How is a parent meant to carry on when their child is ripped away from them???

I wanted to post on Tuesday…we had witnessed a pretty disturbing sight on Sunday night, but the more I thought about sitting down and writing about it the more my heart broke open. So I prayed, and meditated about it and thought; “ok, perhaps I’ll write about it on Friday, after my WWYDW, and follow up response.”

But my WWYDW never happened. It never happened because instead of me rambling on about What Would You Do if your vet, to be clear our LA vet, not our Toronto vet threw away the masses that he removed from your dog’s tail instead of sending them off to a lab to be tested?? Seemed absolutely trivial once I heard about the kids who were shot dead, yet again, while attending school.

The two things in tandem have truly knocked the wind out of me. I cry at the drop of a hat, and have felt myself catching my breath on more than one occasion. And the guilt, that same strange guilt from the day our Mikaela made it out of Paris, so close to the cafe attacks, hits again. Why their child and not mine???

By the grace of God, that’s why.

First on Sunday, while on our way to dinner, we drove by a young man lying on the PCH after having just been struck by a car. The first responders had just arrived and they were working feverishly to try and bring him back to life. His skateboard visible as we drove by. We continued on our way to our dinner, and watched as the lights flashed, while they tried to save the young man, and then, once he was whisked off in an ambulance piece together what happened. We sat eating our dinner, with not much of an appetite, while witnessing the juxtaposition of life. One young man fighting for his life on the PCH, while the paparazzi swarmed Nobu, trying to “get the shot” of whoever was inside eating that night.

A boy lay dying, and the photographers could have cared less.

A mother was about to get the single worst phone call of her life; that her son was killed by a hit and run driver. While TMZ was going to get a photo messaged to them that they would later pay thousands of dollars for.

These two things happening a mile apart from one another.

What is this life???

I don’t understand how parents are meant to stand up under the weight of losing a child.

I can’t even walk by Mikaela’s room in Toronto while she’s away at school in Malibu without my eyes welling up. What if she, God forbid, was to never come home again??

It is unimaginable. We’re not supposed to live like this. Parents are not meant to bury their children.

We get pregnant. We grow our babies. We deliver them from our bodies. We nourish them. We love them. We raise them. We become enamored, invested, involved, hopeful, and flat out obsessed with them. Excited about every single accomplishment, and gutted, right alongside them with every heartbreak, and what might seem like an insurmountable failure to them. They are a part of our beings, our souls.

So, how is a parent meant to carry one when their child is ripped away from them?

How?

How?

How?

I simply cannot bear to think of all the mothers and fathers who are inconsolable right now. I cannot even begin to pretend to picture what healing for them might look like.

Do you ever heal?

I doubt it. Not completely.

I imagine that there will always be this giant hole left where their laughter, their joy, their unfulfilled dreams used to reside.

The pain cannot be fully removed because it will forever and always be a senseless act that stole them from you.

So, what are parents in America supposed to do? Keep their children home and home-school them? Never allow them to cross a street? Tell them they can’t date somebody in case he/she turns out to be a sociopath who will later go on a murderous rampage???

Going forward should we all shelter our children to the point of suffocating them, and not allowing them the freedom to grow up in the world?

Maybe. If it means keeping them safe, and out of harms way, I might consider doing it if I had young kids right now. But who is that fair for? It’s no way for a child, or a parent to live, tied to one another’s apron strings. We must let them go so they can become the people they’re meant to become…but at what cost? Possibly their lives??? That’s not what one of the risks of sending a child to school, or allowing them to go the beach, the movies, or a music concert are supposed to be.

At the end of the day, children will continue to lose their lives at not only an alarming rate on American soil, but a sinful rate. I say sinful because the only reason all these beautiful innocent children belonging to thousands of mothers and fathers are no longer with us is because of good old fashion greed, corruption, and ego. I know it’s never going to bring these kids back to their families, but I believe that one day, the karma, the payback that all these corrupt government officials will be dealt, though it will never come close to the suffering of all these families, it will at the very least come to them. And the only prayer I have is that whatever their payback is, I hope it is long, painful, and dreadful. May they not be let off the hook with any mercy, may they all be dealt such a hand by fate that there will be no mistaking that it was karma paying it back to them for allowing this to go on, and on, and on.

This is my one wish.