Human Sunrises

I've been thinking about writing a post for a few days now but have come up with a bunch of excuses.  I know, though, deep down that the real reason is because I feel inclined to write something about the Connecticut tragedy of last Friday, yet I am frightened to even go there.  I decided I need to get past that fright, because writing about it will be therapeutic.  And there's a lot I've thought about as a "rookie mom" as all of this has been unwinding.  Being a mother has put a new black and dreary spin on things as I hear and see the images of grief- stricken parents.  I feel tightness in my chest, tears in my eyes, horror in my heart for these people.  They've lived the unimaginable, the unthinkable.  And why do people say that-- that it's "unimaginable" when, actually, we all could imagine something like this happening?  It's got to be because when we start to imagine it, we become so jolted, so crippled in fear, so overcome with anxiety that we have to stop giving it the remotest bit of attention. Yet, in the wake of what occurred, I find myself still giving it a lot of my attention and I'm not totally sure why.

This morning on the drive to work I heard an NPR interview with the mom of a little boy who was killed on Friday.  She described the horror of Friday and her subsequent current grief.  She said her surviving children are already in counseling because she's too broken to help them right now.  The outpouring of words of comfort and acts of kindness has helped, she said, during this interview that took place at the site of the town's vigil.  But her voice cracked, and her words were very drawn- out, almost in monotone.  This was the shell of a woman, I could tell.  She said she frantically arrived at the scene on Friday and found her two daughters (one of whom is a twin sister to the boy who passed) in the company of some local emergency workers.  She looked for her son but was already throwing up, over and over again, she said, because she knew he was dead.  She just knew.  It was intuition.  And her life would never be the same. 

I've been walking this fine line for days now--- the line of too much media exposure to this tragedy.  I know myself by now, and I know that seeing and hearing specifics means I will ruminate on them, reflect on them, even dream of them at night.  I will cry for the kids whose faces I've now seen in pictures.  I'll picture their empty bedrooms, and their bikes in the garage.  I'll hear the voices of their siblings ask when they're coming home, and the parents saying over and over that they're not.  I'll envision the dads and moms sitting up in the cold, dark night bawling their eyes out so hard that they're choking.  But I can't help but think and picture and envision.  To imagine the unimaginable. I guess maybe it seems unfair that I should get to turn the TV off when these parents can't turn anything off.  They have to suffer, so avoiding things feels irresponsible.  I feel I should learn about what happened, and learn of these kids' legacies because it's what's right to do-- to be part of this big entwined world we are a part of called the human condition.  Why should I get to go on my merry way?  I found myself cursing out radio stations that were playing music and telling jokes as usual yesterday morning.  They seemed so irreverent.  But then I realized maybe I am the one who is irreverent in not understanding that people all grieve differently, and for a lot of people, they can't function unless they turn it off.  Imagining the unimaginable is simply too much. While I am somehow finding some help and aid and comfort in hearing and seeing things, a lot of people need to compartmentalize and move on. 

Perhaps part of my need to see and hear more and more is because I am a teacher AND a mom; there are two ways in which I can imagine the unimaginable.  Two reasons for which I can do the whole "what if" thing.  Two huge parts of my life that cause me to want to piece all this together and figure out what the world means and what it's all coming to.  Two realms I feel I am supposed to protect.  Two arenas that are precious.  I'm not one of those people, as I've referenced in previous posts, who thinks that moms or parents are special as compared to the rest of the population.  Being a mom was a decision and it's a responsibility and it perhaps further connects me to some possible fears and griefs.  But I'm not going to sit here and type that only parents can understand the magnitude of what happened on Friday.  That is preposterous.  Anyone with family or even one friend he or she cares about can conceive of the horror and terror that would ensue in a massive loss like this.  So I'm not saying momhood makes me special.  Or that being a teacher makes me somehow more connected to what happened either.  But it's made my imagination of the unimaginable more sharp, more keen, more scary.  It's made my inner peace more shaken.  My daily life less mundane and more terrifying.  My feeling of any iota of control much, much less.

In discussing the tragedy with my students, a few of them told me they didn't understand how school could become a place to fear. And how the world could be so unsafe, and so sad.  They wanted to know when they would start to feel better and how.  And one young lady talked about Alice Walker's gorgeous essay "Human Sunrise."  She later sent me a link to the text, and here's the part I absolutely adore:
"We are rising all over the globe now, in this most terrible of times for Earthlings and for our Home planet. People everywhere are moving, joining each other, plotting and planning how we may protect and provide for the challenges of the Age. Still, there are, and will be, days of incredible depression and distress as we encounter the hard truths of the suffering of the Earth and her Creatures. There are abominations occurring on our planet that I’m convinced would have been unimaginable in the Buddha’s lifetime. They are unimaginable even in my own lifetime – and I have actually encountered some of them. The horrible genocide, the incessant war and war mongering, the dropping of bombs on the poor; the starving, deliberately, of children. The greed. The mutilation, cannibalism and enslavement forced on people who are at the mercy of weaponry and force wielded by people they’ve never even seen.

And I say to that: When it is all too much; when the news is so bad meditation itself feels useless, and a single life feels too small a stone to offer on the altar of Peace, find a Human Sunrise. Find those people who are committed to changing our scary reality. Human sunrises are happening all over the earth, at every moment. People gathering, people working to change the intolerable, people coming in their robes and sandals or in their rags and bare feet, and they are singing, or not, and they are chanting, or not. But they are working to bring peace, light, compassion, to the infinitely frightening downhill slide of Human life."


And so I am trying to decide to imagine human sunrises now as I ruminate on, reflect on, and sometimes even obsess over what has happened.  Countering the bad with human sunrise thoughts won't fix everything.  As a teacher, as a mom, as a human, I feel spiritless, weak, and alone when I think about the horrors of our world that only seem to worsen.  But I know that if I don't try-- if I don't continue to teach my students in the best ways I can, and if I don't continue to show Mabel the beauty and greatness of the world-- then not only have I failed myself, then I've failed the human sunrises, and the people who have left the world too soon.