This time yesterday morning people were going to work.  Children were going to school, probably looking forward to the holidays.  There was no sense of the horrific event waiting in the shadows for a small idyllic town; waiting to bring us all up short.  We were moving through our lives as innocents.  I wish it could be yesterday again, and that it could all be different.

The sudden violent death of a loved one is different than death through illness.  For the people of this community in Connecticut life is forever changed in ways not all yet understood.    Right now there is only shock and grief, confusion and maybe a feeling helplessness.  Later, in its own time, will come anger.  I could not help but think about these families facing the forever of their lives without their loved ones, be it an adult or a child.  Years and years of that empty place at their dinner tables, the empty space in their souls.  Grief spiraling into forever.

Sometime in the future some of these families may want to join the fight for gun control or work on getting mental heath services to more people in need.    Oh I know.  Today is too soon for them to think about that.  And it won’t be something that fits every family.  But their families are like our family.  Some will need to find something to fill a small part of that emptiness.   Like those of us working for truck safety to honor dad, they may want to do work that helps keep their loved ones memories alive.  That might make a difference.

For the rest of us, hurting in our own ways as we watch the unimaginable story unfold, the time is now to discuss those issues.  It is way past time that this country stop tiptoeing around the issue of guns.  Like the trucking industry, the gun industry has a powerful lobby and has pretty much gotten what it wants from our government.  Like the trucking industry their arguments sound sensible unless we pay close attention.   And just as change in trucking regulation only comes when every day families stand up and make noise, change in our gun laws won’t change unless regular people are heard.

I can not seem to move on today without expressing these feelings.  Though I have no children of my own, I echo the President’s words…these are all our children, these are all our teachers.  Today we all wake to a new world.  Again.  A lesson learned.  Again.  There is no making sense of this.   We can only move ahead, hold them all in our hearts, and try to make it better.

Last night as Katie and I were exploring the yard I looked up and tried to see if there were 26 more stars shining down.  I couldn’t see them.  But I know they are there.