Such Sorrow

I will dispense with the normal wacky shenanigans as now is not the time. I, like most people, spent yesterday on the verge of tears at the news out of Newtown, Connecticut. 28 people dead, 20 kids, all under the age of 10. It's heartbreaking, it's tragic, there really aren't adjectives that accurately describe it. It's hits home that much harder having 2 very young kids of my own. 2 kids that will be in school in the coming years. I get worried when they crawl into the other room and I cannot see them, I could not fathom the terror that must have beset the parents involved in this. Not knowing if your child was ok, or alive, that just ate me up yesterday.

I think that we have become desensitized to mass shootings like this for the most part, sadly enough. When adults shoot adults, its sad, when peers shoot peers at work or college it is tragic. But when an adult shooting young children, it's unspeakable, it's unconscionable, it's...a true societal disaster. After trying to absorb all of this, I tried, like so many, to wonder why. I tried to step and make some sense of all this, and then I got angry, very angry. My anger was sparked by Tom's facebook post about not trying to scoop this guys name. An incredibly valid point that is always brought forth when things like this happen. However, like every other time, the news outlets have a race to "scoop" this kind of bullshit information. That is where my anger started. And the more I looked at what they were doing, the more I became enraged. Young children with mics being thrown at them, pictures being taken of them with the horror of what just happened still imprinted on their faces. It's despicable. If that was my child I would be hauled off to jail for punching out a reporter trying to make my child recount something so terrible. So haunting that they probably cannot and will not be able to fully comprehend for many years.

For the record, I am not against news outlets getting information. I think the country and world needs to know what is going on. But it is never just information. It doesn't stop there. It is outlets trying to out do the other. They reported the wrong person did it, wrong weapons, people who died that didn't, so many other things just to be the first. It's appalling. It shows an immense lack of respect for the situation. Maybe it's a society issue as well, maybe we shouldn't be so immersed in every aspect of these stories. Maybe instead of an overabundance of instant news, we need to see it and spend a bit more time reflecting upon it. I know I hugged my kids extra tight when I picked them up. Held them just a bit longer before bed time. Seems like that is a better reaction then salivating over another detail from CNN or NBCNews or whatever news group.

I will spare everyone a debate of guns here. Hopefully it plays itself out in the near future. I guess I just wanted to bleed off some emotional stress here, as if I wasn't already mired in a flood of it with the divorce, and missing the kids anyways and everything else going on. Suffice it to say, it weighed heavily on me. As it really should have. I hope that in this holiday season people take a few extra moments to think what's important. Like this...