My heart is heavy

While it’s tempting to say there are no words for what happened at Virginia Tech yesterday, what kind of writer would I be if I couldn’t find some way to express my feelings about it? Not to mention the fact that writing is one of my outlets. And I have to think if I’m this sick about the rampage that killed more than 30 faculty and students at the university, you probably are too.

While I have sympathy for whatever illness drove the gun man to kill so many people before apparently taking his own life, I’m mad too. It’s one thing to take your own life, it’s a whole other story to take innocent people along with you.

I’m not so old that I don’t remember what it was like to be in college. The days filled with more free time than time spent in class. The nights spent partying or hanging out with friends pondering the meaning of life. The injustice of having only a few dawn hours to write a 10-page paper when we had known about the deadline for two weeks. Despite sometimes feeling like life was so hard, we had the freedom of being supported by Mom and Dad’s dime and the choice of how we wanted to spend our time. Life was good.

One student in a classroom on the floor above where the shootings took place said her class heard the shooting, but thought it was hammering from an ongoing construction project in the area. And really, in that environment, should anyone have thought anything else?

I’m sad for all of the families and friends and fellow students mourning loved ones today. And I’m pissed about someone who was so cowardly and so angry that he could not go out by himself, but had to alter so many lives in the process. What he did was unconscionable.

In such an awful situation, I feel it’s the victims who deserve to be remembered and talked about more than the coward who killed them. May God bless them all.