Dear Conrad,
When you're older, you're going to become more aware of what kind of evils are in the world. Someday you'll learn about Jonesboro and Columbine ... and now Newtown.
It was hard not to look away from the television while things were breaking (and a lot of it was bad information for the first few hours.) Many people cared more about the newest update than about the grieving community, which is just our nature I suppose. In the time that followed, everyone screamed at each other over whether or not we should have guns. We were mad - more mad than usual. And we should have been angry, because the deaths of 20 innocent children is something worth being angry for, but we were angry at the wrong things. Angry at our neighbors who owned guns. Angry at our neighbors who didn't own guns. That kind of anger doesn't fix anything.
We hugged our babies extra tight that night and in the nights that followed. Christmas was a little over a week away, and it felt like we had been robbed of the joy of the season. It was hard to think about your own celebrations when the television kept reminding you that there were families who would be having funerals instead of having Christmas dinner.
What bothers me most is that we will never truly know why Adam Lanza did what he did. What possessed him to go to the school and wreak such havoc on his community? Sometimes I hope that, when I die, I gain the answers to these unanswerable questions.
Other times I'm sure I don't really want to know the answers at all.
