How Could This Happen?

For the past 4 days I have been haunted by the stories from Newtown, Connecticut in the wake of an unspeakable tragedy.  I am usually able to watch news reports on just about any story and intellectualize them as "this is just what our society has come" and move on.  This time has been very different for me.  This time I am unable to begin to comprehend the idea that anyone could walk into a school filled with children and begin to take their lives without any warning or reason.  This time I cannot fathom the act of having to hide children in closets and then face off with an armed madman to spare their lives.  For quite possibly the first time in my life, I am completely and utterly without a clue as to how this could happen in our country.  How do you write a eulogy for a 6 year old?  How do you explain to a 6 year old that their friends and teachers can't come back because a bad man came to school?

This situation has taken me back to the years when I worked in child care and was entrusted with the lives of children by our campers' parents.  Every morning they would drop their children off at our uptown camp and never think twice about them being there safe and sound at 5:30 when they returned.  We literally walked these kids around uptown Charlotte every single day.  They were not in a controlled environment with doors and desks.  Regardless, I do not believe I ever truly had a day when I felt that there was any less than a 100% chance that every child placed into my care would be there at 5:30 to go home with their parents.  Now I get chills when I think back and realize just how easily all of that could have been different.  One distracted driver.  One angry bank employee that wished to exact revenge in an uptown building.  One disturbed individual with no thought for human life.  All of that could have changed.

I think about my son, my niece, my nephew, all of the children on the Christmas cards that I have received in the past 2 weeks.  All of us has reached an age where we get up daily and take our kids somewhere while we go and earn the almighty dollar.  We have all studied the available daycares and schools, inspected them to ensure they are safe, met every teacher to make sure we have a trust in our hearts that they will do whatever it takes to keep them safe.  But now, all of the sudden, none of that seems like enough.  I have realized that we are all at the mercy of fate, or God, or others, or whatever.  It seems that all we can do is take a moment and hope with all that we have that our little miracles will be there when we come back.

Some of you may be reading this post and thinking that there is no point to it.  And in all honesty, there may not be one.  All this may be is a small attempt to rationalize what has happened.  Maybe it is just an attempt to put all of those thoughts and feelings into something that attempts to make sense of them.  I really don't know.  I am not sure any of us feel that we understand things the same way we did 4 days ago.  If nothing else, let this be a small reminder that we all should appreciate the moments that we have with the ones that matter.  Perhaps that is all we can take from this whole nightmare.