Six Months

Six months ago today, my husband went out to buy our Christmas tree. It was late for us, we usually have the tree the first weekend in December. For some strange reason, I began decorating the house the day after Thanksgiving, which is something I never do. Decorations rarely go up in my house before December 1st. It just doesn't seem right. Maybe my change of heart had to do with the impact of Sandy and getting life back to normal, but the decorations went up early. And we were getting the tree late.

I was upstairs, revising a manuscript, I think, when I picked up my phone and scrolled through Facebook. There were a bunch of posts about a school shooting. Then I saw it was an elementary school.

I put on the news - MSNBC, I think, and there is was - the elementary school had a name.

Sandy Hook.

I can honestly say the only news story that ever impacted me to this great a degree was September 11, 2001. To this day, I still cry over news stories regarding Sandy Hook. I look at those innocent little (and not so little faces) and my heart breaks all over again. I am the mother of a seven year old first grader. I try to put myself into Jackie Barden's shoes, or Nicole Hockley's shoes, or Veronique Pozner's shoes and I cannot hug my son enough when I do. I can't imagine that the pain of losing a child ever gets better. I don't understand how it ever even gets bearable. These families are far stronger than I think I could ever be. I cannot imagine losing my son, never mind losing him to violence because of some deranged nobody who was such a coward that he shot his mother while she slept and chose children as his targets.

And what's just as sad? Our country has done nothing - repeat after me, done nothing to prevent another Sandy Hook, another Aurora, another Columbine, from happening. Our weak-willed Congress does not have the balls to stand up to the NRA and say, "Gun control is NOT gun confiscation." It doesn't impede upon the 2nd Amendment. That amendment promises the rights to bear arms will not be infringed. It doesn't say that right is a free-for-all. It doesn't say there cannot be regulations on ammunition, or weapon size, or whether or not a person should have to submit to a universal background check.

Six months ago, twenty children and six adults lost their lives. It took that nameless, faceless coward less than five minutes to fire off 154 bullets and take those lives.

Think about that -

Less than five minutes.

154 rounds.

26 dead.

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

Remember them.