Gun March Moves One Mom From Sorrow to Activism

For the first time in four years, Karen Lynch feels like a mother again. Tears still leave her face when she cradles a picture of her dead son, but she says enough time has passed that she can now have celebratory dinner, with her surviving son, without feeling sick in the stomach.

Today is the first time Lynch has acknowledged Mother’s Day since her ex-husband allegedly shot their 19-year-old son Tim. “It’s been a terrible day for years,” says the Santa Ana woman. “I used to define myself as a mom, and all of a sudden I didn’t know what I was. I feel like I can feel like a mom again.”

It’s a welcome revelation, she says, that came unexpectedly by participating in the Million Mom March, a crusade of mothers across the land who want stiffer gun controls and also want to make Mother’s Day something more than a Hallmark occasion.

Lynch plans to march in downtown Los Angeles today, one of 65 such demonstrations in cities from Seattle to Atlanta. The biggest march is in Washington, D.C., where 150,000 or more people are expected to take part in what organizers say will be the largest gun control rally in U.S. history.

For many, the march is activism at its purest, a once-in-a-lifetime event, a grass-roots effort to make a difference. For Lynch, the event carries much more weight. She says it’s somehow bringing her back to life after years of depression.

“I feel a sense of purpose,” Lynch says. “I have reason to wake up on Mother’s Day. I guess it’s my way of honoring my son.”

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Timothy Lynch died four years ago after an argument with his father in Hesperia. Tim attended a community college, preparing for a career as a firefighter. On March 25, 1996, Tim got his report card--a perfect 4.0, highest in his class. Karen Lynch was teaching a computer class in Chicago at the time. Tim was at his father’s home, celebrating his grades with a friend when his father walked in. Somehow an argument broke out and the friend left.

What happened next is in dispute.

The father, in court papers, said Tim attacked him with a chair; but prosecutors didn’t see the shooting as self-defense because Timothy Lynch was shot five times. The father, Michael Lynch, was charged with murder in San Bernardino County, but the case has yet to go to trial.

The death altered Karen Lynch in ways she never expected; it made her ask “Why?” and “What if?” almost constantly and mistrust everybody around her, she said. And when Mother’s Day sneaked up on her one day, the loss of her son turned a perfectly sweet time of flowers and dinner into something loathsome, she said. Lynch, 51, said she hadn’t realized how much she had taken the day for granted. Since Tim’s death, she says, she mostly has spent the day at the beach on Balboa Peninsula, Tim’s favorite beach spot.

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Recently though, that’s changed.

Things around the house appear the same. Her other son, Shawn, 26, is thinking about joining the U.S. Coast Guard, something that Tim ultimately wanted to do after a stint as a firefighter; Karen keeps photographs of Tim near candles; on the sofa, she keeps a stuffed Winnie the Pooh bear, dressed like a fireman and with angel wings. The bear used to bring her to tears, because it symbolizes her son’s dreams. But these days, she said it comforts her.

But for the first time in four years, Lynch said she probably will not go to the beach on Mother’s Day.

Instead she will meet other mothers on Olvera Street in Los Angeles to rally for more gun controls. Lynch heard about the march through a support group of parents whose children were murdered.

After talking about it with other mothers and visiting the group’s Website, Lynch said the event began to take on a meaning beyond simple activism. The march became almost the only way, she says, she can feel like she is accomplishing something while awaiting the trial of her ex-husband.

Lynch says it’s an outlet for her sadness. Even though Tim is gone, she says, “I’m doing something. . . . I feel like a mother again.”

When the day is done and the march is over, Lynch and her son Shawn are planning to go out for dinner.