A Few Words from an Awful Place

I should be going to bed about now — I probably will crash in a few minutes, anyway, but…

As the aftermath of the San Bernardino shooting unspools, I’ve noticed a number of people saying on social media that they are offering their thoughts and prayers for the victims and other concerned parties. I’ve also noticed a fair amount of sneering and jeering at the first group, presumably because those thoughts and prayers aren’t in fact some sort of magical incantation and remedy for either the horrors of the day or the existence of evil people, and that therefore the people offering those thoughts and prayers are dupes at best, and obstacles at worst.

But I don’t know how many (if any) of the members of either group have been the subject of those thoughts and prayers. I have. And I will say this much: While those thoughts and prayers didn’t restore my parents, I will say the knowledge that people — even people I didn’t really know or might never meet — cared, that people remembered us, gave me a measure of peace during some of the darkest years of my life.

That deserves better than scorn.