With a shout and wave, my son bound out the door to go see
his girlfriend. He fired up his car,
backed it carefully from the garage stall, and drove off into the winter
darkness with no cares in the world and lightness in his heart.
It is the simplest of actions, and yet the normalcy of it
all brings a sad, wistful smile to my face, and a lump in my throat.
Fifteen hundred miles away, parents’ hearts are broken,
filleted wide open with wounds that will never heal. The Christmas lights, unhung, blackened, will
never burn brightly again for them.
Instead, they are burying their beautiful, sweet, angelic children in a
frozen, hardened ground.
Where is the Christmas in that?
A madman has stolen away the joy and innocence. Because of him, because of his sickened mind,
those parents will never see their son or daughter have a first love, a first
car, or even challenges of teen years.
No dances, no walk down the aisle, nor grandchildren who will steal
their hearts.
About the madness, people ask ‘what are we to do?”
There are no quick answers.
Nothing that can make a difference to those babes already gone. We can only dry the tears of those left
behind and say meaningless phrases like “God must have needed more
angels.”
All words fall flat.
Fifteen hundred miles away I can only try to understand the
grief. It is incomprehensible. If I think too hard about it, I could become
hardened to the world. Never trust. Carry the burden with a grimaced face. Close my own world to what is safe. Then I ask myself to define safe---if not a
kindergarten room in a school, then where?
My eyes watered as my son left the driveway. The lights from our Christmas tree shone in
reflection in a window.
We must never, ever forget.
We need to hug each other a little tighter and flourish the “I love
you’s” more frequently. In the end, it
is all that matters. On either end of
the road.
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