Newtown

There are no words for what the families and friends of victims of the Newtown Massacre are going to go through in the next week. How could there be?

Words for the parents who go home to the hidden Christmas gifts. For the fear that their kids must have felt--innocent children, alone--before an unnamed walked in with a gun. There are no words for what the kids must have felt before they watched their friends die. There are no words for the absence that these people cannot even begin to understand. None. And there never will be. Grief, birthed from something as inexplicable and tragic as violence, is something so painful that there will never be a tongue that could capture its essence. And there never should be. 

I keep thinking about the morning before.

When they woke up, what was the first thing they did? Did their moms have to wake them up four times too many? Were their shutters open or shut, sunlight warm on their skin? Did the stretch or hide under the blankets, complain about headaches or how their stomach hurts, trying to wriggle out of going to school that day? Did the girls cry when their mother yanked their hair into pigtails, a little too roughly, hurriedly because they were going to be late for school and work? Did they eat breakfast with the eggs hard or sunny side up? Did they eat breakfast at all? Wear the green shirt with the stripes, which they hated, instead of the blue one, which they swore up and down that they asked their dad to wash for them? Did the have plans after school? Soccer or playing with an early Christmas present or hanging out with their friends? Did they trip over their own feet as they got in the car, bodies still growing? Could they see their breathe in the cold morning air, and if, when they did, they reach out and try to grasp it, then, a tangible thing? Was their favorite song playing on the radio on the way to school?  Did their parents count the seconds from home to school? Tell them not to talk to strangers at recess? Did their parents tell them that they loved them, as they left the safety of their car?

In my living room, my mom has this poem, titled "No Regrets", and it goes something like this: 

In the morning I sometimes

wake early and listen

to the quiet breathing of my children

& I think to myself,

this is the one thing I'll never regret.

And I carry that quiet

with me all day long.

They'll keep that quiet forever, and those parents will yearn for nothing more.