Since that awful day, I've been trying to make some sort of sense of it all, trying to understand what drove one individual to kill twenty innocent children and six innocent adults. My mind just cannot comprehend it. I don't understand it. And my heart aches for those families, especially the families of the children. Since last Friday, I've cried what seems like buckets of tears, for children I didn't even know, but who've touched my life in a horrible and beautiful way. I cried for them as if they were each my own child.
My son is seven. He is in first grade. And I suppose that's why this particular story has hit me the way it has. Any one of these kids could be him. He could be any one of those kids.
I've written and rewritten this same post in my mind a thousand times since Friday. No words seemed right. I'm a writer, why was I struggling with this so badly? Why couldn't I find those right words?
Because they don't exist. Or if they do, I am not gifted enough to craft them.
No parent should have to bury their child. Ever. But especially not when that child is only 6 or 7 and whose only crime was being in school at the wrong moment. There shouldn't even be a wrong moment to be in school. Schools are supposed to be safe. Our children are supposed to be safe in them.
I don't know if stricter gun control laws are the answer. I don't know if there is an answer, if this could have been prevented. All I know is that these children should not have died. Twenty-six families should not be having funerals at a time when a good portion of the world is celebrating the coming Christmas holiday.
Twenty children should have been given the right to grow up.
Even now, I cry when I see their beautiful faces. And I'm angry that something so terrible happened to them. That something so terrible destroyed the innocence of every child in the Sandy Hook Elementary School that day.
Charlotte Bacon, age 6 Daniel Barden, age 7 Olivia Engel, age 6
Josephine Gay, age 7 Ana Marquez-Greene, age 6 Dylan Hockley, age 6
Madeleine Hsu, age 6 Catherine Hubbard, age 6 Chase Kowalski, age 7
Jesse Lewis, age 6 James Mattioli, age 6 Grace McDonnell, age 7
Emilie Parker, age 6 Jack Pinto, age 6 Noah Pozner, age 6
Caroline Previdi, age 6 Jessica Rekos, age 6 Avielle Richman, age 6
Benjamin Wheeler, age 6 Allison Wyatt, age 6
Rachel Davino, age 29
Dawn Hochsprung, age 47
Anne Marie Murphy, age 52
Lauren Rousseau, age 30
Mary Sherlach, age 56
Victoria Soto, age 27
Rest in peace, Heaven's newest angels. Soar high.
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