If you are a
parent, or a grandparent, if you know a child, or a person who works with
children, you could not help but be deeply affected by the tragic events of this
past Friday.
How do we
explain this sort of a tragedy? How can we possibly comprehend
it?
We understand,
at least academically, that there are people in this world who are mentally ill.
We understand there are those whose minds do not work the same as a `normal'
person's, as yours or mine. We know they are sick, and that for whatever reason,
their sickness has gone uncured and untreated and perhaps even
undetected.
Although I am a
Canadian and my history and my precedents are different than those of my
neighbors to the south, I still understand the principle behind the U. S.
Constitution's Second Amendment. I understand that this Second Amendment is
sacred, and taken as literally as if it were a part of scripture by many people.
I understand that and I respect that.
But as a parent,
I say, there has to be a way to mesh those rights with laws that will protect
innocents from the illegal, immoral and lethal acts of other people. There has
to be a way to protect the rights of the many while ensuring the few do not have
access to weapons, especially weapons that were only designed to kill a lot of
people in a few seconds.
There has to be
a way to protect our children. For they are all, every single one of them,
our children.
There has to be
a solution to this problem so that future generations will only know of such
horrific tragedies by reading about them in their history
books.
Consider all
that humanity has accomplished in just the last century alone. We have put a man
on the moon, and even successfully conducted heart transplant surgeries, for
God's sake! We should be able to solve this—this problem of our own
making.
The loss of a
child, no matter how it happens, no matter the age of the child, is a loss too
horrible, too hard, to bear. It is a loss from which no parent ever fully
recovers. Losing your child is something you never, ever get over. There is a
hole in your heart that never closes, and an entire chapter in your imagination,
entitled "what might have been" that can never be written, or
known—and yet it's a chapter that can never be closed up and put
away.
Such a loss is
undoubtedly more tragic when the child is still small. I remember my own kids at
those ages: actually my eldest was 10, my second son 5 and my daughter was 4 all
in the same year.
Those are years
of wonder, years of learning to read, of making friends, of beginning to
participate in sleep-overs. They are years of cartoons and best friends and
singing along with your favorite songs on you tube. They are years of writing
letters to Santa, and getting excited because Christmas is just around the
corner.
For each parent
who is now in mourning, my heart breaks. There are no words we can offer you to
make it better. We can only pray. We can pray that you receive strength and hope
from the Comforter, and that in time your memories will be more sweet than
bitter.
We can't do
anything to heal your heart. Only God, and time, can do that, and only to a
certain degree. As I said, that hole will be there, forever.
But the day
will come when there is more joy in remembering than there is
sorrow. And maybe, if we can all work together, if we can be open
and honest and leave politics and hyperbole behind, we can find a way to prevent
some of these tragedies from ever happening in the first
place.
Maybe we can
give you, and ourselves, and the society in which we live, the gift of hope.
Love,
Morgan
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