I was reading details of last Friday’s nightmare and one
fact struck me. When asked about the shooter, a former administrator who had
known him in high school said, “Did you find a best friend? Did you find any
friend? You won’t. He didn’t have any.” The young man had no friends. Not one.
Now, I am in no conceivable way excusing his actions, nor even trying to
explain them. I’m just noting this fact.
Every time I open Facebook, another beautiful face appears.
These are the faces of the children who were killed at their Elementary School
where they should have been safe from a maniac with a gun. Seeing their
perfect, precious faces brings fresh tears to my eyes again and again. I can’t
fathom their parent’s pain. All weekend long, the world felt out of sorts for
me.
And now today, alone in my house, I feel even more out of
sorts. As a mom, you know all too well the worry that goes with parenting. But
there are times when the worry you feel for your children is cranked up, and
other times the worry recedes, like background music. Normally, by 9am on
a school day, I can relax. If any of the school buses carrying my children were
to have crashed, I would have heard about it by now. M y
children are safe at school. There is a break in the worry until 2:45 when they
board a bus again. I am out of sorts because I can’t stop thinking about the
path a crazed gunman might take in my own children’s school buildings. I wonder
whether the fire doors could be automatically closed off to protect them. I
consider that the M iddle School
seems safest because the classrooms are so far from the entrance. These are not
thoughts that usually torment me on the average week day.
