Thinking of Connecticut
The news out of Connecticut yesterday couldn’t have been worse. It was stunning. Heartbreaking. Tragic beyond imagining.
I am so very sorry for the loss of those precious young lives. I cannot begin for one minute to imagine how their parents, their siblings, their grandparents, their aunts and uncles and cousins, all of those who loved them, feel today.
There are no words to express the depth of my condolences… and nothing in this world that I could possibly say that would ease the pain in even the slightest way.
But it reminded me to appreciate once again what I have, to be sure that what I have is never taken for granted.
And what I have, as a loving aunt and, now, great aunt, of so many fine youngsters, is literally tens of thousands of school days over the past however many years when those fine youngsters have gone off to school… and come home safely.
Even yesterday, two sets of siblings went off to school from my family — the two older ones to middle school, the two younger to elementary school. And even yesterday, all four of them came home safely, just as their cousins did before them and as they themselves have for years now.
And I am oh so deeply grateful for their safety in this oh-so-unsafe world.
Oh Judy, so beautifully said. I have eight grandchildren – all are now older than these whose lives have so tragically ended. But my heart is breaking for these families. Every life is precious.
Kay, I can’t — just can’t — wrap my head around those events. But oh how I want to wrap my arms around the babies in my own family… My youngest nephews are gonna get squeezed when I see them next weekend… and I can only hope they don’t understand all that well just why.
I feel the same way, Judy. Every one of those kids was a glorious gift – they all are. And if our parents were still alive, they’d be wanting to hug us too. And I look at my 4th child (who lives with me), a 34 year old son diagnosed with schizophrenia just before he turned 19, and am terribly grateful that he is stable, sees mental health professionals on a very regular basis, is responsible and helpful, volunteers at the Red Cross, talks with his other 3 siblings, has friends… This issue of mental health problems – many times they need to be seen as neurological diseases; not all are failures of home life or addictions etc. We have a long way to go in managing mental health disorders of all kinds in the community. I’d better stop preaching here – it just touches too closely.
It touches us all, Celia, in every way. Thanks for sharing your story, and please give your son a special hug from me.
There are some events that happen in this world that just defy explanation or at least an explanation that most of us want or can handle. Also, there are “things” that happen to some of us, such as (severe depression and some of its, uh, more “ugly”, side-effects) that when asked to explain, we can’t give those who ask for an explanation that they can understand. For most of the time, we don’t really understand it either. For those that it happens to, it is like you enter a world of magic where the normal rules of the world don’t apply.
It is surely clear that the normal rules didn’t apply here. I’d hate to live in a world where this could be considered normal.