Sean asked me yesterday if I blog to try to “make sense of the world.”
Yes. Absolutely. That has never been more true than now.
I also blog because, as I know from keeping a diary for so long, it helps a lot in painful moments. It’s a way for me to remove a piece of what’s making my mind hurt, look at it from a small distance, not quite so close to my heart, and begin to let it be… if just a little bit.
I know there’s an overabundance of writing on the topic of Newtown, but I am compelled to add to it anyway. This week, I can’t write a normal blog post about funny things my kid says, or Christmas preparations, or teacher politics.
Because this week, when I think about teachers, I can only think about the educators at Sandy Hook – the ones who never expected to lay down their lives in the course of their jobs, and the other ones who, from now on, will always wonder when they might have to. I’ve only read two news articles about the shooting, but they were enough to brand forever on my brain the thought of a teacher shot dead while shielding her tiny students with her body.
I don’t know how you ever teach again, after surviving a catastrophe like Sandy Hook.
This week, when I think about kids, it’s worse. Obviously, I think about my children all the time, but now there’s this underlying horror with too many strands to put my finger on… I look at them, my vivacious three-year-old son, my wide-eyed baby daughter, both so beautiful it makes me ache, and I feel guilt-gratitude-tumult-terror-overwhelminglove…
… and I wonder… How do I deserve these beautiful children… How could I have brought them into this messed-up world… What would I do if something like – what would I do if – what would I…
… Oh God. And I can’t wonder any further.
It might sound like a strange thing to say, but I’m thankful that Sebastian died the way he did. If I had to lose a son, it’s a blessing to feel sure that he didn’t suffer, never had a chance to be scared or alone or even to cry. His was the most peaceful death possible.
Of course, I know this doesn’t death-proof my other children.
There is no word for how crazy it is to me that pro-gun types are advocating more guns right now. The idea of guns in an elementary school is so, so wrong that my brain can’t even process it. People actually dare to make the argument that if the teachers at Sandy Hook had had access to their own guns, not as many people would have died that day. This may be mathematically true (maybe), but guns in school classrooms is a tragedy unto itself. And let’s be realistic: there’s no way those guns wouldn’t do harm, and most likely unnecessary harm.
As a Canadian born of pacifist parents, my mind is boggled that anyone could possibly believe anything contrary to
MORE GUNS = MORE DEATH FROM GUNS.
It’s already proving to be true in Canada, even though we have no “right to bear arms”, and we don’t generally have the cowboy mentality toward guns that is common in the U.S. We are still utterly shocked and outraged when someone opens fire in a public place in Toronto, but the frequency is increasing: our gun problem is growing. As more illegal firearms enter the country across the border, more people get shot. Period.
It’s common knowledge that the majority of gun crimes are committed by males. I don’t disagree with people who say it’s because society puts too much emphasis on male toughness of a certain kind, but I think it’s deeper than that.
It’s scary: somehow, little boys seem hardwired to think guns are cool. I noticed it while teaching kindergarten last year: young boys – even the quiet, gentle ones – seem to gravitate toward games involving guns. They’ll turn almost any inanimate object into a gun – to “shoot bad guys”, of course.
My father, who, along with my mother, transplanted himself decades ago to a new country to avoid being obliged to kill people, has admitted that he ate puffed wheat as a kid solely because it was “shot from guns”. (So ironic that it’s “Quaker”.)
My own son, with no toy weapons and zero violent TV or video games in the house, has been known to say, “Guns are cool,” and, if we allowed it, would do plenty of pretend-shooting.
If I were to see him do that that right now, I think I would burst into tears.
To me, this is the greatest argument for gun control. Wherever this “manly” urge to shoot stuff comes from, it’s far more likely to reach fruition if there is easy access to guns. Add mental illness into the mix, and obviously, it’s deadly. Since neither the urge nor the illness is going to be eradicated, it’s the third ingredient that has to go.
The other question that I can’t get out of my head is: Why is this so much worse?
I remember the massacre at Ecole Polytechnique in 1989 – the one that deeply shocked our nation, and spurred much tighter gun control laws, along with discussion of childhood abuse and mental illness. It filled us all with fear and incredible sorrow. I also remember Columbine, and Virginia Tech. And I know that countless innocent people die violent deaths every day in countries filled with war and terrorism. On the same day as the Newtown tragedy, sixteen people died from a car bomb in Damascus – which was forgotten by news sources almost immediately.
Why does this awful event haunt me – and all of us, it seems – so much more?
Not just because it’s still so raw. Not just because it was so unexpected, so appallingly incongruous in that little town. Not just because a massacre in America is so much rarer than a car bombing in the Middle East.
I think it has to do with how easy it is to put yourself into the scene. I saw pictures of those parents, rushing to the school to find out if their children were safe or dead, powerless to stop the world being ripped from under their feet… and they could be me. I think of those traumatized teachers and students, and I can’t help picturing the faces of my own wonderful students and colleagues at my school. They could be us.
And then. They were so young.
The murder of innocents is almost impossible to take.
On Easter Sunday in 1997, I was eighteen years old. I sat in silence at Quaker Meeting in my hometown, reeling from the news of the murder of two-year-old Zachary Antidormi, remembering the Dunblane school shooting a year before, feeling like the world should be ending, and composing this poem in my head.
Light is in everything
But a shadow fell upon a woman
at a moment
Blade in hand she slayed Innocence
and God was not in that knife.
Baby Angel of momentum growing
now impossibly stopped.
This is a shadow where anguish is complete and
Innocence hides.
Light is in everything
But a darkness possessed a man
on a morning
A score of bullets tore Innocence
and God was not in that gun.
Tiny Spirits of energy flowing
now indelibly cut.
This is a darkness where heartbreak is real and
Innocence cries.
Your words life rebirth hope spring chances
fall alien on my ears like a sick joke
Tell me God needs little students and maybe
a little guard to help them across
but not
that God’s hand wields knives and machine guns.
Remind us how to find Innocence
somehow
because that is where God’s Light lives.
We are in the darkest time of year, in our corner of the world. Hannukah has just ended, Christmas is almost here, and we are filling our homes with light, warding off that darkness.
As Hawksley Workman wrote, “the darkness defines where the light is.” When I lost my son, I suddenly understood these words. At the awfulest moments, humanity’s love can be a very powerful thing. It plunges into the hole with you, and gradually, it can help you climb out and stand up again.
Humanity’s love being sent to Newtown right now is immense and beautiful. Let us find ways to be part of it.
***
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I’m trying to avoid reading lots of articles on Newton, too, but always so valuable to read the sense you make of the world. My daughter is six and in Grade One, like the child victims, so I know the “there but for the grace of” feeling, like all parents. It’s a terrible, regrettable reminder to love your family and friends as hard as you can. I’m sad I need the reminder sometimes, but grateful, too, that I recognize the times where the boundaries of the darkness show me where the light is.
So beautifully written.
I know. I don’t want to have known about this, but since I do, I can’t not think about it. It sits in my mind like an itch or mental arthritis or something else painful that just won’t stop and can only be ignored for brief periods of time.
I remember that poem very well. I think of it just about any time I hear of the violent death of an innocent.
Thank you again, DiLovely, for putting into words the thoughts and feelings that many of us, (especially myself as a Kindergarten teacher) are feeling after this horrific act of cowardice and inhumanity.
My heart goes out to all involved, both directly and indirectly, as together we try to process and come to grips with this senseless tragedy.
MB.