Mourning for My Home State

As a teacher, and as someone originally from Connecticut, Friday's tragic elementary school shooting felt far too close to home. For the past couple days, I have found myself suspended in a strange place in which I cannot seem to tear myself away from the news while all at once having a desperate need to avert my eyes from a situation so painful I cannot look. My weekend transpired much in the same way; a mixture of the usual normalities and trivial weekend enjoyments punctuated by tears I could not hold back as my Facebook newsfeed filled with comments from too many friends who knew the victims of this tragedy, or I heard the names read on the television, or I saw a family walk by with a child who looked to be six-years-old. 

While people on both sides of the vitriolic gun control debate or the when-is-it-an-appropriate-time-to-talk-about-gun-control-debate have voiced their opinions, it remains to be seen how a country in mourning will proceed in ensuring that a tragedy of this magnitude does not happen again. In haste, I have heard people say everything from: we need metal detectors in schools (I currently work in a school with metal detectors following a deadly school shooting before I worked there in 2005) to a completely crazy remark that had the teachers been armed this would not have happened. While like everyone else, I have strong opinions on this argument, I think that, just for right now, all I really want to say is that I mourn for those parents, I grieve for that community, I revere those educators, and I hold our nation's community in my thoughts as we try to make sense of something so senseless.