I haven’t written anything in a few days. I’ve had plenty of ideas, but after hearing about the Colorado movie theater massacre, I couldn’t seem to make my thoughts coalesce. The big question of WHY always jumps into my head at hearing news like this. Then I realize I need to push that thought away. You can’t really explain crazy. My next thought is always wouldn’t someone notice if the person was acting angry or strange? But what if he always acted like that or had no friends. My third thought, surprisingly, is always about the crazy person’s family. I have no idea why, but I always wonder what in the world could have happened that was so bad it pushed them over the edge? Did their family not notice? Again, I can’t answer these questions. I just can’t seem to wrap my head around it.
In a photo album yellowed with age rests the clippings of the headlines. Beside that I have his picture, one I took on a ski trip we went on, and near it is his obituary. I saved all the headlines pertaining to his shooting, and they sit beside the funeral service pamphlet. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way, but it did. The fight after school one day, a harmless stupid fight that 16 year old boys have all the time, ended with the other boy bringing a gun. For a very long time I hated guns. But this is not about a political stance, this is about life. It’s not the gun, it’s the person using it. It took me a long time to realize that.
I can remember where I was for all of the horrific acts I have heard about over the years. I go through the motions for a few days after, not really focusing. I try to shield my children from the news as best I can, because I want to be the one to explain it, not the media. I wait and get all the facts together, and then I tell them myself, in the best way I know how. How do I tell them it will be okay? I don’t. But this quote helps explain it for me:
“Love is stronger than death even though it can’t stop death from happening, but no matter how hard death tries it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away our memories either. In the end, life is stronger than death.” ~ Unknown
