Day 23- A Moment of Silence

On Friday, December 14 around 4:30pm (Spain time 6 hours ahead of the east coast) we returned from Paris back to our tiny apartment in Barcelona. Like any other afternoon, we went to grab some food and came back to our place so Eric could go out and shoot and I would write my blog and maybe even work on my script, it was like any other day. Until we looked at our computers, an array of news websites were overloaded with horrifying news about a school shooting in Connecticut. The story was still unfolding so we did not know the extent of it until we turned on CNN. I should add Eric is from Connecticut and his family still lives there, his sister and brother-in-law live 2 towns over from there. For the next 6-8 hours we were glued to the TV, sick to our stomachs and filled with disbelief. Especially since we have been discussing starting a family or our own. How could be someone do something like this? What could those sweet and innocent children and adults possibly done to deserve this? That lingering question of if everything happens for a reason, what god forsaken reason could this be? Not only for those children we lost but those who now have to live with this for the rest of their lives. The innocence of these children is gone, I sat up that night trying to remember the first time I learned of the terrible things the happen in the world. The first thing that came to mind was when the Challenger blew up, it was 1986 and I was 8 years old. We watched it in our class (3rd grade I believe)and as soon as it blew up, the teacher immediately turned the television off and our Principal made an announcement over the PA system. It was a terrible accident but not at the hands of someone else. How do you explain to your children that there are people out there that are capable of such things? Simply teaching them not to talk to strangers is not enough anymore. My best handle of this is actually teaching our kids that monsters do exist, not the ones living under their beds or in their closets but the ones that walk among us. The monsters you don't see coming. Maybe this way they will see them coming, they will know they exist and they will know the evil they can bring is real and if at all possible fight back. I don't know if that is the right thing to do but knowledge is powerful unfortunately so is violence. For now let's just take moment of silence to remember those lives lost and try to come together as a nation, as human beings to do the best we can to prevent something of this magnitude from ever happening again.