The “Love Always Wins” sign that was placed in front of Schemengees Bar & Grille at 551 Lincoln St. following the Oct. 25, 2023, mass shooting is placed Tuesday at Raymond Park at 49 Main St. in Lewiston. The sign is to remain at the park for the rest of the month to commemorate the shootings a year ago that killed 18 people and injured 13 at Schemengees and at Just-in-Time Recreation at 24 Mollison Way in Lewiston. Daryn Slover/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — There will almost certainly be a memorial one day to the Oct. 25, 2023, mass shooting.

But it will not happen anytime soon.

Nearly every detail remains to be decided, from where it would go to how it would look.

A commemoration event planned for Friday night is “the first public step on that journey,” according to Shanna Cox, the president and chief executive officer of the Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

Based on the experiences of other communities that have dealt with mass shootings, it might take a decade “to get a permanent memorial developed, designed, completed and done,” Cox said.

She said the trick is find “a sweet spot” for timing that balances the need for a place of healing with figuring out how best to do it.

“We’re taking the right amount of time,” said Cox, who is among those on a steering committee gathering information to lay the groundwork for moving forward.

The panel includes a variety of people and organizations: survivors of the mass shooting, family members of the 18 victims, the director of the Maine Resiliency Center, the head of Community Concepts, first responders, community leaders, advocates for the deaf and the LA Metro Chamber.

“We really recognize as a group that we want the work to be meaningful,” Cox said.

That means the panel needs “to work at the pace of true engagement,” she said, so its members can make sure they are representing others.

“There’s been a lot of processing” so far regarding what to think about and how to approach the many issues in the best possible way, according to Cox.

After a traumatic incident, “processing is healing,” she said.

Though the mass shooting took place in Lewiston, Cox said, it is important to remember for a memorial that the event affected people across Maine and in other states. She said it is also crucial to keep in mind how much the memorial will mean to members of the Deaf community, who suffered many losses.

A memorial should be something, too, that recognizes the people who worked at Just-In-Time Recreation at 24 Mollison Way and Schemengees Bar & Grille at 551 Lincoln St., the residents caught up in that night’s frenzy and so many others terrorized by the incident, she said.

Cox mentioned those “who sheltered in place, hid under tables, hid in stairwells, hid in closets. They experienced a trauma. And what did they need out of a memorial?”

“What does it mean for the business owner who sheltered those people?” she said. “What’s it mean for the mom who was scared at home with doors locked?”

What it amounts to is a long list of tough questions that, in fairness, can never be fully answered. No memorial, after all, can encompass what everyone needs.

But the panel starting to work on one is trying.

Cox said the committee “has started to look at common elements of other memorials” created after mass shootings, and begun contemplating how to engage those who have an interest in what is done in Lewiston.

Already, she said, committee members know that many memorials “incorporate nature or outside education.” Some have museums or signs that help explain what happened.

Cox said the committee will have to think about art, trees, benches, if there should be names cited and how specific it should be.

At the heart of it, Cox said, is deciding for whom a memorial would be created.

The victims, of course, and those injured. But there are many others who carry wounds from that night a year ago: patrons who escaped, police officers, firefighters, public works personnel, educators, medical professionals, emergency medical personnel, journalists, photographers, funeral home workers and many others, Cox said.

“What would the experience at the memorial or in the memorial be to them in a way that contributes” to their healing and memory, Cox said. “Those are big questions that we’re grappling with.”

At this point, members of the committee are not even sure they are asking all the right questions.

For now, Cox said, it is impossible to know the “right elements” for a permanent memorial.

Once the committee focuses on what it wants, she said, it will have to figure out where a memorial could go, and how to design and build it. None of that is likely to happen easily or quickly.

And maybe that is for the best.

After only a year, Cox said, “I don’t know that somebody can fathom finding peace, let alone what would bring it, or where they’d find it.”