12.14.12

Just... Wow.
I am in disbelief that today's horrible events could even take place. All these babies, just gone.

I was proctoring an exam when the "Breaking News" message popped up on my monitor and I swear I stopped breathing. I am sure that every parent, everywhere, instantly went to that horrible place in your mind where you picture yourself in tragedy. But Dear God, THANK GOD, my own babies were safe. And yet, there is absolutely no assurance that they will be safe tomorrow, or even tonight.

The terrible reality of today opens up dialogue about what needs to change in our society, our blessed country where this should not be happening, but it also brings to light the things that we can't change, and that is even scarier to me.

I can teach them to look both ways, never play with matches, and swim only with an adult. I might even be able to keep them from willingly getting in a car with a stranger. But dammit, there is not One. Single. Thing. that I can do to assure that some sick and hurting, yet monster of a person won't walk into their school and spray their room with bullets.

My son is in kindergarten.
I have pictured this gunman in my child's classroom all day. I do not know any of these poor families that have lost their children, pieces of their hearts, but I am sure they have been doing the same. I cry for them. I have been crying all day.

These poor babies and their families.
These poor teachers that have to worry about things like this. That have to lock their students and themselves crying in bathrooms, when they should be cutting out pictures of Santa and saying their ABCs.

It is so very hard to acknowledge how fleeting life can be. To understand that we can only do so much to protect our babies. I break thinking of how they surely wanted their moms when all of the shooting began and that if it had been my boy, I would not have been there to save him. We can't always save them. We can't. And so we cry.