The huge memorial for Charlie Kirk is underway, with over 100,000 people estimated in attendance and an unknown number watching on TV or the internet. The conservative movement has been anything but silenced by this tragedy; in fact, as many have noted, it seems like a huge slumbering giant has been awakened.
At its heart, though, the outpouring is still about an awful, history-changing event—the shooting of the conservative leader on September 10 at an outdoor event in Orem, Utah.
Charlie’s wife Erika, who made a powerful televised address in the days following his death, spoke to the New York Times Thursday and told more about the horror of finding out what had transpired and what followed in the terrible aftermath.
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“With all due respect,” Ms. Kirk remembered saying, “I want to see what they did to my husband.”
She was braced for the worst, but what she saw surprised her. “His eyes were semi-open,” Ms. Kirk said. “And he had this knowing, Mona Lisa-like half-smile. Like he’d died happy. Like Jesus rescued him. The bullet came, he blinked, and he was in heaven.”
She had not been able to kiss him goodbye when he left the house earlier that morning. She did so then.
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Since Charlie’s death, Erika has been named CEO and Board Chair of Turning Point USA, the organization that Kirk co-founded and led to such prominence.
She spoke at length about how it was just another morning, and how Charlie was excited as always to meet the day and do the work that so passionately drove him.
Ms. Kirk, 36, spoke in a composed voice while fighting through tears about a husband lionized on the right as an inspiration to young Republicans and pilloried on the left for his attacks on civil rights, feminism and Islam. She acknowledged her struggle to make sense of an unfathomable tragedy.
“I’m allowing myself to feel this so deeply,” she said, “without medication, without alcohol. The Lord is giving me discernment.”
She also reminisced about her late husband's special relationship with Trump, saying Charlie was like family to the president. “Charlie was like a son to him,” she said. “And when the president said, ‘Just let us know how we can support you,’ I told him, ‘My husband just loved conversing with you and using you as a sounding board for all sorts of things."
"Could we continue that?’ And he said, ‘Of course.’”
“No one will ever forget my husband’s name, and I will make sure of it,” Erika said in her speech to the nation just two days after the murder. As the events unfolding in Phoenix are showing at this very moment, the spirit of Mr. Kirk is very much alive today.