Sandy Hook Elementary School

Today, as a nation, we are faced with a senseless tragedy.  The loss of twenty innocent lives. The loss of six adults whose time here was not yet finished.  Twenty six lives lost in what, to all of us, seems nothing short of a nightmare.

I spent my morning watching the news, sobbing nearly hysterically, as they recounted what happened, showed pictures of families, video of police and firemen, all the faces of grief.

I immediately thought of my job at Lincoln Elementary School, working as a staff assistant in different capacities, remembering the friendships, the closeness, the sense of community we all had, working together to educate the youth who walked through those doors every day for 180 days each school year. I thought of the teachers, some of whom are best friends, pouring their hearts, souls and hours into lesson planning, correcting and showing up for their students. I thought of the sense we had there, that we were one big family; parents, students and teachers alike, united in raising those students to be successful adults.

I imagined what it would be like if this tragedy had happened there, at Lincoln.  How many parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends and neighbors would have been effected by the ripple of grief the single drop of a lost life would cause.

I imagined if it were me, trying to protect my students from a crazed gunman.  I imagined if it were me, running up the hill to school, not knowing if Logan, Jack or Wyatt were safe or not. Scared or not. Alive or not.

I imagined if that shooting had happened here, in Marshall, where Josh is an elementary school teacher.  I imagined how helpless he might feel if he were faced with the challenge of protecting his 17 students.  I imagined how horrific it would be to lose him that way.

I imagine now (with parents aware whose lives were lost and whose were spared) the guilt that would curl up in my lap if I were one of the parents whose children survived.  I would feel it, insidious, creeping up from my belly and into my throat as I hugged my children extra tight.  

Something like this is unimaginable, unbelievable, unreal.  Something like this is heartbreaking any time, but somehow seems worse this close to the holidays.  For me, this feels like a second blow, coming only days after another senseless shooting at a mall near my hometown that killed three, including the gunman himself.

Watching the president address the nation, tears in his eyes, a lump in his throat, only made me cry harder. He spoke of us as a nation of parents, all mourning alongside those who lost their children in Connecticut.

"I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the overwhelming grief that I do."

-President Barack Obama

How true that is.