Newtown

I am thinking about what words can do, in a crisis. Can they offer at least some kind of comfort? I don't know. We have had school shootings before, but not like this one, not in this magnitude. Is there a way to explain what has happened to anyone; a parent who has lost a child, or a child who has lost a teacher? We will hear reasons, explanations and justifications over the next few days and weeks. Why the twenty-year-old son of a teacher would do such a thing, what a parent, the surrounding environment, even a whole country failed to do to prevent this tragedy from happening. Why someone missed a red flag. Don't listen too closely. We have no answers. Take comfort in the fact that this is the exception, the rare event, rather than the rule. Get used to the fact that it is the nature of life to break your heart through the kindness of its sickening ephemerality. Not just now but each and every day. You say that is no comfort. I agree. There is just no way to handle this.