The English language does not have words equal to the task of describing the intense grief a parent feels when a child dies.

To capture that emotion, some of the Amish families who lost five children almost a year ago in the West Nickel Mines School shootings turn to a Pennsylvania Dutch word.

Zeitlang.

It means a keen yearning — some describe it as a homesickness — for a little girl whose empty dress now hangs in her room, the older sister who no longer chatters with her little sisters at bedtime, the smiling child gone from her chair.

Over the past months, the families of Naomi Rose Ebersol, Marian Fisher, Anna Mae Stoltzfus and sisters Lena and Mary Liz Miller have become painfully familiar with this emotion.

"There's a hole," one mother says. "It goes through you every day, what's missing. You just long to see her. You just have to have her here."

But as time has passed, the families say they are gradually mending, as are the five girls who were wounded when  a milk truck driver named Charles Carl Roberts IV entered their Bart Township one-room school and shot the 10 girls, before killing himself on Oct. 2.

The past year has brought dark days to this community, as school families have struggled with depression, anger and survivor's guilt.

There also have been joyful days of blessings.  And there have been normal days, too.

Although it is, as one mother says, "a new normal."

The survivors

Among the five girls who survived the shooting, there are scars and hair that is still growing out after brain surgery.

Sarah Ann Stoltzfus, 9, does not have full vision on her left side. Barbie Fisher, 12,  has pitched in school softball games but had to undergo a recent shoulder operation in the hopes of strengthening her right arm.

Barbie, Sarah Ann and another girl, Rachel Ann Stoltzfus, 9, all returned to school last year, after the shootings. Another, Esther King, 14, graduated last year and now works at home on her family's farm.

The fifth child injured in the shooting, Rosanna King, does not talk or walk, but the Amish community considers her a benediction of her own.

Shot in the head, the 7-year-old was not expected to survive. Doctors sent her home to die.

Now she laughs out loud, moves her arms and legs and even has tried to say a few words. She was expected to visit her classmates at school this week.

"We have seen a lot of miracles," her family wrote in a recent letter to an Amish newspaper.

New world, new lives

Families who lost daughters in the shootings say they did not know how to navigate grief until they took the journey, step by difficult step, held up by their faith and by the love of others over the past year.

Slowly, the nightmarish fog is lifting.

A farmer who lost two daughters  says he knew he was turning a corner when he started to feel like working in the fields again.

Like all of family members interviewed for this story, he asked not to be named.

Another couple talked about their daughter 10 months after she had died and, the father says, "It didn't hurt like it did at four months. That was a big sign that things are changing."

His wife says, "You can wake up one day and think, 'You know what? I'm starting to heal.' "

Three of the families who lost daughters — the Millers, the Stolzfuses and the Fishers — have had babies since the shooting.

The births have been double-edged events.

They are a bittersweet reminder of other births and other children who were not here to welcome a new brother or sister.

They also are a happy reminder that there is new life and many reasons to get up and greet each day.

Mary Liz and Lena Miller's little brother asked his mother if his sisters up in heaven helped to pick out the new baby for their family.

"There's a rainbow after each storm," their mother says. "That's what keeps us moving."

The Nickel Mines families' other children also have kept the parents moving, as have the support, love and prayers of others over the past year.

One mother says, "We were able to say there's a lot of good people in the world, too."

Those good people — both  Amish and English — turned out in droves to help the families in the numb weeks after the shootings.

Every family was deeply grateful for the food, cards, offers of transportation and other gifts, including more than $4.3 million that was donated to a fund to benefit the families.

The families still get and appreciate mail on a regular basis from people asking how they are doing since the shootings.

The Nickel Mines families, bound by a common, painful thread, also have drawn closer.

"I don't know how I would feel if we had been the only ones," one mother says, her voice swelling in gratitude. "We have each other to come together and share."

Other people, who had lost a child through other circumstances, made their way to the families' doorsteps to share their experiences, too.

"That was counseling at its best," one father says. "They shared with us how they felt. We saw that's exactly how we feel and that made us feel better."

The families recently got their turn to pass that sense of healing along to others.

Last month, the parents of most of the families journeyed to Blacksburg, Va., to hand deliver a "comfort quilt" to Virginia Tech officials and the families of students and faculty killed in the  massacre there on April 16.

"We could just feel for each other," one of the fathers says.

The state troopers who stormed into the West Nickel Mines schoolhouse that day, in an effort to save the children from Roberts' gunfire, also have been a continuing presence in the community.

They have come to picnics and gatherings. They have stopped at homes to quietly talk to children who are struggling with their feelings since the shootings.

Still, it has not been easy.

Finding their way

Some children who survived the shootings are battling fears and guilt.

Sisters Barbie and Emma Fisher both survived the shootings. Emma, 10, fled the school before the gunfire began, after hearing what some believe was a heaven-sent voice urging her to slip out quietly, saying, "If you go out, don't run."

Some of the surviving girls now are uneasy around men who are strangers. Some also have had dreams of men with guns coming to the school.

"Your imagination can be worse than the actual happening," a mother says.

Emma wonders why things unfolded the way they did that day.

"She always said, she and teacher and the boys can feel for each other," her mother adds. "They all ran from the scene. She doesn't know why she did it.

"We all tell her the angel told her to go, but sometimes she had thoughts of why didn't she stay in? Why was she different?"

Some of the girls went to counseling,  which helped them sort through their feelings.

And it has helped that new families, ones with daughters, now go to the children's school, giving the girls new playmates.

A new year

For everyone, there were anxious days before school began a few weeks ago in the New Hope School, a replacement school built in a new pasture after the old school was demolished within days of the shootings.

The school's teacher, who ran for help when Roberts pulled out a gun, has asked that for a time no outside visitors come to the school, down a lane posted with "No Trespassing" signs.

In the New Hope School, the children have reminders of Oct. 2 — teddy bears, flowers, angel figurines and other things that people gave them in the past months. But they have new name charts and other things that show it is a new year.

Though one family says it was hard to see their son off to school on the first day, things have settled into a routine.

"It's better now that school has started," one mother says. "It's not as bad as we thought it was going to be."

The new school, which opened last April, is just over a hill from the farm of one of the families who lost a daughter. They still have three other children who attend the school, which is so close they can hear the shouts and laughter of the children playing at recess.

Rather than being a haunting reminder, "It's been a ray of sunshine for me," the mother says.

New Hope will fall silent on Oct. 2, the one-year anniversary of the shootings. No classes will be held that day, or the previous day.

Families will get together for a solemn lunch on Oct. 1. And on Oct. 2, they will gather at their homes with their own families, to talk, to be together and to remember.

Still with them

The families have worked to keep their daughters' memories alive.

Marian Fisher's family put up her gravestone on April 3, her birthday, sowing grass seed across her still-raw grave in an Amish cemetery outside Georgetown.

The Fishers, the Ebersols and the Millers also have not yet disturbed their deceased daughters' rooms.

Marian Fisher's dress — the one she wore on the last day of her life — is hung in her room, not far from her shoes and her name chart from school.

Naomi Ebersol's room also has stayed the same, and visitors sometimes ask to see it, her family says.

"We don't want to put it completely away," one father says of his daughter's   room. "We don't want to forget her. She was special to us."

The families say they know the day will come when they can put away their daughters' things. That will be OK, too.

"These things," one father says, "take time."

Lessons learned

The families say the past year has taught them how precious their remaining children are.

"You don't take them for granted," one father says. "Tomorrow you could wake up, and they're not here."

They realize horrible things can happen without warning.

There can be a temptation to wonder, "Why our child, why us?" a father says.

But he adds, "We're not better than anybody else. Why couldn't it happen to us?"

The families readily say they are still learning about forgiveness. The families' grace  towards Roberts and his family in the weeks after the murders stunned the world.

In fact, some people told the families they could never forgive Roberts if they were in the families' shoes.

That was hard to understand, one mother says, adding the Amish don't fully grasp the grudges that some folks hold toward others.

The families say they didn't make a sudden decision to forgive Roberts. The notion already was in their hearts, nurtured by their belief that as Jesus forgives them, so must they forgive others.

It has not always been easy. There have been times they even struggled with their faith.

"You have to have a will to forgive," one mother says. "You have to want to forgive and that's the first step."

A father says that as they "released"  Roberts, they released themselves from anger and from bitterness. But not from pain.

His wife says quietly, "Just because you've forgiven doesn't mean you've forgotten, and that it doesn't hurt."

Heavenly sounds

The families who lost daughters all were given wind chimes by the family of a former teacher at the Amish school. They are stamped with this message: "How beautiful heaven must be, sweet home of the happy and free."

The chimes hang from the porches of the girls' homes, not far from where their brothers and sisters play, their dogs weave in and out of visitors' legs, and their mothers and fathers carry on the tasks of the living.

On a breezy day, if you listen carefully, the whisper of the wind brings a song from five little girls who have passed on.

CONTACT US: cstauffer@LNPnews.com or 481-6024; acrable@LNPnews.com or 481-6029.