our community."

As for the path ahead: "We have to make a change," Jacobson said, mentioning gun reform and mental-health funding.

"My father was an avid rifleman; he was a Marine. We're not anti-guns," she said. "But there has to be something that's in the middle that we can get behind and that we can work together as a country to make the world safer for our kids."

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