Newton, Massachusetts is not Newtown, Connecticut. But it could be, easily. It’s another tree-lined New England
community that families choose because of the schools.
Dear Newtown, CT:
You drew the short straw. We all know it, and that’s the
true horror of December 14th:
it could have happened anywhere.
In any of the other safest places on earth too numerous to name. We are
gutted, as a nation, united in our collective grief with a uniformity of
soul-sickness and outrage lobbyists dream of tapping into. We want to know how it happened, seek
unfindable, insufficient explanations and yet the how is secondary to the
crushing reality of what happened.
Because ultimately there isn’t a way to explain the unimaginable. Words fail us because the loss, the
betrayal of what should be, shakes the foundation of our belief in humanity, in
goodness, and in our sense of rightness in this world.
My daughter is 6. When I hug her, I am hugging her for 20
families denied that simple, precious pleasure. When she laughs, I am
struggling not to cry. We are, as
a nation of families, a nation of parents and sisters and brothers, cast adrift
by this event, stunned and shaking with grief. And yet, my loss, the loss of
those who learned about this as something that happened elsewhere, is nothing, is
utterly vicarious to the loss of 20 -- TWENTY -- Newtown families (that’s
right, you need all of your fingers and toes to account for the number of
households) whose lives have been shattered, hearts have been ripped from their
chests.
May no other community ever have to walk the road you are
now on. We stand with you and by you and for you, wishing desperately that
there was something useful we could actually do, some burden we should shoulder
for you, some way to undo the brutal reality of your lives.
Love,
Newton, MA
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