Tsunami Post

I deleted the last post. It just seemed so small next to the numbers that just won't stop climbing higher. Everything you could possibly say seems so small.

I haven't watched a lot of TV coverage. We have a a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old so we try to keep our news coverage to either CNN.com or TV news after they're asleep. **NOTE: some of you may disagree with "sheltering" them from "reality". Liam was 2 1/2 on September 11, 1999. Of course, I had the TV on non-stop. But Liam noticed, and worried. Even at 2 1/2. He wanted to know why that airplane kept crashing into the building and was it broken and would they be able to fix it and were the people ok and why are you crying, Mom? I was due to have Sean two days later, I had a hormone rush going that made Niagra Falls look like a trickle and had been having contractions off and on for days. But that look of innocent concern on Liam's face will be etched into my brain forever. That's when I decided that he didn't need to see things like that until he was able to really think about the answers I was going to have to give him. I'm not sure, even at 5 years of age now, if I can give him good answers for this. I don't feel like I have anything to give him, good or bad.

Anyway, I haven't watched CNN on TV because of the kids. But last night, after they were in bed I turned it on. About halfway into a photo montage, I was crying. Rusty turned from the computer obviously worried about me, and hadn't seen the images that started it (the bodies of dead children, alone, waiting for someone to come claim them). I wanted to tell Rusty I was ok. But I wasn't. And I think he may have been wondering if he should turn the TV off and make me go to bed. But to his credit, he didn't. He let me be an adult and make my own decision. So I kept watching. I forced myself to watch image after image. I said this after the Belsan school tragedy, and it's still how I feel -- I feel that I owe it to someone, somewhere, to acknowledge that that child, that mother, that husband... those people were loved. They were something to someone. They are a loss to their families, their friends, their countries and the world. To look at those images is to acknowledge that something precious passed from this world. In all honesty, we know that many of those bodies are not going to be claimed. Whether it's because of the need to bury them quickly or because the rest of their families are gone as well. Some of those people will never be mourned individually. I guess it's the only way I feel like I can pay tribute to them, to the sorrow someone somewhere is feeling, as I sit here comfortably in my home with my two children sleeping peacefully and my husband sitting nearby.

Some people have complained to CNN that their photos are too graphic and stories are too sad. I say that life is too graphic and too sad sometimes. But that's what makes it life. Ignoring it isn't really living. Taking it in... feeling the anguish... and continuing on. That's life, isn't it?

I do want to post the links to the Red Cross site, if only because that's where we were able to donate. I also want to encourage you to check and see if your employer does charitable gift matching. Rusty's former employer would match charitable giving up to $500 per year.

Red Cross online donation form **Please designate the money to go to the International Response Fund: https://www.redcross.org/donate/donation-form.asp