Another Dark Day on the Calendar

As the oldest child in my family, I spend a lot of time fretting over what is and what could have been, often failing badly to see my role and responsibility in moving from the former to the latter.

Today is an anniversary of sorts for something so many of us couldn't grasp when it happened, and, I confess, I still didn't "get" any better than when we observed its first anniversary. Here are words I offered some time ago-they remain as inadequate as they were then.

I cannot imagine how long this day is for a parent who suffered the loss of a child, a husband of a wife, a son or daughter of a parent, but I do know that today in Newtown, Connecticut, everyone trying to heal will hurt again.

Everywhere we turn today there will be news accounts recounting everything that everyone will ever know about an unthinkable tragedy that happened eight years ago today but there is one thing we, with all of our research and analysis, will never know.

For a small town whose residents will always have broken hearts that can never heal today is just the next day in the unending tragedy that will only end when all memory of what happened has gone. And that will never happen.

Even those of us who question the existence of God can have no doubt that evil is real and in the world, because it came to a place that offered safety and security, an elementary school filled with adults who gave the last and fullest measure of devotion to save those least able to save themselves, the children.

All I can offer is to hold the parents, siblings, and friends of those who were murdered in my thoughts as the survivors hold them in their hearts. I'd pray for better days for them and us but hope for better days may have been among the casualties at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Newtown should remind us to examine our lives and decide what is truly important. We see every incident of inchoate violence as an isolated singular event, rather than as larger and unending episodes of anger and rage so profound we still dare not speak of causes and solutions because our emotions are still too raw or ‘it’s too soon.’

Except, it's not soon; it's too late, much too late for six young teachers and twenty even younger children and grieving relatives who put very small coffins into the cold, cold earth, during the holiday season eight years ago and who will carry until their dying day a hole in their hearts that time will not ever heal.

Today is a day to pause and hold our loved ones closer and see in their eyes a reflection of who we must become the difference in the world, today and every day.

-bill kenny