everyday life

I don’t have any words to convey how I feel about the tragedy in Newtown.  I have only these three personal stories to share, and for some reason I feel compelled to do so.

Yesterday, after a beautiful, candlelight- and allelulia-filled Lessons & Carols service at our church, we came home in the spitting rain for a late dinner.  It had been a day jammed with errands and details, with the minutiae that compose our lives: haircuts, buying skates, frosting gingerbread cookies, shopping online for a last-minute presence for a best friend, an early hockey game. At each step I felt heavy with awareness of what a privilege every single one of those small things was.  Whit was difficult at dinner, picky about his food, and I just blew up.  I lost it.  Matt encouraged me to go upstairs, and after stomping out to make a point (that point being I am such a martyr) by taking the trash out in the driving rain, I did that.  I closed my bedroom door and folded laundry, and as I smoothed a pair of Whit’s long johns I sat down on the bed, overcome with sobs.  I was flooded with powerful guilt: how can I possibly be so ungrateful, when there are families out there tonight who would give anything for the privilege of a bickering child at the dinner table?  How?

This morning, I walked both Grace and Whit to the gate of school as I always do.  I had to go home before the 4th grade’s morning assembly, so I kissed them goodbye and jogged back to the car.  Once I’d crossed the street I turned and watched their backpacks and hooded heads (again, raining) walk away from me.  I was swamped with feelings: sorrow, fear, guilt, grief, gratitude.  I sat in the car and let them wash over me and then, tears still falling, I drove home.

Half an hour later I sat in one of the assembly rooms at school as Grace’s 4th grade class filed in.  The parents sat in a row against the back wall of the room, and the floor in between was filled with the younger grades all sitting criss-cross applesauce.  This was a previously-scheduled “environment assembly,” and the theme was taking care of our earth.  I’m willing to bet I wasn’t the only parent who was thinking of other things, however, as our children stood and sang in their clear, true voices, about how is “time to turn the tide.”  Tears swam in my eyes.  I looked around the room at the teachers who have cared for and shepherded my children over the years with a new and passionate admiration.  A few minutes later the 4th grade sang Big Yellow Taxi, and the words I know by heart rang out, filled with an unexpected, chilling resonance: Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.

So much is gone.  Of course, of course, a million, unquantifiable times more for the families that lost loved ones in Newtown.  But for all of us, too.  In my opinion, his incursion on one of the world’s truly sacred spaces – an elementary school – has altered the world we live in forever.

This is the darkest week of the darkest season.  Friday is the darkest day of the year.  And yet how much more pressing this new darkness feels, this darkness wrought of an incomprehensible act, this darkness from the heart of someone who was a fellow human being.  We are moving towards the solstice, and there is still so much here I do not understand.

Candles lit by pilgrims at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem. 

Like everyone else, I am speechless about and stunned by the events at Sandy Hook Elementary yesterday.  Like everyone else, I feel an overwhelming desire to hold my children tight coupled with a devastating sense of helplessness.  There is also a powerful mixture of gratitude and guilt, that my children are safe, and, of course, a hovering fear: what if someday they are not?

There is one thing we can do, and I am so, so grateful to Gail for posting about it.  Her post is short, actionable, and to the point: please write to your representative.

My sister (who is both a mother and an educator, not to mention the wisest and most thoughtful soul I have ever met) and I emailed back and forth yesterday.  She shared my strong outrage that this should happen in school, a place that was always for the two of us a haven, a safe place, a home (I just wrote about why this is one reason I so love Hogwarts).  She said she was planning to make sure her children didn’t find out about Sandy Hook.  I would love to shield mine, too, but I’m not sure I will be able to.  They are older, and I fear they will hear.  To be prepared for those conversations, I clicked through and read Brene Brown’s resources about talking to children about violence and death.

Finally, I was moved by these words, which I read on Smacksy.  The darkness that led to this and the suffering of those who lost children are both too big to comprehend.

Prayer for Newtown from Marianne Williamson, December 14, 2012

Dear God,
We come to You with broken hearts,
surrendering the catastrophe that has occurred  in Connecticut.
We cannot comprehend the darkness that led to this,
or the suffering of those who have loved and lost.
They are both too big.
But in You, dear God, there are Answers we cannot surmise and Light we cannot summon by ourselves.
For those who bear tonight the unbearable burden
of unimaginable grief,
who in their agony yell at the forces of fate…
For those who moan and those who faint,
for those who rage and those who pray,
we moan and pray along with them.
For tonight, those were our children too.

May a legion of angels come upon the parents
and bring to them an otherworldly touch,
an otherworldly comfort
and otherworldly sense that their children are well,
that they are safe with God,
and shall be with them always.
Give to those who grieve what no mortal force can give…
the touch of Your Hand upon their heart.
May all who are touched by this darkness
be lit by Your grace.
Please wipe away all tears, dear God.
as only You can do.
We present to you our brokenness, and the horror and pain of those who grieve.
May those who died find joy in the immortal realms.
May those who mourn them be comforted in this hour of their agony.
And may our prayers and actions be guided by You, dear God,
to create a world where this occurs no more.
Amen