I was up early this morning - beautiful morning by the way - with the perfection that a day in May can have… sunshine and fresh golden greenness and robins and calves and crops partly planted and silence… after a big moon last night.
So I started my morning ritual.... of blood pressure taking and recording..... pill sorting and taking .... peanut butter and cracker and banana and diet pop for breakfast (criticize all you’d like) .... an on-line jig saw puzzle or two/pure indulgence, when I decided I’d like some NEWS to listen to.
Since I do not have tv or a radio, I rely on what the computer will give me for news. Since I have the memory of a slow peacock, I typed in NPR or WPR and was offered a news story about a school shooting a while back at a Christian private school in Madison Wisconsin. Not exactly primie Mother’s Day fare but I clicked on it anyway.
I ended up with a mug shot of the father of the shooter.
https://www.wpr.org/news/bail-set-father-abundant-life-shooter-guns-daughter
Lately in the hope of decreasing school shootings, authorities have been charging the parents of the shooter with various crimes. In this case the father of the 15 year old girl who did the shooting is being charged with allowing her access to two handguns she used to kill 2 people, wound 6 more, and then end her own life. Turns out the guns were gifts from the father to the daughter - thought the girl paid for part of the second gun. The guns were safely (??!!) stored in a safe but the question is whether the girl had access to the safe.
This is the saddest of Mother’s Day stories. The mother isn’t mentioned but I assume there is one - after all we all have mothers. God designed things that way. The father in this case, in his mug shot, is striking in his knowledge, acceptance, regret, hopelessness. Imagine yourself in that situation. No don’t. There is no need for us to put ourselves in that situation. Yet… humanity demands it. If we have been lucky enough in our own lives, to not have purchased guns for our kids, to not have kids, to whatever string of judgements or bad luck that lead to having our faces bare to the world on Mother’s Day of all days.
And he’s lost his daughter.
When I hear about these senseless shootings, I always wonder why. Why did someone decide the best thing they could do was kill other people and often themselves.
There is a part of me that thinks if I could just understand what the reason was, even if it was a senseless, simply bad, reason, I could file it away in my own little plastic head. And then I could move on to the next horrible crisis. There is no shortage of course.
Sometimes I can find more information. Like how many kids were in the family, what the parents do for a living (imagine your return to work after something like this happened? there is not bright side at all to this repetitive situation). This time I didn’t look farther into the family or the shooter’s circumstances. I did find myself at the school’s website. Tuition ranges from $6000 to $10,000 a year and they have a really nice hot lunch program.
==================================================================================
I talked to son John yesterday. He has a golf club membership this year - first time - it’s connected with his job. He and Will and played nine holes yesterday. Will is getting better. Will graduates - I should know the date, but I don’t. His party is June 21st - I put it on the calendar. I suppose I will be able to go. My surgery is May 27. That is if things go well. Ha ha ha.
I remember Katie’s party. In the back yard of their house.
So anyway. Let’s all be grateful our mug shot isn’t on line. Let’s be grateful as much as we can be that our family is staying out of jail, staying out of cemeteries, and a third thing. Life is full of luck, good and bad. We have responsibilities,,,, but much of life just happens to us.
Let’s hope today is full of good happenings.
Loading comments...