…so-called innocents

In the wake of yet another school shooting, myriad news sources will continue to talk about the loss of “innocent” lives. To be so clear – those children, those teachers, did not deserve to die. They did not invite brutal violence; no one dared them to pack their lunches for the last time. To the parents who now have empty beds and friends who have permanently unread messages and the classmates who will never finish what they started together, this is loss. This is tragic, unmitigated loss.

So let that be the focus. We ought to see the loss as loss, with no need to qualify it. If you get in a car accident and total your car, it does not much matter if you drove a 2001 Honda Accord or a 2022 Porsche Taycan; you are left without a way to get where you need to be. The value of the car is more than the dollars and cents; that car gave you the ability to get to your job, or school, or the store. The car balanced the weights of independence and responsibility. How much money it takes to recover does not change the significance of the loss, because either way you lost your car.

When people say “innocent” lives were lost, the qualifier affects your implicit value of life. To qualify the loss suggests some lives are worth more than others. If we insist on playing such a game, I hope my time for evaluation is far off. The students and teachers who never got to pack up their things after the final bell represent tremendous loss. They did not instigate the conflict; they did not antagonize the shooter. They did not, by any account, deserve to die.

And…

There is an empty bed where the shooter was supposed to sleep last night. There are friends and classmates missing a member of their group. A family lost a child and grandchild. For the people left to pick up the pieces of a shattered reality, innocence or guilt do nothing to dull the edges of what broke. Their loss is as complete and devastating as any other.

Before you tote a political response, before you blame a culture, and certainly before you claim to have the answers, see the loss. Not just the loss of innocent lives or the loss of peace or the loss of normalcy. See the depth of loss riddled with pain. The road forward is unknown, and everyone experiencing loss is on the same road. If you must qualify something, qualify the loss of life, not the life itself. Qualify the loss as tragic, nothing more, and absolutely nothing less.