Six years ago today I came home from work early and spent the rest of the day glued to the T.V. and the telephone. Every channel had footage of the Columbine High School massacre taking place. The live coverage sent my heart racing as I quickly called Benny and had him call our friends three hours away in Littleton. Our friend Alan was the youth minister at the Littleton c of C, and Benny had just been there to do a retreat for them a few weeks earlier. I was worried that one of the kids we know might be trapped in the school. It turned out that one of them was. Shannon was on the last bus of the kids taken to the library to meet anxious parents. The waiting was agonizing. Not just for news of Shannon, but for news that it was finally over. Now, six years later, the last of the lawsuits has been settled or dropped. There are still unanswered questions, parents without children, a wife without her husband, and a school that remembers.
The Oklahoma City bombing was also remembered this week. I watched a mother on the news remember her two young sons that were killed in the blast. She said it gets easier, but the mourning never ends.
The Challenger exploded in front of my eyes when I was in 7th grade. Our school was watching it on T.V. and we took special interest in it because our Science teacher was one of the 100 finalists of teachers that had applied. He was in a daze the rest of the day.
On September 11th, I was at BSF when I got the news of the World Trade Center attack. I didn’t yet know about the other two flights. Someone turned on a T.V. in the auditorium just before the first building fell. I watched in horror as my mind tried to grasp that it was really happening. My very first thought was that I had to get home. My husband and baby were there and we needed to be together NOW. If anything was going to happen to me, I wanted to be with them.
T.V. can be both a blessing and a curse. It brought me news of all of these terrible tragedies. I have long since tired of eager reporters not having all of the facts before they speak, stations claiming they are the only ones with the exclusive reports, and witnessing other peoples lives being torn apart on national T.V. It’s so much to take in.
My response is the same…I want to go HOME!
Sometimes I Write 
Funny how we remember exactly where we were when these tragedies happened! And you are right, I think we all feel the immediate need to connect with our family.
When Sept 11 happened, they had the TV turned on in my class and people were crying and just in shock, and everyone wanted to go home, but the instructors made us stay… How cruel!
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