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Noah Pozner's Family Remembers and Mourns

Jewish Family Copes With Loss of Child in Newtown Rampage

By Naomi Zeveloff

(Page 5 of 5)

Newtown, Conn. — Like some Sandy Hook parents who have spoken to the media, Veronique has shied away from portraying Lanza as evil or diabolical. “If we describe him as a demonic force or as a beast with the sign of the beast on his forehead, that is a mistake,” she says. “Because then we are making him apart from humanity when in fact he is part of what is possible in humanity. How do we help these people so this doesn’t happen again, so they never sink so low, so they never have to go to a place so dark where they can take out small children in a fit of rage?

Veronique’s mother, Marie-Claude, says she feels nothing about Adam Lanza or his mother. “They don’t exist,” she says. “They don’t register as people. For me, I am numb. I don’t have forgiveness because I am not angry.”

Marie-Claude says that her energy is focused on her family at the moment. In the past week, she has been chronicling all the ways in which Noah’s presence is still felt in the world on her blog. A twitching of the curtains, a sudden chirping of a bird ornament on the Christmas tree, a succulent plant burst into flower — all evidence of mischievous Noah at play.

Just this morning, Veronique and Marie-Claude were sitting downstairs when Veronique noticed a blue jay outside the window. “To me it was a sign of Noah,” says Marie-Claude. She wrote about the occurrence soon after: “We looked at each other: Noah had loved blue, he had [been] buried with a blue and white Jewish prayer shawl, he always said he wanted wings so that he could fly.”

It is moments like these, the affection of family members, the love of friends, the cards and stuffed animals from strangers and the human tears shed by public officials that have constituted a life raft for the Pozners, and, no doubt, for the 19 other Newtown families.

“At the end of the day,” says Veronique, “the equation is in favor of what is good and what is human and what is giving instead of what takes away.”

Naomi Zeveloff is the deputy culture editor of the Forward. She can be reached at Zeveloff@forward.com or on Twitter @NaomiZeveloff.

To donate to the family’s fund for grief counseling and education for the children, visit noahpozner.org.