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Beslan

September 14, 2004 | Category: Not The Nightly News



I have been haunted by the Beslan tragedy.

I haven't been sleeping well. I have been hugging and snuggling my son within an inch of his life. I have set up a little workstation in my office and I've been having him "work" next to me when CD is doing other things. I don't care what that does to my job.

I am becoming even more overprotective, and I'm probably doing all sorts of un-good things to my son's psyche. It won't last; it's just for now. Until I find a way to buffer myself from this reality, and believe that it won't happen here. That it can't happen here.

I've done it before. Columbine. 9/11. I've seen the horrors before, and been afraid, and found a way to find again a sense of safety - real or imagined - in my little world.

Soon, I will once again blithely bring my son to the little schoolroom with the aquarium full of goldfish and the clock that tweets the hour and believe he is in a safe place.

But for now, I am haunted by adults who plan to harm children. I keep thinking about how it wasn't one screwed up homicidal sonofabitch that accidentally killed some kids. I keep thinking that these adults, these holy warriors, planned it. Looked through lens of a weapon and saw chubby cheeked little faces, and felt vindicated in squeezing the trigger.

I am nauseated with confusion. What cause is more important than the moral imperative as a species to nurture and protect the next generation to be better than ourselves?

How do you deny humanity and target the most innocent, most vulnerable amongst us?

I keep thinking, those kids. Those frightened kids.

Kids who believed in fairies and superheroes. Kids who believed that mommy kisses magically make hurts all better. Kids who believed that monsters could live under the bed. And then the monsters came into their classrooms and tortured them And the monsters looked like adults - the kind that checked their teeth at the dentist's office or coached their football teams.

Kids who died, after suffering hours of pain and fear and learning that their protectors - teachers and parents - were helpless to save them.

I have been haunted by Beslan.

How? When did killing children - deliberately, painfully - become a group activity aimed at any purpose? When did this become our world? I thought 9/11 was the depths of depravity, and now I no longer have the imagination to know how low we will go.

I have been haunted by Beslan.

I am afraid.

10 Comments:


Jim said...

Me too. We live in a neighborhood where everybody watches everybody's kids. They play here, next door, down the street and we parents just keep a general eye around for the gang of children.

We used to, anyway. Now the kids next door check in with their mom a couple times a day, our kids don't go more than a house either way and we've all gone over the no talking to strangers rule again.



9:13:45 PM
 



Anna said...

I'm afraid too. All the time. Before Beslan. That only makes it worse. Actually, every day and every news item and the fact that it's another day with even _more_ love for my child make it worse. I wonder how I'll have the courage to let my son go anywhere in this world.



10:05:25 PM
 



Anna said...

meant to say also that this was a beeautiful, eloquent post.



10:05:57 PM
 



NotDonnaReed said...

You said it perfectly. There is nothing more important than our moral imperative to take care of children -- any children, not just our own. The people who perpetrated that disaster were psychopaths, vile criminals, and nothing more.



7:50:46 AM
 



Jenny said...

My thoughts exactly. Thank you for this incredibly moving post.



1:32:13 PM
 



Tammy said...

You have put my feelings into words, and you have done it well. What an excellent piece of writing! I'm torn between crying due to the topic, and wanting to show this post to my English class as an example of what I expect from them!



4:58:56 PM
 



Rude Cactus said...

These things should haunt all of us. What we see in events such as these are the ultimate depths to which desperate people can sink. Sadly I think there's always going to be some desperation in the world making it very hard to stop things like these from happening again. There are no easy answers.



6:26:08 AM
 



Beth said...

Wow. Thanks for saying that.



10:09:35 AM
 



kalisah said...

I've gotten to where I can hardly watch the news anymore. If I do, I'm afraid that I will become a paranoid hermit and never leave my home and never let my child out of my sight. And I can't live like that. So I have to turn a blind eye or it will eat me up inside.

I have to believe that there are not millions of terrorists out there waiting to kill us all. I have to believe that it only happens occasionally and the chances of it happening to me & mine are slim to none. I have to go on living.

So I try not to dwell on these things. I try not to watch the news. I avoid talking about it. I avoid feeling it. If I ignore it, maybe it won't be true.

That being said, if I were to recognize my feelings on this, it would be exactly what you said.

Thanks for saying it.



5:43:41 PM
 



Helen said...

God, I have been too. Especially about this gorgeous little 6-year-old girl who ran back in the building to find her mother, then the building blew up.

The little girl has been found alive.

I wept like a baby reading that.

And the mother who had to choose between her children? I was a wreck, I can't imagine how she felt. It all hurts so much, and I don't even have children.



2:09:23 AM
 



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