Did they remember to say I love you?

Did they remember to say, I love you?

That is my first thought. 

I am late to hear the news, face buried in my manuscript for another round of edits when Brett walks in and says, “I’m assuming you haven’t heard?” 

Heard what?

Another school shooting. Emphasis on “another.” Children. One teacher. Fourteen dead and counting.

This morning, the number is twenty-two. Nineteen children. Two adults.

I read the news with tears in my eyes and a pit in my stomach. Second, third, fourth graders. Could have been my kid. My mind becomes a runaway train. The innocent children who died. The children who survived but now live with the nightmares and trauma of having watched their friends get murdered in front of their eyes. The adults who witnessed the bloodbath, heard the sounds of frightened children screaming. The parents who dropped their kids off at school and watched them hop out of the car with their Spiderman backpacks, like they’ve done hundreds of times, before pulling out of the parking lot and driving to work or to the grocery store thinking about a multitude of insignificant things.

Did they remember to say, I love you?

Did I tell my kids I loved them yesterday when they walked out the front door at 8:24am?

I think about how chaotic our mornings are sometimes, with the lost shoes and incessant pounding of the Star Wars theme song on the piano and the don’t forget your water bottles and did you brush your teeth and that lunch better have fruit in it and, and, and. 

I will not even pretend to have extensive experience with death because at this point in my life, thankfully, I do not. But I think, and perhaps I am wrong, that when someone dies, it’s common to play your last interaction with them on a loop. The last conversation. The last thing you said to them. The last time you saw them. What they were wearing. What kind of mood they were in. What kind of mood you were in. Were you smiling? Were you irritated?

And this is the thing that is breaking me right now, the thing shattering my heart into a thousand pieces: thinking of those last interactions playing on a loop in the minds of the grieving parents. The inevitable regret is too much to bear. Because when I think of my own interactions with my kids throughout the day, not all of them are pleasant. And I want to believe, my God do I want to believe, that my kids know how much I love them. That you could freeze time on any given day, and no matter what last words were spoken, they would know down to their core how much I love them. 

I want to turn away from this. I want to shut off the news and look the other way. But I cannot—I will not—grow numb to this story. Those parents who were called to identify tiny lifeless bodies did not have an option to look away. 

I cannot stop thinking of the Sandy Hook parents and survivors, who are re-living their trauma right now.

I cannot stop thinking of all the teachers heading to classrooms today, wondering if they will be next. 

I cannot stop thinking of how angry I am to live in a country that values the second amendment over the lives of children. I cannot stop thinking of that truck I saw once, with two bumper stickers stacked on top of each other: one about being pro-life and one about the NRA. I shook my head when I saw it. Today, I want to scream. 

Just this week, in my city, a gun was found in the desk of a second-grader.

Just this week, in a city that neighbors mine, a high school student was taken into custody after being found with both a gun and a list of students he wished to harm.

Once upon a time, I would have been too scared to talk about guns on the Internet, fearful of the impending backlash. Today, I do not care if anyone knows where I stand: if a nationwide gun ban was on the ballot tomorrow, I would vote yes without hesitation.

Brett and I stay up late, talking in the dark, trying to make sense of everything that makes no sense. We confess our fears. We admit how terrifying it is to be a parent. 

We talk to Everett about what happened. We lay out the facts. We call it what it is: evil. We talk about guns, about mental health, about living in a broken world. We remind him that God is with us, that God is sad about this. 

I drive the boys to school in a quiet car. I drop them off, just like all the parents did yesterday at Robb Elementary. They hop out with their LEGO backpacks on their backs, and I yell out “I love you!”

Everett doesn’t say it back, so I say it again. And again. And again. He knows I won’t stop until he says it himself. He smiles at me, and says, “I love you” the way kids do when they’re thinking geez Mom, stop it already.

I’ll take it. 

Carson returns the phrase the first time because he is seven and not yet too cool to tell his mom he loves her in the school drop-off. 

When I get home, the sun is shining through the living room window, beaming through a sticker a friend sent me in the mail, casting rainbows across the floor. Today is the due date of the baby I lost in October. She remembered.

How does one heart and mind hold all of this in a single day? The pain and loss and death and ache and sorrow and anger and lament and rage? I still don’t know.

Today I will get dressed and take Presley to the local nursery. I will buy flowers to plant in the dirt, both in memory of the baby I lost and as an act of stubborn hope. I will bake chocolate chip cookies to keep my hands busy, so when my children, God willing, come home from school today, I will have a gift to offer them for no reason other than it is Wednesday.

I will make a donation to Moms Demand Action. I will read up on where my elected officials land on gun reform, and send emails or make phone calls accordingly. I will do research on gun sense candidates and fill out my primary ballot. I will write cards to my children’s teachers, thanking them for the courage they channel every day simply by showing up to a classroom.

And I will pray. With tears in my eyes, all day long, I will pray. For the parents who said I love you at drop-off yesterday, and especially for the ones who didn’t.