Letters

It’s been 24 hours.

Twenty-four hours ago, another sick, misguided young male person with a gun walked into a school and killed another 19 children and two young adult teachers.

I heard the news last night after a meeting of my compassionate friends but was too emotionally worn to listen to the news and escaped to unconsciousness and my cozy bed, knowing tomorrow was another day.

And now it is today — again.

This morning, I immersed myself in the news. I listened to the reports. I wept and watched as pictures of the children flashed on the screen. I wept as I watched the parents scrambling around the scene desperately searching for their children, or for information.

I listened to the president, a bereaved parent multiple times, desperately begging for something to be done. I listened as one congressman begged on his knees for something to be done. I listened as one commentator after another verbally threw up their hands and declared that nothing would change — that hopes and prayers would be declared, candles would be lit, promises would be made, but nothing would change.

And I am afraid I agree.

I have spent the last 29 years learning about hope and sharing what I’ve learned with so many of my compassionate friends. Having lost my only child, I have worked so hard at restoring hope to my own life — and I know it is possible. I consider my own experience as an example and have offered it to the many devastated moms and dads I’ve met through the years: Hope can be restored. Joy can be experienced again. Grief can be endured, and memory can be reclaimed.

But today I can only think about the beautiful children who are no longer here. I can only think about the families that must begin to follow this well-worn path of trauma and tragedy. I can only think of all the living children who must now learn how to live in this terror-haunted world.

Investigations are about to commence. Who was this killer? What made him into the aberration he became? Who sold him the equipment?

Who cares? None of it matters. Will having answers to these questions change anything? What matters is that 19 newly dead children need to be buried. Ten adult people killed in a mass shooting last week are yet to be buried. Surviving families must all begin a lifetime of sorrow.

And we must all watch and wait. Tomorrow will probably bring the next tragedy. We’ve become numb to the insanity. It’s become a fact of life.

For the first time in my life, I’m not hopeful.

Marie Levine

East Quogue