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'It's surreal and it's incredibly painful' | Bloomfield community lights 1,000 bulbs outside church to honor COVID, shooting victims

Ten colorful lightbulbs outside Bloomfield Congregational Church represent Buffalo victims and one star represents Uvalde victims.

BLOOMFIELD, Conn — Tragedy after tragedy creates a great sense of sadness for many people, who are still trying to wrap their heads around recent events.

"I don't know if people are ready to heal. I think just being together in our common loss and grief I think people are so fragile right now. There's so much pain, there's so much difficulty there's so much strain," Pastor Shawn Fischer, of Bloomfield Congregational Church.

RELATED: Family gathers for vigil of Bloomfield man killed in Hartford

A vigil planned to remember the one million lives lost to COVID-19 evolved to also include the victims of the deadly shooting at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York and then just one day before the event, another deadly shooting took the lives of 19 children and 2 teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

"It's surreal and it's incredibly painful," Fischer said.

All the way across the country, the pain is felt here in Connecticut. Bloomfield Congregational Church gave its community the space to come together and work through those feelings.

"We've decided as a community to make sure that we process all of the tragedy together in a timely way," said Bloomfield mayor, Danielle Wong.

For many parents, Wednesday was an especially difficult day following the shooting at the Texas elementary school.

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"I'm terrified. I have two young kids. I have a daughter who's in the 6th grade and a son who's a freshman at the high school," said Rickford Kirton of Bloomfield. "Just this morning I was looking at both of them going to school, and thinking for a second there that something could happen."

When the sunset, they found comfort among their neighbors, finding the light amid all of the tragedy.

RELATED: Homicide victim in Hartford remembered by loved ones

"Support each other, and listen to each other and basically try to find a way how we can stop this senseless killing," Kirton said.

The lights on the front lawn of the church will be lit every night for the next week.

Gaby Molina is a reporter and anchor at FOX61 News. She can be reached at mmolina@fox61.com. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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