1888 Days

It’s December 14, 2012 and I’m riding a bus from Hollywood to Aventura mall. It would be a 30 minute drive. It’s a 90 minute bus ride. I’m reading a book. I arrive at the mall and walk to the retail establishment where my dead-end job is located. I tell myself I hate my life. I’ll feel like an idiot about that feeling very soon.

I punch in and then jump on line. There’s been a shooting at a school in a little New England town no one I know has heard of. I know Sandy Hook, Connecticut because my sister lives there. A few blocks from the school. I call her and she doesn’t answer.

I know my niece and nephew don’t attend that school but it’s still, literally, too close to home. I am a father of four and I’ve always had a soft spot for kids so any tragedy involving a child always hits too damn close to home.

We will later this day learn that twenty children and six faculty members will die in that school. They are the victims of a sick young man who will also die there. His day began with the murder of his mother, ended in that school, and lives in infamy.

1888 days later, I am at work. No longer in retail and I drove myself to work this morning. I hear from a coworker about a shooting at Marjory Stoneman-Douglas High School. I can’t say I had an immediate, visceral reaction. I was too busy and caught up in my hectic day to focus on the news. I felt a touch of concern and said a silent prayer, and went on about my day. I would later find out that 17 have lost their lives. As a father, and as a member of the human race, I am sickened.

It’s Valentine’s Day. I wonder if they choose memorable dates because of their insecurity. I wonder if they want to make sure we remember the day. Was this kid enamored with the thought of being the architect of the New Valentine’s Day Massacre. Maybe that’s why he ran up the score.

We mourn the loss and we try to imagine what the parents of the lost children are feeling even as we know we can’t imagine it and we pray we never will understand it. We cry. We hug our children a little tighter and a little longer.

And we politicize it.

The members of congress and other selected officials tell us what we already know: that this is a time to mourn. It’s a time to put our political differences aside. It’s a time for healing.

I didn’t know we need the government’s permission to experience these perfectly natural human feelings. I didn’t know the people in the ivory towers were better equipped to deal with this than we were. Thank God for these benevolent super-humans. Where would we be without them?

The thing is every time an elected official calls for peace and prayers and understanding in the wake of tragedy, they are, quite simply, politicizing the tragedy. They are, politically at least, seeking to profit from it.

In this digital, 24-hour news cycle world, we’re too quick to assign blame, send thoughts and prayers, and share in the pain, even if only digitally. We go on social media to share our shock and hurt and inevitably run into a partisan who is assigning blame and offering his cockeyed solutions. Our moment of sadness dies prematurely, is cremated by the flames of anger and we never properly grieve. We bury the dead in the dark as we bask in the glow of their martyrdom… until the next shiny object comes along.

I don’t know what the solution to this problem is. Unlike too many people, I can admit it that. I know there is no gun law that could have stopped this tragedy. If there was, I would support it. I know people bringing up the shooter’s political affiliation are as low and opportunistic as those seeking to restrict the rights granted by the U.S. Constitution. I know more guns would not solve the problem, unless they are in the hands of someone standing between the killers and the kids. I know society failed this young sick young man and as a result, countless lives are ruined.


I must be Socrates because all I know is that I know nothing.

Adolfo Jimenez is an author, poet, and blogger. He lives in Hollywood, Florida. He has published eight books, which you can find here.







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