There’s a river of grief running through this town. Over the last few weeks this community has lost young men and children to accidents and to violence. I don’t have answers for any of it right now.
One day soon it will be time to pick over the rights and wrongs, to propose change, or apportion responsibility. That time is not now.
This moment is for grief, and we are all in some way immersed in it. I’m writing this today not for those of us directly involved but for those of us on the outside.
When a child in our community dies, we feel an immediate and terrible connection, even if we have never met the family. When a young man doesn’t come home we feel as if they are in some way our sons. When a daughter is hurt she is our daughter.
When babies are killed the impact is immediate. The saying is that the grief of losing a child is unimaginable, but as parents, from the moment of their birth, the terror of losing our children is there in our minds. The death of a child rocks each of us to our core.