Virginia Tech Horror

The pain is indescribable. My heart is so full of ache. All those young students. A day of student life broken in chards, never to be whole again. It didn't matter who you were when you heard the news. It couldn't be real. The numbers were insane. How do you wrap your mind around this horror?

Imagine. Just imagine. Sitting at your desk in the dry droll of a German class. Your mind is wandering and thinking of the next test that you didn't study for during spring break. Summer is coming soon and you have big plans. Travel to Europe. Internship at your big wish company. The normal and mundane thoughts are suddenly interrupted by a surreal dadaist nightmare.

One Virginia Tech student was interviewed and commented on the horror of watching people dying around him. My thoughts went immediately to the young soldiers in Iraq. Their ages the same and their horror as grim. All these young people in the beginnings of their adult lives...

The pundits came out immediately. Gun control. Legislation. Computer games. Hollywood violence. Everyone wants to find the reason, where to apply the blame. All of mankind's history has been riddled by violence. Violence of wars, violence against each other. This era is no more violent than the past. What's changed?

I was struck by the throw away comment by one talking head about the shooter. It seems that the shooter was being treated for "depression." And that usually means, pharmaceuticals. Isn't there a pattern here? Hasn't many of the crazy crimes that we read about involve some kind of medication administered to the lunatic. Those husbands who kill their families, the guy in the community that goes bonkers and runs over a group of sidewalk innocents, the high school shooter killing his classmates; all on medication.

As we vilify another mass shooter that will surely go down in history, the chemical crap that passes for medication that might have warped his mind, is basically a side note. It seems that no one is paying attention to the medicines we give to our most vulnerable.

I pray for all the families suffering from this agony including the parents of the shooter. Their terrible burden will surely destroy them in ways that none of us will ever understand.