Unfortunately, in a free market society where products are manufactured based on a theory of supply and demand, there will always be a need for child-sized caskets. Have you ever attended the funeral of a child? I wrote about losing a granddaughter several years ago in a previous blog post, but I omitted much of the emotional part involved with seeing a full sized hearse carry a small white casket to a special area in the cemetery where there is row after row of infant graves. I’m not sure that I would erase those memories as painful as they are, because that small child touched more lives in one day than some adults do in a lifetime. I am a different person today because of Rachael and will forever wonder why she was taken from us.
Last weekend, the tragedy of innocent lives being lost came disturbingly close to home. On Friday, my wife and I sat watching the news unfold on the tragedy in Newtown, a few miles away from our home, speaking only in sobs punctuated by tears. We were waiting for word on the names of those children since we may know some of their parents or grandparents. My son who now lives in Pennsylvania and has a son of his own was upset because one of his close friends has two children in that school and was unreachable. We had a nervous laugh together over the phone when he finally got word that neither child was in school on Friday because they had the flu. Thank God for small miracles.
As I wonder why some people don’t seem to “get it†I feel so ashamed that I never felt this touched by similar tragedies over the past several years. They all are heartbreaking, but in most other incidents I did not know personally people who lived only a block away from that school. Seeing pictures of the location of the tragedy in Hi-Def didn’t compare with the mind picture of my car parked in the lot behind Sandy Hook Elementary School while I watched my son’s Danbury team play baseball against a Newtown team. My wife and I were married in Newtown. Our favorite restaurant for anniversaries, birthdays and other special occasions is in Newtown. But none of that is as up close and as tragic as twenty sets of parents watching their child ride in a child-sized casket to the cemetery in a lumbering grown-up hearse.
I had not planned to write about this event and be another “me too†voice among others who are giving this tragedy new life every day. Frankly, this is the only thing I can write about today. I have about five other articles that for lack of focus are still unfinished. Perhaps none of them really matter in the grand scheme of things. My best contribution is to give prayer and privacy to those who are grieving. This is not a time to air half-baked political rants to polarize our people any more. The small local newspaper, the Newtown Bee, probably said it best:
On behalf of the entire staff of The Bee – we are imploring ALL our colleagues and journalists to PLEASE STAY AWAY FROM THE VICTIMS. We acknowledge it is your right to try and make contact, but we beg you to do what is right and let them grieve and ready their funeral plans in peace.
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