I'm writing this letter in light of Friday's tragedy. I wrote this letter over the course of the day as I could not stop thinking about what had occured and so I turned to my words to try and alleviate some of my feelings.
An Open Letter:
To the families of those who lost their angels today. I’m not sure what I’m writing this letter for, but I do know that the events that transpired today are without fail the most horrific and numbing I have experienced to date. Children are precious, and pure, and to bring harm to them is to do something unimaginable. We have seen horrors in this country that are unspeakable, and yet they continue, and they amplify, and they worsen each, and every day. You want it to get better, and you hope it will. But when something like this happens, I can't help but think we're undeniably without hope.
So many people don’t just get to keep going after today, and that’s not right. It’s not fair. And I get it: life isn't fair. But for those children, those 20 innocent lives that were taken entirely too soon, it is simply not fair. Those families will never be the same; they will try and heal, but they have lost the joy of their lives. Their worlds came crashing down around them today, and there is no tomorrow for them. There is no hope. They will wake up each and every day and for a few brief moments believe that it was a dream; the worst, most painful dream they could have dreamt, but a dream nonetheless. And then reality will set in and those parents will be without the joy of one of those 20 kids.
That’s all they were: kids. Kids, who played, and loved, and cried, and laughed. There’s no justice for what happened today. No reason, no explanation. I don’t believe that this happened for a reason, as supposedly everything does. 20 children are dead- not on account of a school bus accident, or a fire- but for an explanation that will not come.
I don’t have any children; I’m not from the area where this tragedy happened; I have no personal, relatable ties whatsoever to this incident. But I am moved to tears again, and again. My heart hurts; so much. I am one of many who literally cannot begin to imagine what it feels like to have gotten that call. To have showed up to that scene. To have been in that school. I am in complete disrepair over today's events, and I can only offer my words as reprieve. But I hope that you can take little solace in knowing how gravely I, among countless others, feel for you.
We lost more than those 20 children today. We lost our innocence.
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