The world we live in

I've had to curtail my daily newspaper habit this week after the massacre of 19 children in Texas.

I had just stopped imagining myself being shot at my neighborhood ShopRite, like those poor souls grocery shopping in Buffalo. But lately I have imagined myself frantically running into my sons' elementary school to rescue them from an armed maniac. 

Even though they are now 28 and 25 years old. Even though they moved onto middle school in the mid 2000s. Even though they never had to see a classmate shot to death at a desk, much less play dead to live.

One son is now a pediatrician who has to warn parents about keeping their guns safely stored. One is a graduate student who often asks me why I want to read or watch bad news when it just makes me sad.

Point taken: As a longtime journalist, it's an incessant habit. So with the kind of killing that happened in Texas and has been in our faces for days, it's impossible if you have any heart not to grieve. One hundred and eighty-five kids and teachers have been killed in school shootings since 1999.  

They go by one name: Columbine. Newtown. Parkland. The roll call of death in school shootings has its own entry on Wikipedia. 

And so I watch and read, something I recently advised my mother to do less of. Because when she asked me with a catch in her voice a day after those babies were killed with the kind of weapon even a hunter wouldn't be cruel enough to use, she was truly sad. 

What kind of world are we living in? she asks me frequently. 

She worries about the grandchildren: when they drive, when they're with friends, and yes, when they go to school. That's a newer one, foisted on her by the kind of violence we can't imagine. Except when we can.

What kind of world are we living in? 

A more pointed question for mom might be: What kind of world are we living in now? Because her world -- for many of her 87 years -- was a far different place. Yes, she is old enough to remember the Depression, the second world war, the murder of a president in broad daylight, Vietnam. 

But she was wrapped up in raising five children, so her history was personal. Parts of it were as unfathomable to us as the idea that you can drop your kids off at school and never see them again. 

Mom had enough of her own sadness to withstand, so what she was reading in the newspaper or seeing on TV was secondary.

Now, she lives alone and the world has changed and we are saturated with sadness. She spends a good part of her day with the TV on, sometimes as background noise while she balances her checkbook or talks on the phone. 

But when bad things happen, the volume goes up and the TV fairly shouts horror. The Ukraine. COVID. The Capitol riot. People being pushed in front of subway trains or shot because they don't look like the rest of white America. Religions that prey on kids. Parents who prey on kids.   

And guns that can rip children to shreds.

What kind of world are we living in? One in which even mom will absorb the latest bad news and go on with her life. It's what we do. We do it well.

It doesn't mean we should. 

Fort Worth Star Telegram