33 Dead

I was home all day, nursing a sore throat and avoiding Wet New Jersey (roads closed in all directions). A. told me about the shootings in VA. when he came in. We switched on the news, but really, what else is there to learn, except why, and that wasn’t forthcoming.

When something bad like this happens, so evil and devastatingly sad, I kind of split myself in two. The part of me that could insert itself into all that grief, as if I’d been there, as if I were a parent of one of those kids, goes far away, and the part of me that is left is silent, aware only of the immensity of the wrong.

But then for a moment they showed on the tv police carrying a young man the build of Ben, and I felt lacerated and suffocated.