dark

A couple of days ago, someone – a boy, a man, a monster – walked into an elementary school and shot 19 children dead, along with two teachers who tried to protect them.

They were in the fourth grade, younger than my youngest child. It’s a magic age, in between little and big. Old enough now to have their own opinions, small enough to still settle into your lap on a sleepy Saturday morning, spine curled into you.

I look at their photos and imagine what they were like.

They had wiggly teeth and bikes with baskets attached. They had dreams of being teachers, of going to Disneyland. They had best friends and favourite cousins. They had dogs who tonight lie at the foot of empty beds.

Maybe.

I can’t reconcile this world. I can’t make it make sense.

The day before those little lives ended, I sat at a stoplight looking up at the mountains, their jagged peaks painted against a bright blue sky. And I thought, this is too beautiful to write. I have that feeling often. How many ways can you describe the fading sun? Golden, molten, aglow. A million more, I’m sure, but none of them really capture it.

This world is too beautiful for words. And this world is where 19 babies get shot to death at an elementary school in a town where nobody locks their doors.

And then the sun sets again, just as brilliant as it was the day before, leaving families to grieve in the dark.