Katie here.  I would just like to say that my Mama makes me play fetch.

If I don’t look at her she’ll let me take a nap.

We play fetch a lot.

I keep bringing her back the ball.

And even though I get sort of bored with it, I continue till she gives up.

And keep bringing it back.

Cause it makes her happy.

It’s a never ending job.

And that’s my job, to make my Mama happy.

Of course sometimes a girl’s got to say enough!

And I’m very good at it.  Don’t you know.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Last night at the end of a very long and difficult week I told my husband I had thought about checking into a hotel so that I could sleep all night and wake up when I woke up as opposed to when Katie-girl thought I should be up and on full alert.  We laughed about that a little bit and I said that I had high hopes of being able to sleep till 7 because it stayed dark later in the mornings and Katie hadn’t been all that eager to get up at 6 with me all week.  Perhaps she would stay asleep this dark December morning.

My husband, being the hero that he is, took Katie to sleep in the master bedroom with him and I got to sleep in quiet undisturbed luxury in the guest room.  I woke a couple of times, disoriented, but fell right back to sleep and dreamed long and complicated dreams none of which I can quite remember this morning.  I woke up on my own at 7:30!  It was a wonderful thing.

I got up and let Katie out of the other bedroom.  She appeared to be standing patiently by the door, though I hadn’t heard her bark.  How she knew I was up is beyond me.  Sheltie telepathy I guess.  She was very excited to see me, all wriggling and happy kisses.  I think she thought I had gone to that hotel after all.

I took her out to do her morning business and could see the tracks from the night before when my husband had taken her out while I was sleeping.  There was a big circle, his footprints in the middle and at least two rows of little paw prints  at the outside edge.  She’s a circle kind of girl.  This morning her nose went right down into the paw prints and she began to circle, faster and faster, huffing all the way, tracking some beast that had been in her yard.  I laughed at her and asked her if she was trying to track a heffalump.  (Do you remember the Pooh story in which he and Piglet were scared but bravely tracked the heffalump’s footprints around and around a big bush, noting there appeared to be more and more heffalump tracks as they went around?)  Katie huffed at me, tossed her head and did her jobs.  She does not like to be embarrassed by her Mama.

Inside we played a rousing game of fetch and then I promised her a game of Frisbee in the snow covered back yard later this afternoon.  She’s waiting for me at the back door now.  She’s going to make me pay for that dog free night of sweet sleep.

Yes she is.

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.