I Grieve

For the last couple of mornings our alarm goes off broadcasting grief over the airwaves about this horrific shooting. I wake up with a sense of emptiness - a certain sense of detachment. My brain cannot grasp the ludicrous act of the last few days.

Today it finally hit me. I've just spent a few minutes soaking up the words in this article on msnbc.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18143312/
It puts faces and names and stories to the 30 people who died in the massacre at Virginia Tech. 30 beautiful, productive people with families and friends and long lives before them. The tears came as I watched the slide show. I made myself read each and every profile. Completely useless, I know, but I feel that I ought to at least know a little bit about who they are. I can remember them without having met them, I can acknowledge their lives and pay tribute, even if its in a very small personal way. I'm too upset and angry to care much about the shooter. I'm not ready to ask probing questions about how and why this happened. But my heart aches for lost lives and families torn apart. I cannot do much, so I sit and I cry and think about the lives that have been ended and I think about the families left behind. Until I can bring myself to think critically about this tragic event, I grieve.