Dec 15, 2012

‘I’m going, to Sandy Hook okay?...'


I’m both asking my wife and daughter permission and telling them. Ann knows I have to go. Maitreya, in her own way – knows the same. Its dark out, night’s fallen. Ann holds me in a loving, stern look, says ‘Text us, promise?’, delivered in the concerned tone of someone who knows sadness comes in pairs, and doesn’t want grief’s twin visiting her with news of anothe
r, untimely accident.

But since the tragedy occurred, I’ve been of little use at home. Disengaged, absent. A cardboard cut out, taking up space, incapable of being fully dimensional. Until tonight, laying in bed at 5pm when suddenly I heard myself say ‘Go there’. It was the first thing that’s made sense since sense was lost to the blur of shock. I gather my cell phone, wallet, keys. Kiss the girl’s.

And feel Ann stare after me as I walk out, because she knows two very important things about me: 1. I have a big heart. 2. I have an astoundingly bad sense of direction. We both know she could walk outside in an hour and find me stuck in the driveway, trying to find the road. But thanks to GPS, I escape my own driveway. And I’m on my way.

I stop to buy flowers, not wanting to show up empty handed. I walk the aisles, and the enormity of what’s happened uproots me momentarily. I’m no stranger to grief, sadness or death. And I am well familiar with the country called despair in which they are located.

I also know firsthand, that access to that country is only granted to those willing to have their emotional passport stamped by fear, reluctance and heartbreak. I walk around the grocery store sad. As if, by acknowledging I will visit devastation personally, I may not return. I feel light-headed and look fondly at strangers from the corner of my eye – I may never see people again, and I’m taking in all I can before I depart.

And then I leave. My body. I don’t know if it's a talent, or a curse. And I can’t do it consciously. It seems to happen only when other people are under real duress. It's a kind of parlor trick for the sensitive. Our mind slips out of body like a naughty school kid sheds her jacket on the playground. Maybe the body can’t handle the emotional pain, so we leave – and do our work in the aethers sans flesh.

And probably, it’s why I want to be on the ground where people died. I want to extend the goodness of mind to the children, try and embrace them in kind intent, help guide them at a time when they are truly, lost. The only problem is, I’m still at Stop ‘N Shop. Trying to buy $9 flowers wrapped in plastic while viewing reality from an oblique right angle. Because the downside of consciousness-slipping is I see everything as if I’m lying on my side.

I fumble for my ATM card. But my fingers are like #2 pencils and after a few seconds of stabbing at the hard plastic I mange to spastically fling it across the counter. It falls on the conveyor belt. I make a lame joke about being spaced out. The cashier is from Heaven because she hears me say between the lines ‘I am going to Sandy Hook. My fingers, are pencils’. And without a word, swipes my card while I punch in numbers.

Interstate 95 gives way to the Merritt Parkway, which melts into a dark, single lane road. I ask my protectors to protect and my guides to, well – guide, because I suck at it. I also ask – myself – out loud, ‘what’s the plan?’, as I angrily turn on the radio and Stevie Wonder comes on, reminds me ‘…I hope and pray each day I live, a little more love I’ll have to give, a little more love that’s devoted and true…’ And right on cue I see a house with a huge white sheet draped over the door – the words God Bless Sandy Hook spray-painted in blue. I am here. The town is achingly quaint – single roads, charming stores. And police, media and road blocks everywhere. The road to the school is closed, so I walk the half-mile.

I pass numerous young Japanese couples, giggling and laughing. I pass people crying, a young couple arguing where to go for drinks. I keep my head down, ashamed with my cheap flowers and out of body delusions I can help. And then, I’m there. Or at least, as far as I’m willing to go. A memorial to the children, teachers.

Police are everywhere. I stand numbly, looking at the cards, flickering candles. Angel Wings, hung off the Sandy Hook School sign. But what stands me up straight are the stuffed animals. Plush friends meant to comfort, oddly atop hard concrete in dark of night where no child would ever be. What in god’s name am I doing here.

Media in every language, every country vying for real estate. A pretty woman with an intolerant Brit accent curses the ‘fucking crowd…’ as she pushes her cameraman between people for a live shot. A mother – three kids and husband in tow, walks to the memorial on stiff legs.

She has a bag of stuffed animals. She manages to take one out, lay it down, then collapses in tears. Her husband leads her away. Her teen kids, unsure what to do, leave the bag of teddy bears and quietly, dutifully follow. A grim faced woman shouts at her son, pulls him to the memorial. Where they turn and slap on big smiles while her husband takes a picture.

A young girl next to me sobs out loud, turns, apologies. It is a strange, uncomfortable amalgam of opportunity, grief and non-sense. I walk a few feet, kiss the plastic covering the flowers and lay them down. I am also sucking in breath through my open mouth, because suddenly it is hard to breathe. I no longer want to be here. It's a burial ground and I’ve trespassed. I would give anything to be sideways again, out of body. Unfeeling.

Like Dorothy clicking her heels, I’m now trying to consciously will myself away, ‘There’s no place like home…’. But it doesn’t work that way. Spirit, mind, consciousness, love…knows where you should be, and how you should be there. And right now, I could not be more sober, conscious or aware of exactly where I am.

Walking back to the car I pass people as they head to the school. Someone grabs my arm, a woman in her 50’s, two teen girls by her side. She shouts at me in a language so ancient its carved in stone somewhere. Estonian? Balkan? I don’t know what she’s yelling, but she’s desperate. She is imploring me and I cannot help her. ‘School…? The School…!?’, I ask, scared.

I want to both help her and to tell her ‘Don’t go…there’s nothing we can do’. I find a store, buy beer in a can. Find a dark parking lot, drink. And cry. At home, Ann says ‘How was it?’. And for the first time, I realize – it’s unfinished. You can feel everything there. It’s oddly still, but the air’s full of emotion and energy. Ours. The children’s. Teachers. You can feel them, amid flashing lights and camera’s and sadness.

It is raw and palpable. Bluntly touchable and achingly sad. And – if we are lucky, we’ll never whisk ourselves home. Not if home is unfeeling, uncaring, forgetting. But if true home is the place where we can’t help but hurt, can’t help but feel and cannot turn away from the sadness and need of others, then we are there. And we should never, ever leave.