What you can’t do

My children enjoy making fun of me.  I’m a bit of a klutz and ham so that is the perfect storm that being laughed at, but what they really kid me about is my crying.  I can’t help it.  I am either very sentimental, very sensitive or have exceedingly weak tear ducts.  Not only do I cry at the sad parts of movies, I have often cried at happy parts.  Doesn’t have to be real people either, as I have sobbed at animated films as well – some, according to my daughter, that didn’t even have sad parts.

For those of you lucky enough to have grown up with Star Trek will understand my belief that “going every week where no man had gone before” was a staple of my childhood.  I loved the adventure and meeting new cultures and alien beings with Spock and Kirk.  I loved the challenge it gave to my young 1960’s mind about being different and to accept things you don’t understand.  The one episode that still stands out in my mind is with an Empath, Gem. (episode 12 of season 3 for Trekkie fans).  Gem takes on the hurt and suffering of the injured so that the injured person can survive.  She, with her regenerative powers, then heals herself.  I guess I rather feel like her.  I watch movies (and to the immense amusement of my children, even commercials) and suddenly I am that person being hurt or saddened.  I feel like the person overjoyed with happiness.  So thoroughly do I feel that emotion that I can’t help but cry.

And so, it was with great sadness that I read the accounts of the tragic shooting in an Aurora, Colorado, theatre last week.  I have friends, children, a husband – all of whom could very well have been that excited movie-goer to the new Batman film.  Great story, great actors, exciting plot, handsome superhero, great femme fatale.  And, like Gem, I can’t help but absorb that feeling of grief and deep hurt of those who lost loved one.  How could one possibly feel when they lose someone they love so tragically, so senselessly.  Reading accounts of family and friends left behind, I sobbed.  None of them were people I knew, but yet I know how much I love my family and how unbearable it must be to live without them.

This is something for which all of the preparedness stuff I talk about simply can’t prepare you.  Ever.  Particularly when there was no purpose to this other than the workings of a deranged mind – and the inhumanity and hardware to pull it off.

For those left suffering, I am truly so sorry.  I feel for you and wish that like Gem, I could take some of your sadness and help you heal.  But I am trying to understand, trying to empathize, and am crying with you.