Related in grief

In just ten days my son Paul would have been forty-one years old. Since the Newtown CT massacre I've thought of him more and more. I've been through thirteen Decembers since his death. This one is the hardest. So I thought I'd share a poem I wrote about our last time together. Though my experience is totally different from the bereaved in Newtown, we are related by our grief of the loss of a child. No parent is ever prepared for that. The Last Night How could I have known it would be the last night? A night like all the others: the low creaking groan of the garage door, tires screeching to maneuver into the narrow place, the roar of the engine before silence. Then slamming the door, my son, sweeps down the long hall, calling out hello in his deep friendly voice. I startle as I hear his heavy strides pass my door, I call out to him. Returning, he enters my room standing, staring, looking more calm than I've ever seen him. His blue eyes like sapphires fringed … [Read more...]

Thoughts about the horrific Sandy Hook massacre

Four days ago a 20-year old man took his mother's assault weapons, killed her, and then went to a local school and killed twenty children, ages 6 and 7, and six adults before he killed himself. So much has come up for me since then besides the tears. The senselessness of it, the grief of parents losing a child, the struggle of young children to get their arms around such a profound loss. Our whole country and probably the world are in mourning now, and we are all at a loss about what we can do. Right now all I can do is think and cry about it. However, as I watched Bob Schieffer'smorning talk show yesterday while I was working out, two things came up for me aside from the enormity of the numbers of guns bought and sold in our country and the senseless numbers of gun murders over 32,000 a year. It is totally clear that we have the right to bear arms. There is no way we'll be able to remove guns from our country. That said, can't there be a better way to control them. The people … [Read more...]