May They Rest in Peace

Today I am alive, as are my two grandchildren and my oldest daughter, but the terrible multiple murder here of a woman in her 60s and her oldest daughter and the daughter’s two babies has all of us on edge.

When the news broke but no identities had been revealed - when we did not yet know that a manhunt was under way to find the daughter’s husband - we all felt panic and I could only think, “If my life ended today - if someone shot me, or a truck driven by a joyriding kid  jumped the median as it did with our brother and his friend though their lives were spared thank God - if my heart stopped the way my mom’s heart stopped as she sat in my living room, what would be the last things I saw and noted? This little girl trailing home from school with her flowered backpack? I really saw her yesterday. This middle-school boy walking homeward too, clarinet case in hand? I saw him too, and felt I could see right down into his young life, the practicing  sessions, the jitters he felt as he walked into the room where his lesson took place each week.And when I arrived at the grocery store to which I was headed when the news alert came, I noted more things: the funny military spikiness of asparagus bunches, all standing at attention; the dark moonish beauty of the plums. I picked one plum up and cradled it all warm in my hand, and seemed to taste again the tart outside of all plums, the yielding sweetness within….They had released no names at that point but they did mention 2 Windsong Way, which, like everyone else  I immediately Googled so as to  pinpoint the eye of the tragedy. Then when I got home, I looked in my 2008 copy of the Town of Winchester's List of Residents Seventeen Years of Age and Over to see who had suffered this awful fate and there they were, only two  of the four dead, since children do not vote.In my church our ministers have us lift up by name the people we are praying for. Today we lift up by name the lady Ellen and her daughter Laura, and the little ones Charlotte and Thomas-called-Finn, all of whom entered into Eternity at some unknown time earlier this week on 2 Windsong Way as the birds darted and the sweet scent of freshly-cut grass drifted in the balmy air.