I was reading a blog post yesterday by an EMT who was describing the consequences of not wearing seatbelts. He went into some detail about the various things that happen to a body when it goes from moving, say, 40 m.p.h. to 0 m.p.h in the space of a second. There were obvious things, like hitting your head on the windshield or being ejected from the vehicle. But there were less intuitive injuries, like internal organs being sliced in two by tendons as they rush to the front of the ribcage, or femurs being driven up through the pelvis. It was horrifying to consider all the ways the body reacts to what the author called “free floating energy.”
I thought about this some more this morning in the wake of the insane shootings at Virginia Tech. Before I was a parent, my reaction to tragedies like these centered mostly on the victims. Think of what they lost. Think of the things they’ll never get to do or see or be.
But today I find myself thinking of the parents. How do you handle something like this, when your child’s life comes to such an abrupt, unexpected end? What happens to all that love and pride and concern, when it suddenly has no attachment? What becomes of all those memories?