I know we should celebrate life and remember people they way they were when they were alive. But I just can't let go of the fact that Alison Parker and Adam Ward are not alive now, taken brutally and senselessly in yet another shameless act of violence perpetrated by a warped individual armed with misguided anger and a gun.
The terrible twist on this latest tragedy is that we got to watch. Alison Parker, a TV reporter, was doing a live report in the field when she shot dead, murdered, on television. Adam Ward, her cameraman, went down next as his camera clattered to the ground, still broadcasting back to the station. It was a horrific tableau out of a violent crime drama or horror film but no. This was real. Real violence, real blood, real life.
Hey, NRA. You got to see a gun murder on live television. Are you not entertained?
In the hours since this insane assault, I've seen the photos of Alison and Adam, young, energetic, at the start of their lives with hopes and ambitions to drive through the many years to come. Years they will now never have.
I wish they would stop smiling at me.
They look out from the photos with smiles and bright eyes and it makes me angry that their friends and families will never see those smiles again, never see the light in their eyes again. It makes me angry that we live in a country where this sort of damn thing can happen and does happen with alarming and sickening regularity.
It makes me angry that people have to keep dying because our leaders lack the will and the courage to act to stop it.
It makes me angry that Alison Parker and Adam Ward will not live to see another sunrise because of ignorant people insist that holding on to their guns in an unalienable right that cannot and must not be abridged in the slightest.
It makes me angry that we all have to live in a constant state of fucking terror because there are those who have derived great wealth and power in preserving the status quo of violence and fear-mongering.
It makes me so incredibly angry and I really wish they would stop smiling at me. Maybe if they would stop smiling at me, I can be less angry. Maybe if they stop smiling at me, I can cope with the pain of this tragedy and move on.
If they stop smiling at me, maybe I can stop being angry.
Fuck that! I want to stay angry!
And all of us who care about living in a just and equitable society in peace, we should ALL stay angry about this because if we don't, others will. Others will get angry over every slight possibility of a threat to take their guns. And these morons have the NRA with a shitload of money to stoke that anger and keep things the way they are, one damn day after another of someone dying who doesn't need to die.
I don't want to be angry but what else can I feel? What else can anyone feel other than anger if we are to get someone to pay attention, to hear once and for all that we won't live like this anymore! We refuse to live in a state of siege from a terror of our own making!
I wish they would stop smiling at me.
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