Sadness

Before I begin I should say that I have gone back and forth about posting something in this space, normally a place for peace and love, about the horrific events that took place in Connecticut yesterday.  After much contemplation I realized that I should go ahead and do so.  After all, had I maintained this blog during 9/11 I am sure that I would have written something about that fateful day back then.  

This has hit just a little too close to home for me.  First, it took place in my beloved home state.  A place I thought I would never leave.  That I would stay in and raise my children in and live out my days in (and who know, that may still happen). It took place a scant thirty miles from where I grew up and where my parents still live.  Second, it took place in an elementary school.  As a former elementary school teacher (one who would often times have to lead her students through lock-down drills) that made it all the harder.  Harder still was the notion that the children whose lives were lost, or, for the survivors, those whose lives were forever changed yesterday, are the same ages as my girls.  Kindergartners and first graders.  The idea that that could have been them yesterday absolutely rendered me a puddle.  If Grace and Emma were children who attended school, even though we are up here in Massachusetts, I know that I would have sped to wherever they were yesterday and pulled them out just to have them near me.  

I had to walk away from the computer yesterday.  I had so sign out of Facebook and find other ways to keep busy 'cause if I had stayed longer than I did (which was longer than I initially planned, mind you) I would have become more of a puddle than I already was.  The President's speech totally did me in.  The shock was palpable from each status update I read.  My heart was broken.  My stomach in knots.  I cannot imagine what I would be like had I known someone who was personally living this hell.  In an attempt to find normal in a day that was anything but we took the girls to the Christmas event at Old Sturbridge Village.  Being transported to the 1830s, when events of this nature did not take place, was a great escape, even if it was only for a few hours.  

Sleep last night was not to be had.  I tossed and turned, my thoughts constantly returning to those in Connecticut (who surely were finding sleep hard to come by as well). Around 4:30am I finally gave up and checked in with the world.  With CNN.  With Facebook.  In the quiet of the morning, while I lay next to Dave, and the girls were asleep down the hall, tears quietly trickled down my face.  There are families that will never have that again.  

So today we shall continue in our gentle ways.  We will figure out how to spread just a little more love.  How we can send a just little more joy and peace out in to a world in such desperate need of it.

"This morning, I want to keep our spaces sacred and fill them up with love.  May those suffering pain, fear, sadness and anger be held in the light, and may we all hope an strive for a little more compassion, love and peace in the days to come." -Amanda Soule