By now there is not a single person in this country who does not know about the terrible events of last Friday the 14th. The Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre in Newtown, CT.
For the last three days the whole of the internet has been bursting with information updates about the shootings, the victims, the shooter... Every news site has been posting headlines non-stop, and every social media outlet has been overrun with posts; things like, "Prayers go out to the victims and their families..." "Hug your children tighter tonight..." "Pray for the teachers heading to work next week..." "Such a tragedy...." "Why was there no warning about something like this..." "More attention needs to be given to the mental health industry in America..." "If only God were allowed in schools, this never would have happened..." "There are just no words..." That's the one I've seen the most of, over and over - "There are no words" - which has been followed up by a myriad of paragraphs FULL of words saying how sad it is, how so-and-so's heart goes out to the victims, how they are praying for them and their families...
My Facebook profile has been purposely absent of any and all mention of the tragedy in CT. You see for me, as a parent of two small children (one of whom will start Kindergarden next year), there really and truly are NO words.
As soon as I heard about what had happened, I put myself in the mindset of one of the parents of those 20 murdered children. I imagined what would be going on in my mind if I sent my daughter to school, the same as every other day, only to find out later that she had been gunned down at her tiny little desk in her colorful little classroom by a monster with a semi-automatic assault rifle. After imagining all of that I sat down at my computer, ready to post some sympathy-filled status update on Facebook, and that's when it hit me - there are no words.
If I was one of the parents forced to live through Friday's horrible situation, there would be no words in the whole of the English language (or any language for that matter) that would ever come anywhere close to offering any sort of comfort. There is nothing that could be said by any friends or family members that would ease my suffering any tiny little bit. No words of condolences by state officials, and no offerings of hope and support from the President would ever be able to soften the blow of losing my child. The heartbreak I would suffer would be complete and unending, and no words from that moment forward to the end of my life would ever make anything better.
So here I sit, three days later, still with no words to offer up to anyone about what's happened, because there are none. My silence on the matter is all-encompassing of how I feel about this awful tragedy, and my silence is all I have to offer to the families of the 26 people who died at Sandy Hook Elementary on Friday. I know that nothing I could say to anyone one of them would offer any comfort, so I will give them my silent respect instead.
