Mass

You live with your pain. One year passes, two, then three, and suddenly six have passed and the world continues on and on and you're somehow meant to move on, too. So you try to find meaning. You try to find an explanation. A why or a how. Someone to blame. Or something. An inevitability. Maybe there was something wrong with his brain. His friends. The computer games. You try to find meaning. Maybe then it'll all make sense. Or – if you can't find meaning in their lives, maybe you can somehow find meaning in their deaths. Six years later, nothing has changed. You're restrained and they're restrained and nobody wants to say anything because saying something can always lead to more pain. And there's enough pain at that table. The table is supposed to be empty. Why should there be any flowers on a table cluttered with pain? Maybe sharing something might help. But they're in pain too. You restrain yourself because interrogating doesn't help. It's your pain and it's their pain. Are they allowed to be in pain? In your mind, they aren't. They're only meant to feel guilty. Ten deaths, not eleven. Not to you. How could they not see? How could they not suspect? How can they sit there, how can they still be there? Do they feel regret? How can they love him? Then again: How are you supposed to unlove your own child? How are you supposed to remember them building a loving home for fake snails and somehow believe they're also capable of killing? (In your mind, you're still a good parent. Maybe you never were. You look back at every moment and try to remember. Re-remember. Some memories change, and others stay the same.) They held him as a child, too. Now they're holding the picture of yours. It seems wrong for their gaze to be so loving. The very child they've held took the life of yours. So you take the picture away. You don't actually want to know that he was shy and that he loved animals. The person they've held dearly? He let yours bleed and fight for his life for six minutes. And then he shot him again. How can you share your feelings with people who don't have any space for them? How can someone who's drowning save another person screaming for help? Forgiving might help. They didn't know. They tried. But maybe they didn't try enough. It doesn't help. Or maybe it does. (You remember his clothes full of mud. He was funny. He breathed easily. That could be his meaning. Not of his death. His life.) ((She shares something with you: His face, angered. Underneath, so much pain. At that moment she was scared of him. Maybe that's part of the truth, too.))