14 December 2012

A classroom of kindergarteners was murdered today

Tragedy is a word I've heard a lot today. Its not a very powerful word, comes standard in news broadcasts and political recognitions. Aside from its acquired vulgarity, it is an individual experience, as I understand it. There were twenty eight tragedies dealt quickly and countless following that. I am searching for a word, something that indicates the ragged gash that was torn.
An anguish. A cluster of anguishes.
I sobbed all day, the newsman reporting over the radio sobbed, the policeman in charge sobbed, the president addressing the nation did too. The sobs were an admission that it does not matter. It does not matter that the president stopped leading the world to recognize a local horror. It does not matter that the policemen were securing schools across the state and securing warrants. It does not matter that a reporter pried for details to deliver up to the minute about an event that was finished. It does not matter that a man's heart was broken for hearing it.
It does not matter because it is done. A roomful of the most magical brightness and promise has been snubbed out by one person who must surely have lost all that and been in so much pain. I hope that the poor young man gets to a heaven where each of his victims come to him to forgive him before they all melt back to the infinite.

As for the living, we remain. Twenty sets of limbless parents with impossible tomorrows. Classrooms full of miraculous brightnesses tarnished. Teachers returning to do what they do not know. A community grappling with shameful relief and clumsy support. Policemen searching cause for reasonlessness, seeking to punish a ghost. Politicians, perhaps honestly, expressing empathies doomed to course policy scufflings.  And even the killer, someone must have loved him and if not, someone surly should have.

A man across the nation, trying to bypass the bromides of sympathy, trying to find scope of an event that has affected him but that he cannot affect. A common man sharing common feelings. Trying to stop sobbing for a blip of horrors amongst horrors, knocking together a crude assemblage of words for what?

I have a message, and it is not mine but it is in my own words:  With compassion, you cannot know a person without loving them. It is our reason in this world, to seek that compassion always, to strive. And it is also our duty, good people, to strive to be more easily loved, but mostly to endeavor to love those who do not or maybe can not.


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