I have only cried about two news events in my life.

I am making separate posts about the shooting to keep the guns issue away from the mourning. This is the post about mourning.

There are only two news events I remember really crying about. They are 9/11 and this shooting. I didn’t live through JFK, MLK and a lot of the bad things that happened those years. Oklahoma City was tragic. So was Columbine, and what happened to Gabby Giffords, and lots of other events through the years. But this is by far the worst of them all other than 9/11. There is no explaining this. The murderer had nothing to do with the school. The victims were little kids. They were in a happy, safe place. It’s an incomprehensible horror.

This shooting has destroyed lives. The 26 dead, the classmates, siblings, parents, families, friends, neighbors, and the country will never be exactly the same. The world is robbed of the youth and brilliance of 26 people. Between the principal working on her doctorate to the kids whose potential was never realized. Odds were that from those 20 kids there was a unique leader in the group, a teacher, an entrepreneur, an inventor, a scientist, a journalist, and maybe even an athlete.

This was a suicide mission by a terrorist. But imagine that this was done by a conventional terrorist. Someone with Al Queda links. I’m pretty sure the bombs would already be flying. We would be forced into revenge. But that’s not an option in this case. We have to cope with this event without the option for true justice or revenge. That’s another difficult aspect of this event.

I had a bad feeling about the future when Columbine happened and that bad feeling was clearly justified. Columbine set the framework for all of these attacks. It seems to always be the same script. The “loner/odd/depressed/anti-social” killer does his deed. He kills himself. He often leaves some manifesto that tries to justify their action. We spend too much time “getting to know” this person. They become an anti-hero. We mourn the loss. The gun arguments start and end quickly. We forget what happened and in a few days/weeks/months (not years) it happens again. One event is more cruel than the other. Kids at school. Students in a dorm. Students at a retreat. Now babies at school (and at 5-7 they are still babies). When will it end? Where is the bottom? I’m afraid that even after this, and after Norway, we still haven’t reached the bottom. How fucking horrible is that?

I don’t know what needs to be done. We can’t make outcasts of every depressed and sick person out there. It won’t do anything to make the situation better. We have to spend more money on mental health and spend more time on caring for each other, but I’m not convinced that’s enough either.

I hope that this is the last time I have to cry about the news, but life is tough and things happen. Let’s at least try to avoid avoidable situations. To those poor parents, I wish I could say something or do something to make this better. I wish you never had to feel this pain. I’m so sorry.