Conn. tragedy leaves pain, questions

At this moment it seems like nothing else matters.

There’s nothing to smile or laugh about. There’s no holiday cheer because at least 18 children were killed–murdered in cold blood on a Friday morning in Connecticut. Most likely while they were sitting in their kindergarten class room.

Think about that for a moment. Kindergarten. Where the kids are 5 or 6 years old. It’s an age before life becomes too complicated. When it is not supposed to be complicated. Certainly when it is not supposed to be marred by violence.

Senseless is the word that keeps turning around in my head. I keep asking why. Why would someone go into an elementary school and murder children?

We asked Dr. Mark Welleck, a psychiatrist, that question today when he joined us on the Bruce St. James show.

He said, “I’m supposed to be an expert on the human mind and human motivation and I don’t get it either … we may never, ever know what was truly in that mind.”

Welleck continued, “Our attempts to understand are really our attempts to not to feel so frightened … there are no reasons that will ever really be able to discern for sure and we each have to deal with our own pain and help our children deal with theirs. Asking why is understandable. But, there are lots of questions and there aren’t answers.”

The key, as Welleck put it, is to deal with our own pain.

That’s what makes this school shooting different. The pain. Usually there is a certain type of detachment with these types of stories. But, there is no such thing here. The children are too young. They were too innocent.

Newtown, Conn., is a small New England town that’s probably not that much different from the one where I grew up. But, it’s a town that will never be the same.

We’ll move on and start to have regular conversations filled with smiles and laughter a whole lot sooner than they will.