More Than We Can Bear

Notes of Concern…

                               …Jackson Blair

More Than We Can Bear

I am writing this column the day of the elementary school shooting in Connecticut. Following the story all day as it developed, the numbers of dead kept growing. From first reports of two adults and one child to the current number estimated to be 27 souls, as many of them as 20 elementary school children.

What came to mind all day was a comment made by then Mayor Rudolph Guiliani in response the question of “how many people died” at the Twin Towers. He responded: “more than we can bear.”

Clearly he had no idea in the midst of the turmoil exactly how many people might have lost their lives. But he surely knew the number would be more than any of us could bear.

The numbers on “9-11” were in the thousands. In some way, such a great number is really hard to wrap your mind around. One cannot even imagine such horror.  The number 26 is difficult primarily in that so many were very small children; little innocents who waved goodbye to a parent and went off to school only hours before.

Too many of them never to come home again.

A robo-call to every home telling parents about a shooting and a lock down. One can only imagine the terror in so many hearts. Ambulances, fire trucks, police, swat teams, nurses, doctors all converging on a little elementary school while anxious parents waited for a glimpse, a prayed for glimpse, of a safe child.

Forty parents it is estimated did not get their prayers answered.

The number is not in the thousands.

But it is still too much to bear.