(no subject)
"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." - Kurt Vonnegut
It seems really trivial to be posting a message on my Livejournal or for people to join a group on Facebook, but when I sat at my computer in the Banner office this morning and watched today's tragedy unfold well into the afternoon, I couldn't help but think of that Vonnegut quote. I couldn't help but think about their last moments, and I couldn't help but hope that that was how it was for them. That they were scared up until that very last second, and then there was the beauty of heaven without pain.
I watched and read it all with a sort of awe, a sort of sleuthing wonder, trying to figure out what had happened, what went wrong, why why why why. But I couldn't. I just stared at the computer, at CNN's homepage, at the headline: Gunman dead after massacre at Virginia Tech. Dead. Massacre. Dead.
What scared me the most was probably what scared every student in the entire country: Each of those 33 people woke up that morning just like it was any other morning. They got up, brushed their teeth, walked to class, shared a cup of coffee with a friend, crammed last minute for an exam, cursed themselves for being late yet again to class, tripped over that same crack in the sidewalk, just like every morning. Same crack, same sidewalk, same morning, lived over and over again as the monotony of a semester wears down until the end, until the summer, until, for some, graduation and certain freedom.
They had every intention of walking out of those classrooms and living their lives routinely as average college students in an average college town.
I saw them. I saw them, and they were me. They were you. They were us. And they are gone. They are lost. For what? Nobody will ever know, and nobody should even attempt to answer. It's called a tragedy because it's senseless, and we mourn because we don't understand, could never understand until it, God forbid, happens to us. Until our normal, routine, average lives are interrupted.
I saw them, and they were me. And you. And everyone we know. They were us, and maybe that's the most painful realization of all.
So I hope - I pray - that the last thing they felt was not terror or pain, but beauty and certainty. There are other plans for you, and may you never have to know what pain is again. We will carry that burden for you now because you have carried enough.
It seems really trivial to be posting a message on my Livejournal or for people to join a group on Facebook, but when I sat at my computer in the Banner office this morning and watched today's tragedy unfold well into the afternoon, I couldn't help but think of that Vonnegut quote. I couldn't help but think about their last moments, and I couldn't help but hope that that was how it was for them. That they were scared up until that very last second, and then there was the beauty of heaven without pain.
I watched and read it all with a sort of awe, a sort of sleuthing wonder, trying to figure out what had happened, what went wrong, why why why why. But I couldn't. I just stared at the computer, at CNN's homepage, at the headline: Gunman dead after massacre at Virginia Tech. Dead. Massacre. Dead.
What scared me the most was probably what scared every student in the entire country: Each of those 33 people woke up that morning just like it was any other morning. They got up, brushed their teeth, walked to class, shared a cup of coffee with a friend, crammed last minute for an exam, cursed themselves for being late yet again to class, tripped over that same crack in the sidewalk, just like every morning. Same crack, same sidewalk, same morning, lived over and over again as the monotony of a semester wears down until the end, until the summer, until, for some, graduation and certain freedom.
They had every intention of walking out of those classrooms and living their lives routinely as average college students in an average college town.
I saw them. I saw them, and they were me. They were you. They were us. And they are gone. They are lost. For what? Nobody will ever know, and nobody should even attempt to answer. It's called a tragedy because it's senseless, and we mourn because we don't understand, could never understand until it, God forbid, happens to us. Until our normal, routine, average lives are interrupted.
I saw them, and they were me. And you. And everyone we know. They were us, and maybe that's the most painful realization of all.
So I hope - I pray - that the last thing they felt was not terror or pain, but beauty and certainty. There are other plans for you, and may you never have to know what pain is again. We will carry that burden for you now because you have carried enough.