Tragedy

I was checking out fun editorials to give my students for their last illustration assignment. I found a ton of stuff that happened this year that was outlandish, interesting, or fun. They are perfect for college student illustrations: A boy expelled from school for having a mohawk, a real petting zoo, we're talking lions, tigers and bears, a feather growing from a babies face and more. I have a total of 15 articles. I was trying to contain myself from laughing at some of the crazy editorials. In my search I came across the current news. The bombing of Boston. My oldest sister runs marathons, so immediately horrible pictures came to my mind.

I went home from work and Daddy asked why I looked like I just saw a ghost? I asked if he had seen the news? He hadn't, but heard something on the radio. At this point we didn't know how bad it was. I just knew 2 people were killed and 40 were injured.

We decided to go out to dinner at Sam and Louie's Pizza. The meat I had pulled for dinner was still frozen. In my wallet I had 2 free meal passes for the boys.

At the pizza place there were two TVs broadcasting the horror. Daddy looked at me, I looked at him, and then I asked the waitress if she would kindly switch the station.

She did, but she stood there for awhile trying to find something new to put on. I said, "Really you can put on anything. I just don't want my sons seeing the horrible tragedy." She said, "I understand. It's just that I have to have sports or news stations on. On both of those types of stations they are covering what happened." She finally found something. In the mean time, Mica had seen a bomb go off. He laughed thinking it was fake.

It's not like I strive to hide things from my children. It's just that when something is too much for even me to understand, I don't want my children watching it.

Daddy and I hadn't even had a chance to talk about what had happened yet.

With the Sandy Hook tragedy we decided to talk to Mica. We kept it brief, asked where they go in their school for danger drills and asked if he had questions. He didn't ask anything. Then we told him if he did have questions to ask us. We mentioned not to talk about it at school because not all of his friend's parents would choose to talk to their kids. We chose to never talk to Isaak.

Isaak has been freaked out about death, rightly so. I just don't want him terrified about the topic even more.

My thoughts go out to everyone personally effected by the bombing that happened in Boston. 

Do you, or did you talk to your children about tragedies?