On Grieving.

And someone a good friend told me she didn’t believe the statistics. And that’s fine as long as you provide stats of your own.

What else is new? Hmm. In Chicago in five months we have 900 people dead. Hmm.

And then the pandemic.

The stat I was looking at was old and it stated that there is at least one mass shooting a day. And people don’t believe it. Yet people believe that knives are the same as guns. Hmm.

“They don’t have guns, they have knives and instead there’s blood all over the floors of this hospital. They say it’s as bad as a military war zone hospital.”

How many mass stabbings are there?

Even when told that certain firearms do more damage by experts and surgeons-some people would rather run to church-than believe the statistics.

Should I grieve for them as well? Or just not want to deal with them anymore? And what kind of teaching Christian, if I still am one does that make me? Personally I was waiting for the miracle of certain people to start telling the truth.

Mass shootings, gang violence, abortions, sick children and Covid with all this how are we to grieve? It took me years (later on I thought it selfish) to honor my mother’s death with moodiness, sullenness, anxiety and depression. Shallow, huh? Feeling fed up or irked or peeved can certainly be addicting.

Lucky for me I had family that was supportive in the best way they knew at the time.

And when my father died a friend I had counseled when someone told her to “get over it,” told me to “just get over it.” It could be she did me a favor.

How are we supposed to grieve the lose of 1 million people? Or 900? Or whatever the number is. And yet not emoting seems callous. Should I force myself to do an exercise that hasn’t been created yet? And for what good? And that sounds exactly like what some friends who NRA members say.

“Well you know that _____ people die each year from?” And that doesn’t seem like a viable option. So what should one do? How should we respond? Or should we?