| Sharing
the Grief |
| With each passing year, parents put aside some worries about
their children's welfare and pick up new things to worry about.
When their children are young, parents can worry about their
performance in school, the development of social skills or
speech. |
| When they get a little older, parents get to worry about
drugs, criminal influences, lousy music with lousy lyrics,
and sex. Children become more independent, so parents get
to keep worrying about their academic focus and pick up worries
about who they are hanging out with, what parties they are
attending and what goes on at those parties. |
| Children start to drive in high school, and parents get
to worry about who they are driving with, where they are going
and how safely there are driving when they are behind the
wheel. |
| Those students who choose to go away to college provide
a whole new set of worries for their parents. It's a whole
host of real-life issues now. How will they do when they are
responsible for themselves? Will they make it to classes on
time? Will they have fun, but remember to focus on learning?
Will they be safe? |
| While random acts of violence are not uncommon in American
society, the massacre of students at Virginia Tech on Monday
brought up the deepest fears that lie inside every parent. |
| While we worry about every imaginable threat to our children,
we put those remote, terrible fears way back in our minds
and try to focus on the things that are most likely to become
real concerns. |
| All across the state, and all across the nation this week,
parents went through the same experience. Anyone who has a
child of any age can empathize with the parents and family
members of those students who were killed, injured and threatened
by this enraged gunman. |
| Everybody can imagine or remember the excitement of that
first day of college, and the whole new set of worries that
comes along with sending a child off to start a life's worth
of adventures and experiences. |
| And everyone can imagine the pain those families felt on
Monday when they found out their child had been killed in
their classroom or dormitory. Parents without students at
Virginia Tech can empathize with parents who struggled to
confirm the wellbeing of their children on Monday afternoon.There
is no way to understand why the killer attacked students and
teachers Monday morning. There is no way most of us can truly
know how the families of the victims feel right now. |
| But we can take a moment to share their grief for their
lost children, and to reflect that while this crime should
never have happened at all, it could have happened to any
one of us. |
