December 15, 2012
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Every Day….
Every day, after leaving my bright, cute, young, everything-in-front-of-them daughters at school, I drive away down the hill with all the other parents, and I think about the call. If I got one. That one that says: ‘shooting.’ And how fast I would drive, where I would park, how I would avoid law inforcement’s cordon (set up to avoid risk, but I would not be avoiding risk), how I would get in the school, where I would look: everywhere, no matter what, for my daughters. Every day, I swear to you, I think this. And then I think …. how life would be if I were the one. Whose kid didn’t make it. Tonight, in abject empathy, in deepest horror, for the 20 sets of parents who are facing that unthinkable thing …. and in survivor-guilt, for myself and all the rest of us who aren’t? We need to be understanding how we are responsible for it not happening again. To someone. Who might be us. Let’s find a solution, fellow parents. Before the unthinkable is ours, not ‘theirs.’ [[tears]]
Comments (4)
I have no children. And my reaction to this all, and, unfortunately to the most recent precedents, is that I would kill.
That’s it. No wait for anyone, anything, no explaination. I mean, ultimately, what’s the other price?
Maybe I’m part of the problem, sliding sometimes between institutions that lean that way when they have their fiercest grip upon the psyche of that proper demographic, and swinging the other way, in which, well… I still don’t know. My best and worst days were spent with a patch on my shoulder.
But, in the end? I’d do something of which would not make my parents proud.
Or, maybe, I underestimate their resolve…
Exactly. You so eloquently said precisely what is in my own heart. It was so incredibly hard to leave for work this morning. (I leave first, my husband brings my son to school.) I often think of myself as almost “too empathetic,” feeling things deeply that aren’t my own. But I doubt that it’s possible in this case. I am emotionally decimated by this horrible thing, and that is appropriate.
I spent the next day in the company of two kids about the age of the ones slaughtered. No kids in my household, so I did the next best thing.
I’ll be at http://twoberry-bob.livejournal.com/ I’m pretty sure. But darn, I hope that Xanga 2.0 survives somehow, because it’s such an incredible FILING SYSTEM. Not just my Scrabble word lists, but my doctors’ appointments, hyperlinks to favorite websites, so many things. And of course THE COMMUNITY we’ve built.