Perhaps the Mayan calendar was accurate after all. We're still physically walking the earth today but the recent event in Sandy Hook makes me question just how alive we still are.
I participated in a benefit run for Sandy Hook Elementary School this morning. About 125 runners showed up on a blustery cold first day of Winter to show solidarity and raise funds for the children of Sandy Hook. The event attracted runners from several states including champion ultramarathon runner David James. Kudos to Brian Vanderheiden for quickly organizing this event, which raised over $5,000. Brian advised us all to put our iPods & phones back in the car and use the 12 mile run to get to know each other and share our stories, about life, and about the Sandy Hook tragedy. Good call.
We kicked off at 9 AM running the first 26 seconds in total silence before proceeding to run the cold, barren course over the hills of northern Connecticut. To avoid creating more noise in a town that is already overrun, Brian organized the race to start a few towns upstate in Roxbury and finish at the center of Sandy Hook. Although grey skies, and barren trees painted a languid landscape, the inner beauty of rural Connecticut was conspicuous.
As I began the run, I couldn't get the vision of the massacre out of my mind. I pictured Adam Lanza, still a child himself, bursting into a classroom that was filled with bright young cherub faces full of pre-holiday joy with smiles on their faces, and then unleashing the wrath of a military grade weapon en mass. I couldn't stop visualizing the horror on the childrens' faces in those few moments that bridged their innocence to instant morbidity. All their hopes, dreams, joys, and relationships gone forever. Extended families decimated forever. There are no nightmares that even approach the horror that took place.
I imagined myself as one of the parents of those children. How would I feel if I dropped my daughter off for school one day and she never came home again? Unfathomable. I thought about the joy, love, happiness, pride and challenges that I have shared with Danielle - what if none of that ever happened? How incredibly empty my life would have been by comparison. What if I never got to know Danielle's friends and their parents - some of the most lasting relationships of our lives?
About 3 miles in I met Joyce. Like me, she has kids that define her life. She talked about her son, a strong swimmer, who recently did a triathlon with her. I told her how proud I was that my daughter had started running 5Ks. Then we touched on the tragedy and what the hell would we do if that ever happened? Joyce paused and then said that a part of her actually hoped that yesterday would be the actual apocalypse.....it would forever numb the pain that we're all feeling.
At mile 10, we stopped at the bridge into town to wait for the other runners. Brian had planned for all of us to run into Sandy Hook together as a sign of solidarity. While we were waiting, a woman was running past us in the opposite direction with her pitbull Grace. She stopped and told us that she lives in Sandy Hook and her son attends the Elementary School. She used to run in town but she can't take the pandemonium that has overrun Sandy Hook: "Most people mean well but we can't even go to the store to get milk. People are taking each other's pictures in front of the memorials. I'm sorry but there are no Sandy Hook T-shirts for sale. I wish it would quiet down so we can get back to our lives and sort through this."
The runners finally lined up behind a Fire Truck that escorted us the final two miles into town playing Amazing Grace. We ran in silence, perceiving the increasing solemnity of the town as we neared the center.
I now understand the decimated look on President Obama's face Sunday evening when he stared at the same ghosts that I was seeing. Evil of this magnitude is truly difficult to digest and comprehend.
One of the runners' fathers was kind enough to drive several of us back to Roxbury to get our cars. We passed the Southbury Training Institute along the way. He told us that it's nearly empty now. Funding for mental health has dried up. The deficit is too high and austerity calls for available funding to go to defense, more guns, less compassion for those who need help the most. So they go unassisted, some of them dangerous to society. Kind of a fitting ending message for today's journey. I got in my car and cried my way back home. I'm so glad that I was able to participate in this event and help the children of Sandy Hook in some tiny way, but I doubt that I'll ever see life the same way again. Perhaps the Mayans were right after all.
