Sad, angry, kind

Yesterday was a rough day. I woke to a text from our son, “If any of you are aware that there is a shooter here currently I just wanted to let you know I’m safe.” The next 39 texts were alerts from his school, The University of Virginia.

“UVA Alert: UPDATE. 1 SUSPECT IS AT LARGE, CONSIDERED ARMED & DANGEROUS.”

“UVA Alert: ACTIVE ATTACKER firearm reported in area of Culbreth Road. RUN HIDE FIGHT”

These aren’t the kinds of messages any parent wants to receive. I don’t know Charlottesville well, but I recognized the name Culbreth Road. It turns out the shooting was next door to where our son usually plays volleyball on Sunday nights; he randomly didn’t go that night. His friends who went did make it home safely. We are lucky. Three families are not, and countless others are traumatized, and it’s devastating.

I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about this and all shootings. Gun advocates can say all they want that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, but nobody can convince me that a college student could board a bus and kill 3 people with his bare hands as easily as he did it with a gun. That’s a load of bullshit. We protect gun rights more than we protect the rights of women in this country, and every day, more than 300 people are shot because of it, and more than 100 of those people are killed. It’s infuriating.

The saving grace of yesterday’s tumble of feelings were the people who reached out to check in on us. Interspersed with the updates from UVA, mixed in with the sadness and the anger and the fear, I’d get a text from a friend I haven’t heard from in a while, or a message from someone at work who knows our son is at UVA.

“You doing okay?”

“I know you’re son’s at UVA — thinking of you.”

Those small messages meant so much. They were thoughtful and gentle and kind in a time of violence, and I’m grateful.