My earliest memory of an event that blew a hole in my soul occurred when I was in middle school, a few years after the assassination of JFK. The specifics of the event do not matter, though it consisted of the abduction, mutilation and ultimate death of a child. Some fifty plus years after the event, I can still vividly remember sitting in one of the swings on the school playground with my feet gently rocking my body back and forth, while my mind reeled. I sat there like that for over half an hour trying to still my mind and stop imagining what that child experienced.

Thankfully, I have not conjured up that memory for decades. Sadly, it came roaring back unbidden this morning. I wish it hadn’t. It still cuts me to the core.

Over the years, other tragedies have moved me, some to tears, some to rage, some to fits of frustration, but none have had the same impact on my entire being as the one that occurred when I was in middle school. None, that is, until this week’s events in Uvalde, Texas, a place about which I had previously never heard, a place about which I wish I still hadn’t heard.

I have been dwelling on the event since it happened. When I first heard the news, I was shocked and dismayed, but I chalked my somewhat muted initial reaction up to being inured to mass shootings, as they occur so damned frequently.

But then the details started to come out. It was the details of the event that came out in the news conferences that transported me back to being in elementary school, trying to come to terms with a heinous act. It was the details that blew an atomic bomb sized hole in my soul. It was the details that crushed me.

I did not write this to make a political statement, though maybe I should have. I did not write this to advocate for better protection of our schools, though maybe I should have. I did not write this to advocate for mental health reform, though maybe I should have. I did not write this to advocate for a rational gun control policy, though maybe I should have.

No, I did not write this for any of those reasons.

I wrote this because I needed to. I wrote this because it was cathartic. My eyes filled with tears multiple times as I pressed the keys.

I wrote this because I can no longer spend half an hour in a swing.