It never is supposed to happen to you, but then it does. We are always the voyeur, ringing our fingers, wiping the sweat from our brow, but somehow safe, because, the people injured or murdered tug at our hearts, but our hearts are never pulled and shredded. Other towns, other cities, other people, we watch the first responders, we hear the tears, we see the reporters trying to find the facts, and filling us sometimes with fiction. Then we listen to the excuses, the calls for immediate action, and the response of not now, its too soon. Everyone is a Maven, and no one knows exactly what to do, and the mayhem churns and churns and churns and churns…
I grew up in Pittsburgh, Squirrel Hill was MY neighborhood. I am Jewish. I still have family and friends in Squirrel Hill. I have celebrated Mitzvot and Tree of Life. I am an American. I have contacted many friends and family just to ask the simple question, are you safe, secure. I am waiting to hear the names of the people, for whom the answer of safe and secure may never be answered.
Where is the justice, when the answer to gun violence is “if someone inside the synagogue had a murder weapon, perhaps more would have survived?” Where is the truth when he who spews division, divide, and derogatory comments as easily as inhaling oxygen, looks in the camera and says “there is too much hate!” One more mass murder, one more day in the life of this nation, and one more moment when time stops for the victim and their families, but time will move on as if it was no big deal…that is until it happens again!
My hometown, my neighborhood, now part of a statistic that is created by human, and COULD be stopped by humans…but we are too frail too inept, too lazy to take on issues of life and death. It never is supposed to be so intimate of a horrific event…but then it is…and to whom it happens life will never be the same. How do we permit this to go on and on and on and on and on……….
