I was traveling to work on Monday and was sort of creating a blog entry in my mind. I would write about having to clean snow off my car again, how thunder was clapping as the snow was falling in a weird spring meets winter way, sitting in wet pants on the train, the flooding and the damage that all the rain before the snow had brought, etc. I was witty in the blog in my mind; an award in the making.
Then I clicked on cnn.com while at work and suddenly the snow, rain, wet pants and whatever else I was going to convey just didn't seem to matter quite so much. Unthinkable tragedy. Stunned silence.
There have been students I have interacted with in one capacity or another (even if it was just via a story being told to me) who we have recommended to counseling. Depression is rampant in our culture and our young people like at no other time. I see it almost every day in the students on campus; I feel it in my own life at times. It's just unreal.
Hind site is always 20-20. People, the media especially, will 'woulda, coulda, shoulda' this to death in the days/weeks to come. Blame will be tossed around like pennies into a fountain. Many will carry guilt with them and some forever. Some will be haunted by images and sounds every time they close their eyes.
In spite of many of my feelings about and toward the VT Administration, the Police and the gunman himself, I can't help but think of his family. They lost a son, a brother that day. They, too, grieve and mourn a loss so profound. They carry a burden and a guilt that I can not begin to imagine. Then to see your son's final video broadcast on national news (I've got a lot to say about that - perhaps another time). The pictures and images will haunt them as well. I can't help but think that the young man so troubled and in my opinion possessed, who unleashed an eerily calculated fury on that day was once a little boy. He ran, giggled, and played. He dreamed of being someone and doing something. What happened? Where did things go so very wrong? I just can't help but think of his family and the loss they feel.
Some how this extended winter weather (how reliable can a groundhog be anyway) just doesn't seem so significant.
