I am here…trying to reconcile our beautiful Christmas tree,
the joy of having our daughter home and the gift of this season, to the
heartbreak occurring less than 150 miles away.
We were oblivious Friday…driving up the highway with a CD of
holiday carols playing in the car, Christmas shopping before picking up our daughter
after her last exam…taking her out to lunch to celebrate the end of her
semester. We wouldn’t have heard at all that day, except we got stuck in a plug of congestion at a nasty stretch of highway and turned on the radio to catch a
traffic report.
It happens like that…in an instant. Life plummets to a place we never understood
it could go. We were three people
driving in a car…one dozing in the back seat, two in the front urging the road
toward home. The radio delivered the
news and we were irreparably changed. Sitting
in the dark, surrounded by yellow beams and trailing tail lights…we agonized that a similar horror could come closer to home than the short New England miles separating us and the most recent tragedy. As parents, we breathe the weight of
pain. We comprehend that each moment with
our loved ones is tenuous…that what we hold tight and dear can disappear in a
second. We imagine ourselves in the place of those in Connecticut. And we grieve.
Oh God, please make these things stop. Please bless the families. Please envelop them with some kind of
peace. Help them make it through. And when
you are done…please help the rest of us too.
