Day 314
I am heartsick.
IT has happened again. Every time children are gunned down I think that it cannot possibly happen again – EVER. And yet, it does.
Shattered lives. Shattered families.
I do NOT understand this. I just don’t. I am practically sick over this and yet – I knew none of them. I am one of millions of people who don’t know any of these families. Never had the chance to meet any of those children and yet we are feeling the same thing … utter heartbreak. And, as parents, we are all thinking the same thing … those kids could have been MINE.
My heart is broken for those families. I can barely comprehend such a violent act … on children … and then compound it with it happening at school … before the holidays. I can barely stand it. I don’t want to think about it – and yet that is ALL I am thinking about.
I have a few friends who have lost children … I still do not know how they continue to breathe.
I used to live 10 miles from Columbine High School. It was not an area I frequented and yet I drove right by the school an hour or so before the shootings began that fateful morning. Never in my wildest dreams could I have thought that I’d return home to the news of that day. We watched that tragedy unfold and it was horrific.
And that scenario has played out again and again and AGAIN in the last few years.
Schools are supposed to be safe. These are CHILDREN we are talking about. Children dying. Children killing other children. I have worked in schools for the past 20 years … they are full of mobiles and music, laughter and excitement and joy and the smell of paste. There is not supposed to be fear and gunfire and death.
My heart is just broken.
Tonight I kept thinking about those mothers and fathers … how do they go on? I think maybe mom was out getting that special Christmas gift at the time that this rampage was going on. How do you, as a parent, get past knowing your child was in the midst of such carnage when you were strolling the aisles at Target? I think I would have a very difficult time not feeling incredibly guilty that somehow I didn’t know my child was in such peril or lay dying.
I know as parents we are not super human. We do not have special powers. We are not able to do all/see all/be all … and that bad things happen that we have no control over. And yet …
I sit here shaking my head wondering why no one had an inkling this young man was so volatile? So angry? So desperate? So LOST?
And maybe people did … but didn’t act on that gut feeling … or thought someone else would notice … or thought it was “a phase” or that he was just having a difficult time finding his way.
I am sickened at what transpired today … on so many levels and even though I don’t want to, I can’t help feeling sorry for that kid who was responsible. The whole thing is just so, so wrong … and so, so terribly, terribly sad.
I purposely haven’t read or listened to much of what happened today. I came home and read online what transpired and had a good cry. It made me want to hug my children – oh so many miles away – and never let them go.
But that’s not realistic … life happens. You love them and let them go out into the world … your heart walking around outside your body … and you hope against hope that they will be safe and happy and that life will be good. And sometimes it is really, really, really good.
And then … sometimes it’s like today.