Apr. 19, 2007 – Originally published by CNC, Inc.

The World Weeps For Virginia Tech

There are times when the world weeps. There are events that make every man and woman pause, shaken to the core by what people — people that they don’t even know — have lost. Part of our humanity is awakened by tragedy that hits a stranger: our empathy, our remembering of our common vulnerability in this shaky old life. This past Monday was one of those days. The whole world wept at the campus shootings at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, with 32 innocent students and faculty killed. The gunman, a young Asian man, then killed himself. Humanity can break your heart sometimes.

Mothers and fathers that I don’t know got up Monday morning, made the coffee and let the dog out. They chose their clothes for the day, watered a plant, and listened to their messages on the answering machine that they were too busy to collect the night before. They straightened the photograph in the silver frame there on the kitchen counter, a habit they got into in September. When was that taken — at the picnic, or was that down at the Cape last summer? They trace that irrepressible grin with a finger. The person in the photo, the person they love most in the world, was busy starting their own day at college, where they went seven months ago full of dreams and plans and their first credit card, a bunch of new clothes, and their trusty computer. Hopeful of what they might be able to contribute as a grown-up; a real grown-up. The new generation, just starting to feel more grown up, just getting their legs under them. Mom and dad had finally learned to let go, had become used to the empty room down the hall, still full of high school memorabilia and maybe a little bit of left-over laundry from the holidays. Even the laundry makes mom smile; it carries the hint of their child still in its folds. This letting-go has gone all right, mom and dad think. And summer is almost here, and they’ll be back. They always come back. College is a great time, they tell themselves, helping each other through the lonely times. College is full of late-night studying, football games, maybe even a first love. Who knows what good things the year will bring?

Then, Mom turns on the TV. Her heart races; why is Virginia Tech on the news ticker of CNN? She fumbles behind her for the couch, the world suddenly swirling, her heart hammering in her chest. She can’t dial the phone in her hands because she can’t keep her hands from shaking. And so begins her longest day that leads into her darkest night.

When great tragedy like this happens, I have always wished that victims’ families knew how deeply strangers grieve for them. I just wish they could know about the people standing in front of the television with tears coursing down their cheeks for parents they will never meet. I wish they could see the anguish of strangers who cannot even find the words to form a prayer. Parents are bound together by their unique understanding of how much they can love, and do love. They understand that a long time ago, their own life faded into the background as they became more interested in the life of this creature they had somehow, with God’s help, made. To have another parent lose this breaks every parent’s heart. We want to hold you in the embrace that has no words.

Here in Reading, we weep for one in particular; a graduate of Austin Prep named Ross Alameddine. We ask God to help his parents and all these parents do what they feel right now they cannot do — survive this. We try to remember the heroism that was displayed on campus Monday morning, like the Holocaust survivor, 80 years old, who threw himself in the path of the gunman so that his students had a chance of escaping through classroom windows. Heaven itself must have shaken with this act, as it prepared to welcome so many so quickly.

All we can offer is our help, our constancy, our prayers and our love. That best, purest kind of love that comes from goodness not of us, but of God through us, and comes from strangers who love you.