As someone who considers herself a writer, (well, a blogger at least) when a unthinkable tragedy strikes, you would think that the desire to sit and hack away at the keyboard would stop me in my tracks. That some force would grab me, pluck me from where I stand and sit me in front of my lap top, no matter where I was or what I was doing, right after providing me with a nice hot cup of coffee/tall glass of wine.
Not now. Not this time.
When the news of the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary reached me, I wanted nothing to do with writing. The sadness and fear that enveloped me, paralyzed my need to sincerely communicate with anyone except my children and my husband. I shut down, as I am sure many of us did. I became nothing but an emotional being, but in a warped kind of way. For the last few days I have soaked everything in, reluctantly. The media attention was and still is mind boggling. And the words “this time of year” began to sting me like a punch in the face. Yeah, it’s Christmas, but any time of year that you lose a loved one, especially a child, is devastating. Why would the time of year matter? I grieved for the adults lost and the parents, not only of the victimized children, but for the children at Sandy Hook who survived, and my brain froze as hard as a glacier. My heart was the only thing working.
As the initial shock started to wain, I like everyone else, searched for answers. I really didn’t feel much like offering my opinion or speculating as to where to place blame. What did it matter? I kept searching for something else.
Round and round we went. Where can we place blame? The are so many choices. Let’s see…
*Guns. Sure we can talk about guns for a long time. The truth is criminals will always be able to get guns, illegally. We, as a people, in our society as it is, have the right to defend ourselves. Timothy McVeigh used fertilizer, Min Yingjun used a knife, Hitler used a gas chamber. Crazy has no rationale. If they want to kill, they will.
*Diagnosis. Aspergers does not equal a mass murder. Neither does Autism. Neither does any other mental illness or mental handicap. Searching for a reason that someone kills can not be found in a medical coding book. If that is where you decide to conduct your search then you are going back in time instead of forward.
*Parenting. We are not all raised by perfect human beings. Far from it. Blaming a parent for an adult child on a killing spree does not solve the problem. Divorce doesn’t equal killing either, or else more than half of us would be dead.
*God. Or the lack of God. Why bring him into this. It’s not His fault. Divine intervention is not mandatory in massacres like these. Although I wish it was.
Do we really need this? Does this really help? Does placing blame teach us anything? We should all be expected to take responsibility for our own actions despite our laundry list.
I am a fighter. I will fight with you on anything. I like to refer to it as debating. I am direct. It’s in my DNA. But I no longer want to be a fighter. It feels like spinning my big ol wheels in a big ol mud pit. I want to stop fighting and start fixing.
I so wanted to write something, anything, that would lend sense to it all. I wanted something eloquent that would untangle this mess and make things better. But then this happened. It dawned on me today while driving. In my search to sort it all out, my now thawed out mind and my beating heart kept going back to something. Something I heard a long time ago, 12 or so years ago, that changed the way I go about my daily life. Something said by a woman named Toni Morrison. It was this:
Overly simple, maybe. Utopian, could be. But necessary, I believe so.
Does your face light up? Do your children, any child, get the benefit of you being happy to see them? Are you too critical? Are you wrapped up in so many of life little inconveniences that you can’t light up when you see someone you love. Even those that you see everyday? Do you light up when you see your spouse? Your Mom and Dad? Anyone else?
It may not be the solution to something as big as the Sandy Hook massacre, but what if it was to the future of our children. What if something so simple could be the answer? How would we know? I say let’s try it.
I look at the face of the killer and I see no light. Desolate, barren eyes. He almost looks like an alien on this planet. Void of light. Probably incredibly uncomfortable with the flash used to take his picture. I think he found a friend in darkness. It was all he had.
Light just might be the answer. The light of a child. I say we rejoice in it, provide blaring light to them and encourage it to spread. And maybe the rest, will just take care of itself.
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