Tag: Newtown

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A Letter to the Moms of Newtown on Mother’s Day

Your kids have not been forgotten.  I think about you and them most every day.  December 14 will always hold a new significance for me and so many others.  The day that changed your life forever, making it at times seem unrecognizable, no doubt, has in some small way touched me, too.  I am so very sorry for what was so brutally taken from you on that day — your child and your innocence.

Mother’s Day is Sunday.  My guess is that this is not a day of joy or celebration for you.  You will not be fussing over where to get brunch or wishing you had more time for yourself.  You probably have too much time for yourself these days.  Too much time to think and feel and mourn.  There may be no comforting you this first Mother’s Day without your child.

You probably see the commercials, hear the ads touting the question, “What’s for Mom this Mother’s Day?”  Buy this necklace!  Eat our food!  Smell our flowers!  It can be oppressive.  I, too, have a young child that is not with me on this day.  She is gone for entirely different reasons, illness and not violence.  But her absence gives me a glimpse into the loss you may feel and how the frequent reminders of MOTHER’S DAY we see and hear do nothing more than turn up the volume of our grief.

I pledge not to forget you or your children.  I pledge to recognize the impact their violent death has had on me.  I pledge to reject the belief that standing in solidarity with mothers who are mourning the loss of their child from guns is somehow a political statement.  I pledge to remember what was taken from you on December 14, 2012.

Charlotte Bacon

Daniel Barden

Olivia Engel

Josephine Gay

Ana Marquez-Greene

Dylan Hockley

Madeleine Hsu

Catherine Hubbard

Chase Kowalski

Jesse Lewis

James Mattioli

Grace McDonnell

Emilie Parker

Jack Pinto

Noah Pozner

Caroline Previdi

Jessica Rekos

Avielle Richman

Benjamin Wheeler

Allison Wyatt

It is so important to say the names, your child’s name.  May you always speak them, because if you don’t, no one will.  May you find a way to honor them and their years on this earth.  May you only know compassion as you figure out how to move forward without your child.

That, I fear, will be the tricky part.  In the days after December 14, people everywhere, moms especially, were stricken by what happened in the halls and classrooms of Sandy Hook Elementary.  It was unfathomable.  We held our kids tighter, fed them ice cream for dinner, showered them with the kisses you yourself could no longer dole out.  We cried on those first days dropping them off at school, worried if they would be safe, wondering if any of us would ever feel safe again.

And then, like life, we moved on.  Dinners needed to be made, clothes needed to be cleaned and folded, bills needed to be paid, groceries needed buying.  Life moved on, as it always does, even in the most devastating of times.  I still see you.  Despite the dinners I make, the clothes I fold, the bills I pay, the groceries I buy.  Despite the busy-ness of my days, I see you.  I remember you.  I will not forget.  That life moving on business is yet another of the cruel things you have encountered.

Somehow your children, with their backpacks and soccer balls and art smocks, have become symbols for all of America, a dividing line of sorts, in the proverbial sands of gun legislation.  Politics has overtaken the empathy.  For that I am truly and deeply sorry, ashamed almost.  I know your children are so much more than symbols.  I wish everyone understood that.  I am sorry if this national discussion your tragedy has sparked diminishes them in any way.  Your children and their lives are so much more than a tipping point.

Be strong, mothers of Newtown.  Choose hope.  Choose to believe that your grief will not always be so consuming.  Choose to honor your children in whatever way makes sense to you.  Choose to understand that allowing laughter and love and light into your lives will in no way dishonor your child’s memory.  My wish for you is the same thing I wish for myself and all mothers missing a child on Mother’s Day.  Peace, strength, hope, joy, and love.  These are the things that will nudge you forward, not away from your grief, but in a more comfortable spot within your grief.

I see you this Mother’s Day, and I remember your children.  

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Angels and Automatics: Lessons from Newtown

I haven’t stopped thinking about Newtown and all that was lost thirty-two days ago.  For a moment, America was shocked.  We shed collective tears for all those young lives lost.  We felt our vulnerability and it hurt.  It hurt like hell.  But like most metaphorical wounds, it healed, or has at least scabbed over.  We’ve gotten back to routines.  We drop our kids off in the morning at school and maybe are not worrying so much about what awaits them.  The rhetoric has become political.  Is the problem mental health?  Is it school security?  Is it gun control?  Most of us are comfortable letting the politicians and Facebook zealots figure it out.

What hasn’t gone back to normal are the lives of those families who lost a child.  They are thirty-two days into the ‘grief process’ that will never end.  The whole idea of a grief process has always annoyed me, even when I worked as a hospice bereavement counselor.  By definition, a process is linear, predictable, methodical.  Grief is none of those things.  Grief is the bucking horse that will not be tamed.  Grief is a wild ride that is at times bearable and at other times terrifying.  Three years into the greatest grief of my life, I’ve grown accustomed to it’s nature, but it is still a powerful beast that at times throws me off completely.

Yesterday an article came across my Facebook feed and I was surprised to read its headline, “Noah Pozner’s Mom Describes Newtown Victim’s Body, And Why We Should All Listen.”  I had never seen a story about the Newtown tragedy such as this headline suggested.  There are some things that are just not discussed, right?  Those twenty children are precious, they are “angels,” and angels don’t have parents talking about their mortal wounds in media interviews.  Right?

Wrong.

Noah Pozner is no angel.  He is a boy who senselessly and tragically died because a rifle was aimed at his face and then ten other places on his little body.  Veronique Pozner, Noah’s mother, wanted the governor of Connecticut to see her boy, her beautiful boy, as he was after the shootings.  She invited Governor Dannel Malloy to view Noah’s open casket.  In her interview with Naomi Zeveloff of the Jewish Daily Forward, Veronique Pozner captures something in words that I have thought often myself, though never so eloquently, “I just want people to know the ugliness of it so we don’t talk about it abstractly, like these little angels just went to heaven. No. They were butchered. They were brutalized. And that is what haunts me at night.”

I so understand her need for others to bear witness to the brutality of her son’s death.

After Donna died, there was a period where it made me terribly angry to hear her referred to as an angel.  During her shiva, people would use the expression with me and I would bite my tongue, knowing full well that my friends and family meant no harm whatsoever.  But I drew the line with our chaplain.  This dear colleague who knew Donna personally and listened to me struggle with my fear during her years of treatment used the dreaded “angel” in her comments for the burial service that I got to hear ahead of time.  I asked her to remove the word.  She completely understood and did so easily.

I know that there are many, many other grieving parents who feel the exact opposite of me.  Thinking of their child as an angel above brings them comfort and solace.  I would never wish to jeopardize that for them.  But for me, and possibly for Veronique Pozner, the term angel brings us no comfort when applied to our children buried in the ground.  And in drawing this comparison I do not mean to draw comparisons to our losses.  Noah Pozner and Donna died for very, very different reasons.  I would say apple and oranges, but that is much too benign a comparison.

When people refer to the Newtown shooting victims as angels, I think that speaks more to their needs than the needs of the families that survive.  If God above needed angels, did he need to transport them in such a violent way?  Where is the logic in that?  It makes no sense to me.

My sense is that Veronique Pozner wants us to know and understand the brutality of that sunny day at Sandy Hook Elementary.  By sharing the details of her Noah’s death, graphic as they are, she is not exploiting her son.  She is opening our eyes.

Semi-automatic weapons are a serious business.  They are not clean shots.  They are meant and intended for destruction on a massive scale.  The body of a six year old, the bodies of twenty six and seven year olds, and the wounds they were left with being on the receiving end of a wall of bullets, tell the true story of semi-automatic weapons so widely available in America.  It is a bloody and graphic and uncomfortable story, but it is one that needs to be told.  And we need to listen.

I support Veronique Pozner and I bear witness to her loss.  May Noah rest in peace, along with Charlotte and Daniel and Olivia and Josephine and Ana and Dylan and Madeleine and Catherine and Chase and Jesse and James and Grace and Emilie and Jack and Caroline and Jessica and Avielle and Benjamin and Allison.

Kraft och omtanke to their families and the community of Newtown, Connecticut.

Correction:  A few readers have commented that my use of the term “automatic weapon” was incorrect, that the Newtown shooter, in fact, used a semi-automatic weapon.   The New York Times tells me that it was an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.   I have corrected three items in this post — changed “shotgun” to “rifle” in the fifth paragraph and added “semi” in front of “automatic” in two instances in the eleventh paragraph.  For the record, I do not believe the mistakes are reflective of anything other than my gun ignorance.  The intent of this post is about witnessing violence and the cost of weapons in our culture.  Whether that violence was the result of an automatic weapon or semi-automatic rifle seems to me semantics and nothing else.  MTM.

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Newtown, Old Story: Resources for Discussing School Violence

At 3:50 AM this morning I heard my son’s voice next to me, fresh from sleep, “I miss my sister.  I miss my sister.”  Mary Tyler Son is three.  He was just shy of ten months when his sister Donna died.  He has never before uttered these words, certainly not in the middle of the night.  Tonight, after a full and lovely day together, full of cookies and long drives, and Hannukah celebrations and friends and a new Christmas tree, he rested his head on the table, next to his half eaten sandwich, and said, “I will miss my sister forever.”

My heart breaks for my son.  Today my heart also  breaks for twenty other families in Newtown, Connecticut.  I have no idea how many brothers and sisters will now, too, utter the words of my young son.  We know loss in our family, tragic loss.  What we don’t know is the sudden loss of gun violence.  Twenty families brought a little one to school this morning.  Twenty families are putting one less child to bed tonight.  This is shocking and senseless and becoming an all too familiar occurrence in America.

Right now I am watching the news for the first time today, my boy tucked away, sleeping, safe.  My Dad just called and asks the very logical question as to why a mother in Connecticut owns such a variety of assault weapons.  One of those weapons was used to shoot her today, before it was used to kill twenty children, six educators, and the shooter himself.

America, we have some issues. There were twenty-seven shooting victims today, but it feels like all of us are victimized by this kind of brutality.

Like many of us, I went to Facebook for news and support.  It was grave, sober, quiet.  People are in shock, speechless, scared, numb.  I encouraged my MTM community to share what they would be discussing with their children.  Responses ran the gamut from nothing, wanting to protect and shield the innocence of their children, to some fairly frank discussions with some very young children, parents wanting to be the one to direct the message their kids receive.

School is supposed to be safe.  It just is.  A day like today shatters that illusion of safety and order.  A day like today calls everything we take for granted into question.  A day like today scares us and our children.  How can we discuss the events of Newtown when we don’t understand them ourselves?  As parents, we are supposed to be the ones with answers.  It is our responsibility to ensure the safety and well being of our children.  Our children look to us to be their protectors.

We live in a world where gun violence is now common.  School gun violence, becoming more so.  Why that is is not something for this blog post to ponder.  I am more worried about you, about all of us, and how we can continue to parent and help our children feel safe in this new world order where school gun violence is a fact of life.

My son is three.  He is not aware of what happened in Newtown today.  My husband and I are in agreement that we will not initiate discussion of today’s events or school violence with him right now.  Should he hear of it, should he want to talk about it, we will address it.  We will answer the questions he asks, and no others.  We will not assume what he needs to hear, we will listen and respond and stress his safety.  At three, we can protect him from this.  Were he just a couple of years older, I am not so certain.

Children are smart and perceptive and intuitive.  They sense our unease. They know when they are being hugged tighter, kissed more, treated, sugared, indulged.  They might not know why, but they sense difference. They do.

For those children old enough to be aware, please understand that it is important for their concerns to be addressed.  If you don’t understand it, there is no shame in that.  How can any of us understand these actions?  But do not let your fear or uncertainty about what to say keep you from tending to your child’s needs.  Let them be your guide.  Listen to them,  watch them, talk to their teachers.  Talk to them.

Turn the news off.  Turn your own comments off about this matter when your young kids are present.  Watch your language.  “Monster, animal, sicko, beast” are just a few of the words I have heard today to describe the shooter.  The language we use influences our children, too.  Pay attention to what you are saying that your kids might be hearing.  Find out what your child knows and address those things.

Here are a few resources that you can use to educate yourself or prepare for a discussion with your child.  I know that many of you are hoping to avoid the discussion, at least for the weekend.  That’s okay, if you are sheltering them from the news.  Use the time.  Think and prepare for what questions might arise next week when they return to school.  Each of these has been reviewed by me and has the MTM thumbs up for being useful and on topic, and better yet, was provided by a fellow reader.