Today I also hold my sons a little tighter, a littler closer, a little more desperately. It has been a few days since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary and I am finally daring to streamline my thoughts into words on a sentence. My heart aches, my eyes well up. I'm trying so desperately to not allow the hysteria from rising. I am more than two thousand miles removed from where this tragedy occurred, and yet I cannot but feel fearful. My heart longs to find comfort in all of the familiar ways, but tragedy seems to be creeping closer, closer, closer. There was a time when those horrible things were unheard of, were a thing of war and distraught places. This land was impervious to many of the evils that pervaded other lands. That's why we moved here...To escape, to find a safe zone. I find myself going through the same waves of emotions that I remember when the September 11th attacks occurred. There is no safe place...Thou knowest neither the day nor the hour...This tragedy, much like 9/11, tears me into thinking that the worst comes most unexpected. At least with war, you live in that constant fear. You know that that day may be your last. You know that danger encases you, and the adrenaline in your body seems to run consistently high. This is the stuff of anxiety. But when one is living life, having arguments, and kissing good-bye with a peck; when one's mind is bogged down with grocery bills and silly things, when one seems to make a life out of living, then the blow is so hard. One is not prepared. I was not prepared. I heard the news on my way to work, and my mind was tormented. The unknown fatalities, the children, the possibility of a coordinated attack...the children...the parents, the agony of time, the children. CHILDREN for God's sake! Children much like my children, just a few years their senior. I am blown to bits.
The conditions are so typical, a quiet town, the excitement for winter break, the conversation about the events of the prior day...It could happen anywhere. IT happens anywhere and everywhere. I feel like this life has a destiny that likes to play Russian roulette. My family and I are not out of range. Much like those parents, who were told to sit down before disclosing that 20 children had been killed. Twenty children, out of the billions of children in the world, who aren't coming home for Christmas. "Your child is not coming home." How bitter the hope of things that did not come to pass.
I sit here, composed, typing my thoughts away. Yet there are those parents, siblings, and friends, who cannot fathom what just happened. Those parents whose tears continue to streak their cheeks, unaware of the world that keeps revolving. Those siblings whose inquirying minds cannot understand their playmate lays cold and unmoving. Those friends, lucky to be alive, yet cursed. I feel for them. I feel for each of their struggles from the core of my being. It is not okay. Don't tell me (or them!) that it is going to be okay. No. The madness is in full swing.
Yet, the days pass. The sun rises, the moon follows. The chill of the wind hits my face. I get dressed. I eat. I sleep. At some point, other thoughts occupy my mind, because unlike those very closely affected, I am at liberty still. My job demands my attention. My kids, sound and happy want me to hold them and read them stories. It's a tricky balance of function and emotion. How desperately I want to grant them every wish for fear that tomorrow I may not get to. Still, the likelihood of another day is high, and my motherly duties grab the disciplined no and make me utter it. "No, you can't have blue fruit punch at breakfast." Luckily their tantrum-stained tears dissipate quickly and opt for milk or orange juice instead. There is time still...
Right after 9/11, there was a flurry of phrases noting, pleading not to forget. "Remember 9/11." As the nation mourns and heals, it moves toward forgetting a little. It's part of returning to normalcy. The struggle is to move on without forgetting, because those families, those frantic mothers looking for their unaccounted sons and daughters, they, THEY will NEVER forget. And I? I will look into my children's faces on their seventh birthday and think of those who never grew up to see it.
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