And the angels weep in sorrow

I didn't do a thing yesterday but sit in front of the computer and refresh the screen as that horrible day unfolded on the twitter. I haven't felt this level of paralyzing shock since 9/11. It's not that I haven't been equally horrified by the all too many massacres that occured since then, but this one hit so close to home for me.

I grew up near Newton, CT. I didn't watch any live video because I've driven those streets. I know what the scene on the ground looks like without seeing it. And I'm not able to bear seeing the faces of the families who lost their children. Much less the interviews with the surviving kids. Just imagining that makes me want to throw a brick my teevee.

I'm sure you know by now, the killer, Adam Lanza was a troubled kid himself. The rest of the details of the massacre in Newtown are still being revised and expanded almost hourly. But this much is clear. Twenty innocent children won't be opening their Christmas presents. The bright decorations will make a mockery of the ruined celebration. They will not lighten the dark sorrow of the grieving families.

Some of the dead children surely had siblings in the same school who survived. They and the hundreds of other kids who lived through the massacre will have suffered emotional wounds that won't ever completely heal. No matter how long they live.

Our President wept on national television.

[Charles Dharapak AP photo]

We all wept for their lost innocence. And contrary to the sniping in the gallery, President Obama had every right to respond first as a parent.



Every parent in America was feeling the same crushing disbelief and horror and suppressing the urge to rush to their own kids and just hug them. And then spent the rest of the afternoon agonizing over what to say to them. How to explain a world gone so mad that first graders could be gunned down in their classroom?

Last night, this tweet nearly shattered my heart.

@rascality: Thing 1 & Thing 2 adapting a lockdown drill the former learned at school yesterday to the home & practicing it repeatedly.

Thing 1 is about six years old. Her sister is younger. What has our society come to when kids barely able to tie their own shoes need to practice how to escape an armed maniac?