Sandy Hook and the Loss of Possibilities

I have a cousin who lives in Connecticut. She and her husband run a gourmet food shop on the coast. I emailed her after the tragedy in Sandy Hook, saying I knew it wasn’t that close to her, but that if something like that happened anywhere in Mass., I’d think of it as very close to home. She told me that it was quiet, very quiet in her shop and around town.

The quiet is very telling, isn’t it? It’s a way of sharing in it. It’s a way of showing we are all affected by it.

I couldn’t be quiet for too long, though. I spent some time with my cousins and their kids, altogether seven children under the age of 11. There’s no such thing as quiet with that crew.
But the adults knew. We said not a word, lest the older ones hear. But they knew, too. It’s the quiet that binds us.

I wish the know-it-all, so-called pundits would just shut up and be quiet, too.

I don’t want to hear about gun control.

I don’t care what his diagnosis was.

I don’t care if you think she was a bad mom or a good mom or if they were divorced or rich, or if he was a skinny awkward kid. All of those things are true of millions of people and they don’t kill anyone.
Just tell me what happened. I want to know that. I want to know how the kids are. I want to know how their parents are. Some people say the constant coverage makes the murderer a hero and people will copy him. Really? Murder little children because you saw it on TV? Surely it takes more than that.

I want TV coverage, lots of it. This is how we share the experience in the modern age. It doesn’t take three days for the Pony Express to get the word to us. CNN does it instantly. I want that. I need that in a tragedy. I want to know that other people are asking the same questions I am. Just spare me the speculation about the workings of his inner mind. And especially stop talking about “indicators” or we’ll end up incarcerating every awkward teenager who doesn’t laugh on cue or cry hard enough.

There’s a piece making its way around the Internet: “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” by Liza Long, although that wasn’t the original title. I was mortified when I read it. She lumps her son in with mass murders because he has violent outbursts. People who like the piece say it’s about the failure of our mental health system.

One of my dearest friends and I have been going back and forth on email about the article. My friend insists the writer is brave and honest. I insist that her son will think his mother’s greatest expectation of him is that he will be a mass murderer. She says I’m blaming his mother. I say, she’s simply hurting his feelings. She could’ve left that paragraph out and still made her point.

I’m not saying this writer is wrong. Maybe there is no hope for her child. Maybe he is doomed to be a loser. But does he have to hear it from his mother? Pray tell, how does that help? Who does that help?

I know it’s compli­cated when a child has severe problems. I’m willing to admit that my thinking is simplistic. But lots of parents with children who have violent outbursts expect their children to live full, productive lives. They know how extra hard it will be, but they keep at it. They are not clueless and in denial. They are being advocates and insisting that their children have the chance to be all they can be, whatever that may look like in the end. They would never allow their children to think that being a mass murderer was in the mix with tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor. They look instead for the spark that will grow into a light that will lead the way to a happy life. And when they find that spark, they make sure their child can see it.

We all need to let our young people know that they have possi­bili­ties, because they do. They have all the possibility of America. Our politicians need to stop talking about our decline and how our kids will be miserable and hopelessly mired in debt.

If this man had seen possibilities in his future, would he have thrown it all away to become infamous? His fellow classmates say he was brilliant, maybe even a genius. Why didn’t he become a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates? That’s the possibility of America. Why didn’t he believe that he could be president? That’s the possibility of America. Why didn’t he get a great job in New York like so many of his neighbors? That’s the possibility of America.

If the corporate life didn’t appeal to him, why didn’t he start his own business. Pet rock anyone? This is America. Anything is possible. If the suburban colonials of his hometown didn’t appeal to him, why didn’t he understand that he could go anywhere in the 50 states by just...going? No papers, no passes, just a ride. So many possibilities awaited him, on the ocean, in the great big country out west, in the mountains, in the cities.

So many possibilities. All wasted. All gone.

Twenty small children killed. Six women killed. He killed his mother first. That surely will mean something to the shrinks. But what? And does it matter? Will it help prevent another young loser from doing the same thing?

Possibilities. They need to know that they have possibili­ties. No matter how screwed up they are, or how unintelligent the tests say they are, or how off-the-charts-brilliant they are, or how awkward they are, or how hard they find it to read, or how hard they find it to sit in one place, or how much they hate their lives, they need to know that there are possibilities for them.

We have to make those possibilities real for them. No more leaving people behind because they can’t do something just the “right” way. Everyone can make a contribution of some kind. Just ask anyone who works with the so-called disabled.

We all have possibilities.

It’s time we started pointing them out to those who think they have none, so they stop stealing the possibilities from innocent little kids whose possibilities were still as wide as the world itself, whose sparks had not yet even been defined.

What’s next, asked Dr. Baldwin (page 4). There is no next, he said. “I don’t know what can happen lower than this.”

Surely, we can map out greater expectations for our young people than aspiring to be the lowest of the low.