Alcohol isn’t a responsible or healthy coping mechanism.
It’s a sunny day. Actually it’s perfect. There’s a slight breeze. The temperature is warm enough for shorts and a short-sleeve shirt without being chilly or sweaty. The dog is happiest in this weather. The older two kids are theatrically falling over as the baby pushes them down the slide in our backyard. They’re yelling, “How dare you!” after each push, and he cackles again and again as if it were the first time. There’s a Mexican Lager made by a local brewery, into which I’ve pushed a lime wedge, in my hand.
Last week, a gunman killed 19 kids around the same age as my oldest. I’ve railed for years against the training in school that terrifies my kids about “stranger danger” and “bad guys” because I believe it places an unfair burden on them, as children (as well as their teachers), to be on the frontlines against gun violence in schools. They’re too young to understand what is going through my head right now.
The day after the shooting, it filled me with anguish to watch my wife, a teacher, walk out of the door. It was a difficult drop-off at school, and as I saw the older sister clasp her brother’s hand as they walked away from me, a lump pulsed in my throat. It’s hard not to feel everything in that moment. They love each other so much.
This past weekend marked the unofficial kickoff to summer, but for the families of the children at Robb Elementary, Memorial Day weekend now also means memorializing children lost to a different kind of war. The festivities forever ended.
There are too many parents—in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; Uvalde, Texas; and so many other places—that were once doing this same thing on some innocuous weekday afternoon. Watching as the sun sat above them, shining down on their kids at play, ignorant to all the bad, all the suffering, all the pain. It reminds me of a sad poem, and how the silver lining is too often tragically won.
“I know that in the next minute or tomorrow all this may be taken from me,
And therefore I’ve got to say, right now, what I feel and know and see,
I’ve got to say, right now, how beautiful and sweet this world can be.”
— David Budbill
