About Yesterday

December 14, 2012

This morning my dear friend Muriel posted that she was going to join her grandchildren for lunch at their elementary school.  My friend Rob posted a picture of himself dressed as an elf, sitting on a shelf in the elementary school where he teaches. 

I thought about Muriel’s joy in the two young lives she has taken responsibility for parenting since their mother died.  And their joy in having a safe place to land in their grandmother’s home.

I thought about the wonder & joy Rob brings to his students, to the young people he coaches in gymnastics & cheerleading.  And how this man enriches every life he encounters.

This morning I left my mother Jean’s room for a few minutes to find out how we were going to transport her to her doctor’s appointment.

When I returned to the room, it was not to the trials & tribulations of the young & the restless in a fictional town but to the travesty & horror at an elementary school in a close-knit community in Connecticut.

Not again, not again.

As bits & pieces of the tragedy came across the media mediums, conjecture & fact disseminated across the airwaves & cyberspace. 

Children dead.  Children dead at an elementary school in Connecticut.

Children who could not possibly have done anything to warp the shooter’s mind.   Innocents.

 Not again, not again.

Social media exploded – an outpouring of sorrow, grief, prayers. 

And posts absolving guns of any responsibility. 

 Guns don’t kill people.

The argument is ridiculous.

Guns don’t do fucking shit on their own.

Nor do poisons, bombs, knives, drones, fists, cars, grenades, chemicals, alcohol, swords, spears, bricks, feet, weapons of mass destruction or nuclear warheads.

All require some participation by a human being.

And not all human beings need to have access to inanimate objects with the potential to destroy life.

Not all inanimate objects with the potential to destroy life need to be available by filling out a form at a retail establishment & handing over cash, debit or credit.

But all children need to be able to go to school & look forward to their grandmothers joining them for lunch.  Without fear of bullets & death.

And all children need to be able to go to school & rejoice as their teacher, dressed as an elf, sits on a shelf & teaches them to read & to seize joy.  Without fear of bullets & death.

Just as this is not the world I envisioned leaving my sons, it is not the world envisioned by those who saw the necessity of a well regulated militia to secure a free state.

The owner of the guns used in the massacre at an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut was not a member of a militia.  Nor was her possession of those guns necessary to secure a free state.

This is not about the second amendment to our nation's Constitution. 

It is about the need to secure a State in which our children attend school & listen to an elf on a shelf read to them without fear of guns entering the classroom. 

It is about the senseless, irretrievable loss of twenty children & their principal, four of their teachers, their school's psychologist & the gunman's mother.

And it is about the loss of innocence for our nation's children.

In Memoriam

  Charlotte Bacon, 6  

Daniel Barden, 7 

Olivia Engel, 6 

Josephine Gay, 7

Ana Marquez-Greene, 6 

Dylan Hockley, 6

Madeleine Hsu, 6

Catherine Hubbard, 6

Chase Kowalski, 7

Jesse Lewis, 6

James Mattioli, 6

Grace McDonnell, 7

Emilie Parker, 6

Jack Pinto, 6

Noah Pozner, 6

Caroline Previdi, 6

Jessica Rekos, 6

Avielle Richman, 6

Benjamin Wheeler, 6

Allison Wyatt, 6

Rachel Davino, 29  Teacher

Dawn Hochsprung, 47  School Principal

Nancy Lanza, 52  Mother of gunman

Anne Marie Murphy, 52  Teacher

Lauren Rousseau, 30  Teacher

Mary Sherlach, 56  School Psychologist

Victoria Soto, 27  Teacher