It’s happened again. What could have been—what should have been—an ordinary Monday morning in America was marked by another mass shooting. Yesterday, a gunman opened fire at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky. Five people were killed and eight others were injured, including a 26-year-old officer in critical condition who had just graduated from the police academy.

In his public remarks in response to the shooting, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear seemed to hold back tears as he talked about how a dear friend, Thomas Elliott, was among the dead.

“Tommy Elliott helped me build my law career, helped me become governor, gave me advice on being a good dad,” Beshear said. “He’s one of the people I talk to most in the world, and very rarely are we talking about my job. He was an incredible friend.”

Beshear’s comments highlight a truth that can get obscured in coverage of mass shootings: The victims are not just a number, and the web of pain is much bigger than we may think. I am part of that web. Two years ago, my dad was killed in a mass shooting at a grocery store in my hometown of Boulder, Colorado.

[Tim Alberta: Requiem for the Spartans]

Too often, when we talk about the cost of these tragedies, we talk about the people, like my dad, who were killed. It’s time we totaled that price more honestly. Let’s also count the collateral damage. Let’s count the family members, the friends, the people who ran for their lives or hid in a bank vault. Let’s count the police officers, first responders, and doctors who tend to bodies ripped apart by bullets. Let’s count the teachers, religious leaders, journalists, lawyers, jurors, and therapists who absorb these harrowing stories. Let’s count the brave souls who confront gunmen. Let’s add in the cost of subjecting schoolchildren to active-shooter drills and teaching office workers to “run, hide, fight.” Let’s think about the depression, anxiety, and PTSD that can make it hard to leave the house.

If we added up all of that, then maybe we could finally get serious about whether we’re willing to pay the price.

I’m still tallying up the toll on my own life. I can’t go shopping without an escape plan. I worry about how to protect my children in a world that didn’t protect my dad. When a news alert pops up on my phone, my thumb hovers over it for a few seconds—I’m terrified it will announce another mass shooting. That’s what happened yesterday morning, when I saw an alert that multiple casualties had been reported in Louisville. Like so many times before, I was frozen with fear. Panic coursed through my body as I thought about all of the people who were just learning their loved one was in a mass shooting; that pain feels unbearable. I held my toddler on the couch and cried as I watched the news.  

It’s impossible to move forward when mass shootings happen so frequently. Buried deep inside my heart is a trauma time machine that keeps transporting me back to March 22, 2021.

I was at work when my mom called. “There’s an active shooter at King Soopers,” she said.  

Heat bloomed inside my chest and crept along my collarbones. King Soopers is my family’s neighborhood supermarket. As a child, I’d run barefoot through the store after swim practice, begging my parents for rose-shaped meringue cookies from the bakery.

“Dad went grocery shopping,” my mom continued.

The neon colors of the California radio studio where I worked began to swirl around me. I rushed to the balcony, gripping the peeling turquoise guardrail with one hand and placing the other on my pregnant belly. My daughter kicked gently.

The afternoon quickly spiraled into chaos. We couldn’t reach my dad. Mom drove to the store, and my younger brother called the local hospitals. I watched the news from hundreds of miles away. King Soopers—my King Soopers—was on every channel I flipped through. Boulder’s Rocky Mountain foothills, dusted in snow, provided a majestic backdrop to the crime scene playing out below. Armed officers wearing helmets and bulletproof vests swarmed the parking lot. SWAT vehicles parked crookedly beside customers’ cars. Twisted yellow tape draped the perimeter.

[Elizabeth Bruenig: Coming undone in the age of mass shootings]

After nearly 10 years as a reporter, I was on the other side of the story. Watching press conferences on my laptop, I observed journalists shouting out conventional questions that suddenly struck me as cold. When they asked about possible motives, a metallic taste flooded my mouth. All I wanted to know was whether my dad was safe.

We got the answer in the middle of the night. My dad, Kevin Mahoney, 61, was one of 10 people killed, a group that also included a Boulder police officer with seven children, three people in their 20s, a King Soopers employee I’d known since I was little, three moms, and a local business owner.

I would later learn my dad had been minutes away from heading home. He’d just put two reusable bags full of groceries into the trunk of his Acura SUV and two cups of coffee into the center console. He looked forward to grocery shopping and getting coffee, especially during the coronavirus pandemic: It was a reason to get out of the house and say hi to the people he knew. Whenever he went to the store, he’d get two cups of coffee—“one for today and one for tomorrow,” he’d say.

But that tomorrow never came. A 21-year-old man wearing tactical gear pulled into the lot and began shooting. My dad tried to run, but he had no chance. For months, I agonized over a million what-ifs—what if he’d shopped just a little bit faster? What if he hadn’t stopped at the Starbucks kiosk inside the store? I couldn’t get out of my brain the image of his body lying facedown on the pavement.

When I think of my dad, I think of sunshine. He loved hiking, action movies, and, most of all, his family. Even though he worked a lot, he always made time for my mom, my brother, and me. On warm summer evenings, he’d chase my brother and me through the yard in a childhood game we called “Monster.” I always thought he’d get to play the game with my children. Little did I know that one of the last times I would see my dad was at my wedding, when he walked me down the aisle with tears in his eyes.

I was 31 years old and six months pregnant with my first child when my dad was killed. My daughter gave me a reason to be strong, but losing a parent while becoming one placed me at an intersection that I hope few people have to experience. Through therapy, I’m learning how to integrate sorrow with joy. I’m grateful and elated to be pregnant with our second child—a little boy, expected this summer. But once again, I must accept that my dad will never hold my child in his arms.

[Read: ‘‘This is the price we pay to live in this kind of society’]

Over the past two years, I’ve watched my mom struggle with the fact that a violent stranger took away her husband and tore apart her cherished family. I’ve watched my brother suffer the loss of his dad—his best friend, the person he trusted with both everyday problems and big life questions. I’ve seen how helpless my husband feels when he’s trying to comfort me. I’ve also witnessed my friends’ anxiety about gun violence: The ones with babies are discussing homeschooling, because they’re afraid their children could go to school and not come back.

I don’t have all the answers, but I’m sure there are solutions. We have the power to break the pattern our country keeps repeating.

“It seems like we argue so much in this country, so much anger,” Beshear said yesterday. “But I still believe that love and compassion and humanity can lead us to a better place.”

As we read about and honor the victims of Monday’s mass shooting—Thomas Elliott, 63; James Tutt Jr., 64; Joshua Barrick, 40; Juliana Farmer, 45; Deana Eckert, 57—let’s also remember all the other people who are hurt. Let’s remember that the loss is so much bigger than what the headlines convey.