Lighting More Candles

We’ve all heard the expression ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over and hoping this time the result will be different.’ When twenty-six school children and teachers were murdered ten years ago today at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut (you just realized it's been a decade, didn't you? I know that doesn't seem possible it's already been that long, and yet it is), part of me wanted to believe we’d find a way to stop doing this to one another. But….
 
When you visit the Sandy Hook Promise website, you'll find "16 Facts About Gun Violence and School Shootings." In what is an epic understatement the page begins with "Gun violence and school shootings are a uniquely American epidemic."
 
The listing is so matter of fact you go numb reading it, struggling to remember that every statistic is a human being, far too often a child with a life that was just beginning with hopes, dreams, and someone who loved them and now they are dead. Forever.
 
We read about random acts of gun violence, pause to extend thoughts and prayers to the victims, and then retreat to our 'thank goodness it can't happen here' safe space, because, here in Norwich, we're special and different. Just like they were in Newtown, Connecticut, a decade ago, in Uvalde, Texas, in May, or Parkland, Florida, three and a half years ago.
 
The carnage is NOT the saddest part. For me, it’s that we choose to mourn those whose lives ended suddenly and senselessly instead of attempting to work to keep it from happening again or more honestly, over and over again. As an adult and a parent, 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 the anniversary of something so many of us couldn't grasp when it happened, and I confess, I still don’t "get it" despite all the passing years. The hurt gets worse as the heart gets harder and that’s small solace and cold comfort.
 
I'm not any smarter today than I was then, except to realize that I'm not any smarter. And I am also no closer to understanding now than I was then. I cannot imagine how long this day is for a parent who suffered the loss of a child, a husband of a wife, or a surviving child of a murdered parent, but I do know that today in Newtown, Connecticut, everyone trying to heal will be hurt all over again.
 
Everywhere we turn today will be accounts recounting everything that everyone will ever know about an unthinkable tragedy that happened ten years ago but there is one thing we, with all our research and analysis, will never know: why.
 
For a small town, whose residents will always have broken hearts that can never heal, today is just the next day in a tragedy that will only end when all memory of what happened has gone. And that will never happen.

Even if you have a problem with God, or in my case S/He with me, perhaps a truce is in order so that you can remember the twenty-six angels who entered heaven this day ten years ago.
-bill kenny