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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAfter Newtown shooting, mourning parents enter into the lonely quiet
In NEWTOWN, Conn. They had promised to try everything, so Mark Barden went down into the basement to begin another project in memory of Daniel. The families of Sandy Hook Elementary were collaborating on a Mothers Day card, which would be produced by a marketing firm and mailed to hundreds of politicians across the country. A difference-maker, the organizers had called it. Maybe if Mark could find the most arresting photo of his 7-year-old son, people would be compelled to act.
It hardly mattered that what Mark and his wife, Jackie, really wanted was to ignore Mothers Day altogether, to stay in their pajamas with their two surviving children, turn off their phones and reward themselves for making it through another day with a glass of Irish whiskey neat.
Our purpose now is to force people to remember, Mark said, so down he went into his office to sift through 1,700 photos of the family they had been.
The Bardens had already tried to change Americas gun laws by studying the Second Amendment and meeting with President Obama in the Oval Office. They had spoken at tea party rallies, posed for People magazine and grieved on TV with Katie Couric. They had taken advice from a public relations firm, learning to say magazine limits and not magazine bans, to say gun responsibility and never gun control. When none of that worked, they had walked the halls of Congress with a bag of 200 glossy pictures and beseeched lawmakers to look at their son: his auburn hair curling at the ears, his front teeth sacrificed to a soccer collision, his arms wrapped around Ninja Cat, the stuffed animal that had traveled with him everywhere, including into the hearse and underground.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/after-newtown-shooting-mourning-parents-enter-into-the-lonely-quiet/2013/06/08/0235a882-cd32-11e2-9f1a-1a7cdee20287_story.html
And the GOPNRAteahadists love the taste of every salty tear.
MichiganVote
(21,086 posts)Frustratedlady
(16,254 posts)I can't imagine they'll ever be the same. Not being there to protect Daniel or know what he went through those last minutes of his life will haunt them forever.
The last portion of that article was heart-wrenching.
It is obvious that much of Congress is weak and insensitive. We should shame them for their reprehensible behavior in honoring the NRA out of fear, rather than these families and the majority of the country out of decency.
Danmel
(4,924 posts)I cannot begin to imagine their pain, but it appears that America is willing to accept this. wash, rinse,repeat.
malaise
(269,157 posts)TM Robb
mountain grammy
(26,648 posts)I think the worship is just about equal with the pro killing NRA gun toting bastards.
Weapons of war are the new golden calf.
CBHagman
(16,987 posts)It's not only an unsparing look at grief but a reminder of what actually took place at Sandy Hook -- something that can indeed happen again, and again, and again, and even so the gun manufacturers and the Second Amendment groups will, with a combination of self-righteousness and feigned victimhood, insist that their way is holy, is that path of order and peace.
Yet they have helped create it.
And there will be calls for more attention to mental health, but that will be it -- calls, not actual increase in or access to services.
And there will be noises made about video games and TV shows and movies, which result in...nothing, because corporations aren't going back to the Production Code.
Returning to the article, it deserves to be read, particularly by those who would recoil from reading it.
Skittles
(153,193 posts)NOTHING trumps their paranoia - NOTHING
CBHagman
(16,987 posts)...and either read the article aloud or leave them to it. One of said relatives posted graphic images from the Boston Marathon bombings on Facebook. Well, in this country guns cause a body count of ten thousand Boston bombings.