Email Kathryn - - - Kathryn's Main Page - - - Inditer dot Com Index - - - Inditer dot Com Main PageIt defies words, this feeling I get when I see these shootings happening so often. And yet, I'm not sure that people at large realize, (yet) that they aren't limited to 'certain, at-risk areas' or 'types of children'. I well remember sitting at my desk in Denver one April day when a call came through from the HR office that 'there's been a shooting at Columbine; anyone with children there, please call HR' and someone said, "Where's Columbine?" and a woman in the office said, "Oh, I don't know. But I'm sure it's got to be an inner-city school."
I remember thinking that made sense, that surely no one in this new-home-laden area of Denver, safely surrounded by Pottery Barns and golf courses, would have children attending that school. So I had fallen victim to that same mindset, thinking that 'it couldn't happen here'.
I worked at that time for a resort who opened its doors to relatives of the Columbine victims, who needed a place to gather and find refuge from the media, etc. and the following week after the shooting was one constant jumble of phone calls, making arrangements for accomodations of these heartbroken, shattered people. I remember holding it all together during the day, but on a long commute home, often I would cry, and yet I couldn't define exactly why I was crying. I hurt with a formless, indefinable hurt for the families, and for the kids who had died, and so much for the kids who had pulled the trigger. Any time someone dies, be it a school shooting, a plane crash, a train wreck -- there is sadness. But there is a particular kind of sadness involved when those so young turn to violence and death as answers to whatever turmoil they're feeling. It's the fact that murder and violence have become viable options that made me so sad. Life is not a Nintendo game, and it's sad beyond words when lives are taken in real life as easily as animated figures are blown off a screen in a video game.
I think you understand a bit of that wordless sadness, Ann, and I appreciate your attempt at putting words behind it.
All the best,
Kathryn Jennings Hancock
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