20 families will not have Christmas this year.  They will never have Christmas again - not really.  Time may heal all wounds but the scars remain.  At the speed of a bullet the DNA of an entire family is rewritten, and the people that may be molded and remade are not the same people as yesterday.

This morning they kissed their children and sent them off with a "have a good day."  Or perhaps not.  Perhaps they quarreled and parted with a "be good today or else."  It doesn't matter.  No one parted with the thought that it was THE parting.  But then, we never do.  We go about each day, doing what we must, accomplishing what we can - acknowledging what is most important in life but seldom acting in harmony with that.  Because there is always time.  Right up until there isn't.

Don't ask "why".  Or ask it, but know that it is futile.  What answer could be given that would satisfy?  That would bring closure where none is possible?  It is a black hole of logic.  Bring all your sane and rational thoughts and watch them be devoured whole.

So what can we do?  However we react, it will be wrong.  Buddhism teaches that hatred and violence are never solved through hatred and violence but through love alone.  Gandhi said, "we will meet your capacity to inflict suffering with our capacity to endure it."  I believe in these things; with all of my heart I believe in them. But how do you love something that is truly evil?  How do we endure something like this?  I'm not sure I am strong enough.  I'm not sure we are strong enough.

Every event like this destroys a piece of me.  Harden my heart, and lose part of my humanity.  Leave my heart open to it, and lose hope.  What kind of choice is that?

I search desperately for comfort knowing full well it too is a futile search.  There is no comfort to be found here.  How could there be?

How do we move forward in a world where something like this happens, and knowing that it is just a matter of time before it happens again?  How do parents send their children off to school on Monday?  How do I send ours off in a few years?  How do we go about our lives knowing that everything can be shattered in an instant?

I don't know.

I just know that we will.

"Can a man be brave if he is scared?"
"That is the only time a man can be brave."

We are scared, but we are brave.  We have to be.  It is the only way.