There are no words..

I'm not sure I can adequately express the utter shock and grief I have felt this past week over the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary. I was out running errands the afternoon of December 14, 2012, only to hear on the radio as I pulled into the garage a preliminary news report. I ran into the house and to my computer as I just couldn't process what I had heard. What I read confirmed the worst and yet my brain didn't want to accept such a horrid and tragic event. I phoned Dave and could barely get out an audible message between my uncontrollable sobs. Here I knew no one that had been affected and yet, I found myself grappling with the physical urge to vomit as the numbers of those killed continued to climb.

As the afternoon unfolded, I wanted to run to Cole's school and scoop him up, it was an almost primitive pull and yet the logical side of my brain was finally kicking in and overriding my every instinct telling me Cole was fine and safe and blissfully unaware of the evil that had presided over his peers in Connecticut that morning. The knot in my throat and the tightness in my chest as the past week's news has been dosing us 24/7 about what occurred has not lessened. The faces of those children, their teachers, their principal and their loved ones haunt me. I cannot wrap my head around anymore senseless of an act than taking the lives of so many innocent 1st graders and those in charge of taking care of them during their school day. The fact that Cole is so close in age to them has kept me up at night pondering that we send him off for a day of school, and may never see him alive again. It is just inconceivable and yet it has happened to 20 sets of parents. I am unable to even consider what life would be like without Cole, his smile, his goofy antics, his quirky eating habits, his lilting voice, his hugs...................................................................it is too much so I embrace and recognize that there may not be a tomorrow. It troubles me that it takes tragedy to uproot our stakes in the ground to adopt a more "live in the present" mindset and yet, I find myself doing just that with the hopes that those little angels with their new-found wings have all taught us a lesson about the importance of living/loving EVERY DAY.