a lot of thinking
I'm still just absorbing everything that has happened in the last few weeks, and it's hitting me.
Our area is still recovering from flooding. Again. Looking at the area where we considered buying a house, I'm grateful that we made the choice we did. We're grateful for once for the lack of a basement. We had chosen a house that was on higher ground. Two that we looked at and considered were thoroughly sogged. Despite the 49-ers wallpaper, the weeds, and the bamboo from hell, this week, I love this house.
The VA tech shootings - it's like a train wreck. You don't want to look but you do. I can't stop reading the articles and watching the news. I feel awful for the victims, their families and friends, all of the students. My heart goes out to them. I wish the media would leave them alone enough to let them grieve and heal. I'm not even going to touch on those using this for their political agendas. But at the same time, I keep reading and crying. For me, I think it's still trying to understand. Maybe it's just being naive on my part, but I just can't fathom feeling so much anger and hate that would make me want to commit such an act. I grew up w/ my fair share of getting picked on, not fitting in, feeling lonely and being depressed. Yet, I certainly never felt that kind of rage. And this applies to all of them - the boys at columbine, numerous bombers, the terrorists responsible for 9/11, and others who have taken lives, how does one hate enough to kill? That's the question that lingers in my mind and perhaps I hope to never truly understand if it means I will never hate like that.
I guess while I'm already in a wobbly place emotionally, tonight, I witnessed yet another gruesome death. I don't know how it happened and i don't have confirmation of the fatalities, but somehow I doubt the driver of that car survived. I was stuck in traffic on 287 for quite a while less than a mile away from the accident so it had just happened. Police and EMS were still just arriving by the time I finally inched past it in the right shoulder, which was all that remained open on 287. A station wagon was flipped upside-down with it's front end, and windshield flattened into the pavement. What the hell happened to flip the flat, low-riding stationwagon? While there were other partly crunched cars pulled off to the grass median, and ambulances being loaded with passengers, it was clear there had not been any effort to extract anyone from the station wagon. Moreover, I could see in the front passenger window as I inched past it in the traffic. I don't know how many passengers were in the car but there was definitely spatter all over the windows. I guess it just really hit hard and close to home (5 miles to be exact) to realize what I was seeing was likely the front passenger, was being the key word.
Too many deaths. So much pain and grief. It's hard to know how to feel about it. It's hard to know so many are suffering. But it does remind me of things to do - hug my husband and cats, make time for my friends and family, and be thankful, above all else, for LIFE.
Our area is still recovering from flooding. Again. Looking at the area where we considered buying a house, I'm grateful that we made the choice we did. We're grateful for once for the lack of a basement. We had chosen a house that was on higher ground. Two that we looked at and considered were thoroughly sogged. Despite the 49-ers wallpaper, the weeds, and the bamboo from hell, this week, I love this house.
The VA tech shootings - it's like a train wreck. You don't want to look but you do. I can't stop reading the articles and watching the news. I feel awful for the victims, their families and friends, all of the students. My heart goes out to them. I wish the media would leave them alone enough to let them grieve and heal. I'm not even going to touch on those using this for their political agendas. But at the same time, I keep reading and crying. For me, I think it's still trying to understand. Maybe it's just being naive on my part, but I just can't fathom feeling so much anger and hate that would make me want to commit such an act. I grew up w/ my fair share of getting picked on, not fitting in, feeling lonely and being depressed. Yet, I certainly never felt that kind of rage. And this applies to all of them - the boys at columbine, numerous bombers, the terrorists responsible for 9/11, and others who have taken lives, how does one hate enough to kill? That's the question that lingers in my mind and perhaps I hope to never truly understand if it means I will never hate like that.
I guess while I'm already in a wobbly place emotionally, tonight, I witnessed yet another gruesome death. I don't know how it happened and i don't have confirmation of the fatalities, but somehow I doubt the driver of that car survived. I was stuck in traffic on 287 for quite a while less than a mile away from the accident so it had just happened. Police and EMS were still just arriving by the time I finally inched past it in the right shoulder, which was all that remained open on 287. A station wagon was flipped upside-down with it's front end, and windshield flattened into the pavement. What the hell happened to flip the flat, low-riding stationwagon? While there were other partly crunched cars pulled off to the grass median, and ambulances being loaded with passengers, it was clear there had not been any effort to extract anyone from the station wagon. Moreover, I could see in the front passenger window as I inched past it in the traffic. I don't know how many passengers were in the car but there was definitely spatter all over the windows. I guess it just really hit hard and close to home (5 miles to be exact) to realize what I was seeing was likely the front passenger, was being the key word.
Too many deaths. So much pain and grief. It's hard to know how to feel about it. It's hard to know so many are suffering. But it does remind me of things to do - hug my husband and cats, make time for my friends and family, and be thankful, above all else, for LIFE.