A Mad Man Brings Devastation To Aurora

                In the Media encampment outside Aurora Towne Center   
    
Last night they were enjoying themselves, enjoying the company of others like them, happy to watch the conclusion of a saga featuring an imaginary hero who fought mad men.


Then a real mad man, someone driven insane by whatever didn't work for him in society, decided he would strike out at that society, would take the lives of innocents, would take the innocence of those that survived, would scar forever the lives of their families and the members of their communities.


The ones who were taken, the ones who survived, the families of those that died last night, the ones who are either numb, blind with anger or ripped apart by unimaginable sadness, are the only ones who matter now.


The mad man will never have his name spoken or written here. He is less than unmentionable, he is less than...anything.


Those who survived and their families and friends will spend the rest of their lives marveling at how lucky they got that night. They will recount the terror and panic, if not aloud, then to themselves. They may feel relief, they may feel sadness, they may feel an odd sense of guilt for having survived.


Parents, mothers and fathers, have lost daughters and sons. 


Husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, best friends, casual acquaintances, co-workers...those 12 who lost their lives, that was them.


The guy in the cubicle down the hall, the clerk handing you back your change, the young woman who took your dinner order at the restaurant...that was them.


There are people who will miss them forever, who will never forget their smiles, laughter or tears.


There are people who will spend hours looking at pictures of them taken at birthday parties, weddings, graduation ceremonies, on camping trips or just when they had a camera in hand.


Those pictures will be cherished forever, along with cards, notes, gifts...everything and anything that can bring back however fleetingly the memory of time spent with them.


Grief is hard. 


It is sitting alone in the biggest, darkest room in existence, hearing the echo of your own heartbeat as if it's a sledgehammer attacking your soul. 


It is an eruption of anger as violent as the most powerful earthquake or volcano, racking every cell of the body with incomparable pain.


Grief of this magnitude is felt all over the world, everyday. But that abstraction does nothing for those in Aurora tonight, nothing.


Their hearts are broken, their lives are shattered. They have lost and they mourn.


I mourn with them. I mourn for them.