Band-Aids

Today, twenty children and seven adults in Connecticut were killed at the hands of someone with a gun. Like the rest of the country, I am horrified. I cried as the stories came in via my Facebook feed, and I cried while watching the silent TV monitor at dinner.

My mom's husband is from Connecticut, and he has school-aged family there. When I heard the news, I immediately texted my mom to make sure they were safe. (I was pretty certain it was a different town, but I wanted to confirm. Only the name of the county had been released at that point.)

I am not going to get on my proverbial soapbox and talk about this tragedy; I have nothing new to add to it beyond the cacophony of voices calling for more restricted access to guns (with which I wholeheartedly agree). But although I have not lost anyone to gun violence, I now have an awful kinship with twenty more families.

There are a million ways to lose your child, and none are worse than the others. The end result is the same: our children are gone. Weston was a beautiful, perfect, innocent baby; everyone mourns the loss of innocent children. Others, even people I don't know and people who never met Weston, mourn with me. That is obviously true with the children lost in today's tragedy as well.

But I spent all afternoon thinking about the gunman's mother. She, too, lost a child, yet not many people will mourn the loss of his life. They will call him a monster. As isolated as I am in my grief, at least I can take comfort in the fact that my son never did anything wrong, that he was loved well by so many people. This mother would have no such comfort.

But then I learned that she was among the victims today. And, I will stop right there.

Maybe people think I'm crazy for fixating on the mother of the gunman and not the parents of the innocent children who were killed. I have met parents whose children were murdered. I have met parents whose children did bad things, who, perhaps, died while doing bad things. While there might be additional anger directed at specific people with which I do not have to contend, none of us has it better or worse than the other. Make no mistake, I am ANGRY. But no one person was responsible for Weston's death (except for me and God, but we won't go down that road now). I can probably speak for all parents when I say that we love our children unconditionally and equally, whether they are what others would call angels or monsters. Our losses are equal.

I am hearing all over cyberspace of people counting their blessings tonight, hugging their children a little tighter, crying, being angry, etc. That is expected. But, my actions today were not different from any other day. I do all of these things daily now since losing Weston. However, like the twenty families who lost children today, I had one fewer child to hug and kiss tonight.

To the Band-Aid. The last baby I held was my dead son, on July 28. Before that, I held Weston when he was alive, once, for fifteen minutes. Since Weston's death, I absolutely could not bear to think about holding another baby anytime soon. This has been very distressing to me; I have a brand new nephew, and I've worried about how I will bring myself to hold this little boy whom I already love so much yet is a flesh-and-blood reminder of what I have lost.

But the dilemma has been solved, and relatively painlessly. I was chatting with my good friend and neighbor, S, today. Our daughters were playing together in her front yard, and she was holding her baby boy, who is a month older than Weston (they should have been 4.5 months apart). Then her daughter had to use the restroom. I just figured everyone would part ways, but she asked if I would hold the baby while she took her daughter inside. I hesitated for a second but said yes. Just in case you're wondering, S is not clueless and insensitive. She has been, and still is, a wonderful friend to me throughout this hell. This was the first time she had asked, and she gave me an out.

So I took the baby, and they went inside. I felt a little emotional for a second, but I kept it together. Caroline was giving me a funny look. I don't know if she could read the emotion on my face or if she was weirded out by me holding another baby (she never saw me hold Weston). Probably both.

But we all did fine, baby J included. He is cute and cuddly. S and her daughter were inside for all of two minutes. When they returned, I remarked that this was actually the easiest way to pass this "milestone." I didn't have time to think, obsess, and get emotional about it. And this is good, given that I am going to meet my nephew relatively soon. And another good friend is going to have a baby boy any day now.

Now, don't go thinking that I'm doing well. It has been one hell of a week: horrific, actually. I have about seven blog posts in draft; I tend to write more when I'm in a dark place. (Usually I have about, oh, zero to one posts in draft.) But being able to hold a baby boy without breaking down was a little reprieve, I think. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Thanks, S!

I am in a dark place, and today the world joined me. But I don't like company of this sort. As much as misery loves company, being isolated in my grief means I can see a light out there, somewhere, albeit dim and flickering. Being joined in my grief means that everything is dark. There is no Band-Aid big enough to fix it.