The Names

We spent Saturday at a family Christmas party in Pennsylvania where we celebrated while avoiding commentary on the events that occurred 24 hours earlier.  It was my 90 year old grandmother's most beloved day and we weren't going to bring it down.  Dr Fabulous and I co-wrote our first article for submission to a regional paper.  It would have been romantic were it not for the content - How to talk to your children about traumatic events.  We didn't know how else to help.  We still don't.

Sunday morning I took Rella and CB to church where mention of the tragedy at Sandy Hook was surprisingly fleeting though a prayer was offered.  I left the service wishing I felt better, trailing my hope and faith behind me like a wisp, a vapor, disappearing. Dr Fabulous spent the morning with Pink and Tink volunteering at a special Santa brunch organized to benefit local children in need from broken, struggling families.

We ordered Italian food for dinner and finally talked to the girls Sunday night about the events at Sandy Hook knowing that we couldn't prolong the inevitable. They would likely hear things once back at school.  They were sad, but they didn't fully understand.  No child should fully understand.  I'm grateful they don't.

Once again, I didn't sleep more than a couple hours, awakened with grief for parents just like me dealing with the incomprehensible and violent loss of children just like mine. I pictured my first grader too many times, and the thought alone destroys me. Try as I might, I can find nothing that puts an iota of distance between me and them.  They are us, we are them.  I've never felt the pain of an international event so extensively and deeply as I do now.  I've been shocked and saddened, but never this affected.  Never. But when it's too much I turn off the T.V. and with time I'll turn off my thoughts.  I'm blessed that I have this option and can't bear the guilt of knowing so many don't.

I stopped looking at social media, including facebook. Dismayed and shocked at the posts that were going up by people I thought I knew - people I don't wish to know anymore.  Within 24-48 hours of babies huddled together in fear while a man with more ammunition than one civilian needs to possess filled their tiny bodies with bullet holes, people started harping about their precious guns - their fears at the "liberals" using this incident to take their rights away.  Pontification on the fact that guns will be procured no matter what the laws say, so (in essence) why bother? THESE were their immediate concerns, their immediate thoughts, those they broadcasted to hundreds of facebook friends in the wake of horrors none could conjure. The judgements were hurled at a mother they didn't know, the typical politicizing began, and people clutched their guns to their breasts as if they were children.  The blood wasn't cleaned, the bodies weren't yet buried, but some simply can't resist the opportunity to speak out against "...the liberal agenda." While conversations certainly need to be had, this noise is so indecent for right now that I have to shut it off, shut it out.  If a mass murder of this caliber cannot lead us in an un-politicized discussion as to what needs to be done to prevent things like this from occurring?  If we can't come together from opposite sides of the political poles that WE perpetuate? Then God help us all.  We're lost.  We're so freakin' lost.

I have never been one to express strong opinions here, afraid of offending or being misunderstood, but I am in such pain and disbelief.  I should just stick with the only words that should be spoken in the days - the DAYS after 26 innocents are slain.  Words of prayer, hope, kindness and love.

I don't understand anything anymore.  Anything.  I only want to say these final words and then I can't bear to write about this day any longer on my blog.  You may think me shallow or that I've moved on, but I just can't bear to talk about it except with my immediate loved ones.  I only have strength for these final words - the only words that matter.  The names of the innocents, the heros, the children; the angels.

God bless their sweet souls and the souls of all those who miss them beyond measure. Bless them all and never forget their names.

Charlotte Bacon, 6
Daniel Barden, 7
Olivia Engel, 6
Josephine Gay, 7
Ana M. Marquez-Greene, 6
Dylan Hockley, 6
Madeleine F. Hsu, 6
Catherine V. Hubbard, 6
Chase Kowalski, 7
Jesse Lewis, 6
James Mattioli, 6
Grace McDonnell, 7
Emilie Parker, 6
Jack Pinto, 6
Noah Pozner, 6
Caroline Previdi, 6
Jessica Rekos, 6
Avielle Richman, 6
Benjamin Wheeler, 6
Allison N. Wyatt, 6
Mary Sherlach, 56
Victoria Soto, 27
Anne Marie Murphy, 52
Lauren Rousseau, 30
Dawn Hochsprung, 47
Rachel Davino, 29