A Monday to be remembered

This is a Monday that will not soon be forgotten. We have too many days like that now. Too many days that people do unspeakable things to other people for a bad, wrong, or no reason at all. The people who were sitting in class today didn't ask to be remembered but they will be. By cell phone cameras and recordings, by eyewitness accounts. By pictures we will undoubtedly see on television in the days that follow. These people will be remembered because one person wanted to be seen and heard. How sad. That the many should suffer at the hands of one.

We have become such a desensitized society that numbers don't haunt us like they should. The number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan the last few years alone should be enough to incite riots and protests to bring those left standing home safely to their families. But those numbers are too big. We are used to the big numbers. Strange how it is the smaller numbers that get us. When the death toll kept rising today people got more and more upset and outraged and wanted action against the university. The fact is the university couldn't have stopped what had happened. It was tragic and it happened. I don't think placing blame and pointing fingers will help. The families need to feel love and support and to know that their child will be remembered however tragic this incident.

I thought back today to the night of the fire in my dorm in college and how we stood outside and watched it burn through the windows. We knew fear that night. But not life and death fear like the students today. That night, at 2 a.m. I called my parents collect to tell them what had happened and that I was OK. I have never heard more relief in my mother's voice than I did that night when I had made it to my aunt's safely. I kept thinking today how horrible it must have been for every single person who knew someone at Virginia Tech University today to have that moment, minutes, hour or hours of not knowing that relief.

My prayer tonight is that the families know where their children are and that this violence that seems to sweep across our world and desensitize us to horrible things will end. That it will become so intolerable that people won't stand for it anymore.