On days like today, there are no words that can be written or spoken that helps us makes sense of the senseless. Today’s shooting in Newtown, Connecticut defies explanation. How can one explain the murder of innocent children? The other night I wrote about how grateful I was that my children survived the many illnesses and injuries of childhood and have entered into their young adulthood. It is mind boggling to think about living in a place where children also have to survive mass shootings at their elementary schools, places where we once considered them safe. Of course in some communities in this country children go to school in neighborhoods that are like war zones. We don’t hear much about these children who sadly are accustomed to being unsafe. There are no news reports from those schools or those communities.
It creates some internal dissonance for me to feel grateful to have been able to raise my kids in communities where they were safe and where violence in their schools was as distant and unlikely a possibility as it had been for those in the Sandy Hook Elementary School. Like many parents across the country tonight I expressed love and gratitude for my children. My sister’s children are the youngest in our family at 12 and 14, though my oldest sister has a grandson who is in kindergarten this year. I am thankful for each of them, for their safety and wellbeing, and for my kids’ half brother who is about to turn five. I found myself hugging my 22 year old daughter, who I know was thinking about her little brother and imagining children that young being victims of such an awful crime.
No, I won’t write much tonight except to add my prayers to the millions of others praying for the families of the children and adults who were killed as well as those who survived but are suffering emotional and mental distress. May they find healing and comfort. May they be surrounded by and embraced by other family, friends, and loved ones. May all who have lost children to the violence of this world be comforted and surrounded by loved ones. May they be buoyed by the prayers and love of people known and unknown to them. May it be so for all who have suffered loss this day.
