As a columnist for a newspaper that chooses to concentrate on only uplifting news, I try and keep my offerings motivating, inspirational, or at least contemplative with a sprinkle of happy ending. You can get all the tragic news you want by the push of a television remote button or the tap of a finger on a phone or tablet. So, yeah, concentrating on the positive is sort of a modern-day Bing Crosby thing to do. Accentuate the positive. Eliminate the negative, et al. But, here I sit unable to think of anything except what everyone is talking about, those 19 babies and those 2 precious adults who didn’t get to see the sunrise this morning having seen the sun set on their very lives. And, I don’t know what to do about it. Here’s the only thing I do know. I have a quizzical, quirky, weird perspective on the entire thing. A morbid perspective, one could say. One that only someone whose child died, thankfully not from violence but from a bad heart, could have. I look at things differently. The same could be said of the other 50% of my personality, the one controlled by the experience from a serious fight with cancer. Things ring oddly with me. I don’t want to say that I’m not scared of death because who’s not scared of death? But, it definitely makes you feel like there’s no room in your life for all the frivolity, all of the hang ups, all of the predispositions toward things like fashion or fancy homes or certain types of trips, though all of those things are lovely. Once you’ve walked closer to a dark abyss, it’s hard to ever see a meadow or a field or a prairie with quite as much joy. What is the answer? I only know that some people think guns should be harder to get. Some people think that guns should be impossible to get. Some people think that’s all hogwash. Some would point out the Canadian mass murder tragedy that won’t show up on any gun violence Richter scale, the one where the man rented the moving truck in 2018 and plowed through a busy Canadian neighborhood one day, killing 11 and injuring 15. All the different opinions, the ones who think guns are the issue and the ones who think mental illness is the issue and the ones who think this is just the way it was supposed to be, prophesied in fact. They all think they’re right. Everyone else is wrong. I suppose therein lies the tragedy. It’s so very American of us, patronizing another’s opinion and elevating only our own to the top. I’m just here to say this. Do whatever it takes to keep the babies safe. We are creating a world, whether we feel we are playing a role in that creation process or not, where we aren’t safe anywhere. And, we’re turning inward. And, we’re turning inward. And, we’re turning inward. Shall we not greet each other in public anymore? Shall we not go to church, since that’s a dangerous place, too? Shall we also not grocery shop any longer? It’s like playing a Sims game inside of our own homes. Here, I’ll set this room up to be the restaurant. Look over here! I can convert this room into a library (#library – we still need one of those). You know I couldn’t resist that jab. Oh, look! Back here is the bedroom. We can pretend it’s the boutique hotel we wanted to stay at this summer. And, now, I’m tucked in nice and safe. But, am I really? When will the evil permeate the walls of our homes? These maybe/maybe not mentally ill people with their maybe/maybe not ok weapons, when do they go door to door? I don’t even want to think about that. I’m a gun owner. I don’t know if it was the Malibu State Park shootings a few years back, or all of the serial killers from the 70s & 80s who frequented our national park system, or just my obsession with true crime podcasts overall, but there’s no way my husband and I would have camped through the backwoods of Idaho without some sort of weapon. I read too much. I listen too much. I’m the person who remembers the details, the joyous ones and the horrific ones. But, I am 100% down for making a weapon the tiniest bit harder to obtain. I don’t mind the extra steps. If I suddenly wake up and decide to commit felonious deeds, I probably should not be allowed to obtain a weapon again. Don’t worry. I’m a scaredy cat. You’re safe from the likes of me. Perhaps we all must give the tiniest bit. You know, it’s for the children. If the latchkey kids became the helicopter parents, just imagine the generation we are currently creating. God bless us, everyone.
