I remember hearing once that when someone close to you dies, people take care of you for about six weeks. They call, come over, make sure you’re okay. After that, everyone sort of gets back to business as usual, and the only one who’s really left with your grief is you.
Since everything in the world moves faster these days, I guess that means, well, everything moves faster. Talk of the school shooting in Newton, Connecticut, was all over Facebook yesterday. I know I was flipping out so badly that I almost went and picked up my kids. People “left Facebook early” to be physically present with their families. There wasn’t a Bluntcard or Elf on the Shelf joke in sight.
But today, we were back to business as usual. Fiscal cliff and basketball games. Funny pictures and snarky observations. Sure, there were rants about gun control and outrage about the failure of our mental health system. There were sad blog posts about the victims, who we’re all slowly getting to know. But we all moved forward.
Not that we shouldn’t. Not that we should wallow in some freakish depression or grieve unrelentingly for people we didn’t even know. But it just seems so odd that we can all come to a screeching halt for one day and then wake up the next morning and move on, almost as if nothing has happened. It’s almost like getting some voyeuristic grief fix. We can feel horribly sad for a bit — we can have a good cry and release all the pain that we may be feeling for whatever reason — but the fact is, we don’t actually have to deal with the real thing.
The people who lost loved ones in Newton are dealing with the real thing. And there are stories of people all over the world who’ve lost loved ones today in terrible ways that didn’t get covered by every news organization or talked about by all of us on Facebook. But they’re feeling just as much pain.
In this life, you are the consoler or the consolee. To some extent, all we can do is revel in the time we spend doing the former, not the latter.
Tammy Soong is a writer, wife, and mom from Reno, Nevada. She takes an absurd amount of pain medication, but not enough to have actually named her children "Newt" and "Elfie." She spends most days stressing out over clutter, writing stuff for this place, and working on podcasts with her gal pals, the Blogging Betties.
This life we are given, it’s not always fair… but it goes on anyway.
Kelly DeBie recently posted..Balancing
Man, you’re sounding crazy-wise today.
It”s that feeling of helplessness that I can’t stand. There is nothing I can DO.
Andrea recently posted..Delay…
My husband and I were just talking about this. There really is nothing to do for the people who were directly affected. Maybe helping someone monetarily if they need it, just to make something in their lives easier (?). But short of that…
In a show I like to a perhaps obsessive degree, at one point, when a character is following a tragedy obsessively, another character says, more or less, that dwelling on other people’s tragedies is pornographic.
The killing of those children is of course the whole nation’s tragedy and problem, however, the grief over the individual lives is not.
And I am of coure reminded of good ol’ Joe Hill “Don’t mourn, organize.”
What show is that?
I know people who seem to get a rush from other people’s tragedies. Like they find a way to insert themselves no matter what the situation. It’s odd to me. I feel like I have enough of my own to deal with. I don’t need to go looking.
And you make great points, as always.
Maybe it’s the children.
Maybe it’s because the shootings are coming to close together.
Maybe it’s because it no longer feels like an *if* event but a *when* event.
Whatever the reason I’ve had a difficult time returning to normal. I did allow myself to post something more light-hearted today. That’s the best we can do: Acknowledge. Remember. Keep living…hopefully learning from our mistakes and not letting distance from an event let apathy set it.
Kelly O’Sullivan (HILWD) recently posted..Insert Card Here
i wax between being relieved i don’t know more about this and feeling guilt that i’m not more aware. i learned about it online, of course. i still have yet to watch the news or read a newspaper with the intention of reading about this tragedy. still… three days later. none of my awareness will shine a brighter light. none of my preaching will make sense of it. my natural response to fear is to laugh. i am not laughing. maybe because i’m not afraid. what can i fear anymore than i already do? the unknown is the only thing that’s known.