Oklahoma = Newtown? Yes, For Me, A Little

All I could think about was Newtown.

Glued to the television once more, I prayed that the children would be found.  As the first few were dug out, I thought, maybe, this time, a miracle.  But when I went to bed, 37 were dead, and seven were children.  These children drowned.

Once again I thought what it would be like to be a child and know you were going to die.  I don't know that a crazed gunman is any worse than a wind that sucks you under a pile of rubble, then floods you with water until you can't breathe while you can't move one part of your body to get away, and so, you slowly suffocate as the water rushes into your mouth and nose, and then, please, God, peace, before death.

I turned the TV on early this morning, hoping for good news, but even more children had died.  As of 7 a.m., it was up to 20.  I know you can't bring religion, and God, into this, but I do wonder sometimes.  Why do the children have to die?

I watched one mother find her son and sobbing, fling herself at him, only to realize the teacher who had saved him was there, too, immediately dropping her arms from around her son, and clutching the teacher, "You saved him!  You saved him!" while the little first grader kind of wandered around, looking lost.

I saw Newtown, here, too.

All the scenes of the parents desperately hugging their living children only made the ones of the parents searching in anguish for theirs harder to take.  You knew there were parents who were never going to find theirs alive again.

I don't know what makes me take all these horrible things that happen to children so personally.  I suppose most parents do.  Once you have a child, you see him in every devastated classroom, or split-open school, or anywhere terrible things hurt and take the lives of children.

It just shouldn't happen.  But that's life and it does, and we have to make some sort of peace with it all.  Just as, in the end, we couldn't prevent Newtown, we can't stop weather either.  What do they call it, in insurance terms?  Acts of nature?  A little too benign for what happened in Moore.








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