We Can't Be Silent About Sandy Hook

It's 2:30 in the morning, and I am commenting on every blog I see that posts on the tragedy of Sandy Hook today. I'm like a woman who's lost her mind--I need to honor and remember and cry tears over tender lives so tragically lost. I'm on a mission to read and leave words and say, yes, those children were here, to recognize their lives--even though I know it changes nothing; for me, it's doing something.

How can we say nothing? How can we write nothing? How can we go on to our next day and not talk about how the earth stood still today?

The twenty children of Newtown that we've lost--so very small, the youngest in the school, at that wonderful tooth-missing-in-the-front age. Just learning how to sound out words, just learning how to write their names. How can we not cry until our tears are gone?

The teachers and staff killed, standing against a monster gunman, taking their place as best as they could, in the way of the shooter, knowing our job is to protect the little ones.

We are to care for our smallest ones, not murder them. They're so little--they need our protection. They're so small--they can't take on what we can. They trust and count on us, and their lives weren't meant for a madman to come into their school while they paint in reds, blues, and yellows, while they practice their songs for the holiday concert, while they make a special card to take home that day and give to their mothers and fathers. There's not supposed to be a bad guy who walks through the hallways of their school firing away at them until their sweet,young life is gone.

They're children, their last thoughts would be of what is most precious to them; Christmas, Hanukkah, for their parents right at that moment when they've never been more scared in their lives. Their last thoughts, of the mama and dad that love them; their last thoughts, of I don't want to die.

I can't make sense of this. Where will a town find twenty little coffins? What funeral homes can accommodate services for so many children. I cry for the parents, running to the school as if they themselves were on fire, hearts pounding, praying out loud, please let my baby be safe, please let my baby be safe.

I think of the nightmare the parents find when they get to the school, seeing other children reunited with their joyfully relieved parents, but their child nowhere in sight. I think of the dizzying disbelief and denial as they keep looking, praying, frantically scanning the crowd of screaming, crying children for the face of their own. I think of them, ushered to a different area than the general one--the one specified for children unaccounted for.

I think of the words they hear, how their knees must have buckled, when they were told to go home and wait--while others weren't; their hearts wrenched to return to a house where they look at and wonder if the Christmas gifts wrapped under the tree will be opened by the child they were bought for. How their child began Hanukkah with them, and now, is not there for its last day tomorrow. My mind wants to scream as I think of the holiday cards that have already been sent out--showing full families that now no longer exist.

It's been 15 hours since I first heard the news, I thought I would have run out of tears by now.

But they just keep flowing, and I've given up trying to fight them back.

Heaven became a little more loud, a little more joyous today. Can you hear it? The sound of the most beautiful voices of angels entering your gates today to run through your golden grasses.

***

To the families in this incomprehensible loss, let us share your burden, let us cry our tears over your unimaginable devastation.

You have a nation of love behind you, around you, underneath you.
 
Our prayers, our broken hearts, our hope that this senselessness stops are with you, and your eternally beautiful children.

 We are so sorry.

 photo credit: horizontal.integration via photopin cc