Where Was I?

      I cannot express in words the deep sorrow that filled my soul on the day of the shooting in the elementary school in Newtown, CT. Somehow, I doubt that I need to, as most of you felt the exact same sorrow on that day and for the days that followed. Immediatly, I thought of Soph, who was with my brother and sister-in-law, in FL. I felt so sick about the whole thing I couldn't feel my arms. How could this happen? How are the parents ever going to cope? This is something we have to worry about now? An elementary school? God help them.
     2012 held a great amount of change for our family.  We were constantly riding the current of a sometimes fast and furious, sometimes tortuously slow transition into Los Angeles from NYC, back to NYC, and then back to LA.  Every decision hinged on what was best for Sophie and her future.  I went to work full time briefly in LA, while Eric had a slow time for a few months.  Then Eric caught a wave and was working like crazy and I was once again able to be with Sophie full time.  My point is, at every moment of every day, our children are with us, whether they are physically there or not.  They drive our decisions and thus everything that comes to be in our lives.  Our life becomes something more than we could imagine, constantly being pushed outside the boundaries of what we know.   With that being snatched from underneath our fellow parents in a moment, it's difficult to imagine how they'll go on.
     It is impossible to speak to what those families must be going through.  They have been separated and they are going to need a great measure of faith to get through this separation.  I believe those children are in heaven now and that they are experiencing peace beyond our understanding.  It is all those left behind...the families of the departed, the survivors, and the world that mourns them all, that have to find a way to get through this life without them and without the surety of what we previously defined as safe and secure.  We are all forever changed.
     How do we go on?  After just standing in disbelief for days straight, we have to focus on the life those children did have, on the teachers who acted as heroes, and on a world who is left with a demand for change.
     Eric called me crying the day of the tragedy, which happened to be the same day that they would record his new tv show.  The show is to be comedy, something to help people escape the tragedies life brings us and cope with laughter at the silly shenanigans of pretend characters and situations.  He felt as  the rest of us parents, that he could see nothing else that day.  I told him that we would be dealing with the reality of this tragedy for many days to come, but he had a responsibility today.  He had to think that there will be a time when these families need to laugh, need to escape their tragic reality and this is a show that could help them...even one of them.  Focus on your artistic responsibility to tell a story that will, for a brief moment, bring someone some joy, or at the very least draw their attention from the stark reality of their lives.  In the next few hours, he and the rest of the brilliant cast, put the world outside, and brought the audience into a world where we could laugh and awww at their mishaps and silliness.  Comedy is really a beautiful sort of therapy.
     In the days that have followed Eric and I have both cried tears for those directly effected and for the new reality that we all live in wherein things like this do actually happen.  I hope and pray for those parents that by the grace of God, they find a way to survive this tragedy.

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