This has been an emotional week. I've been stressed out to start with by my preparations for Japan. Trying to support MTI backfilling my position here. Meeting with my friends, some probably for the last time. Slowly dismantling everything and moving it into storage.
Then the shootings at Virginia Tech...
As far as I know, no one I knew personally was involved. I called Gay M., an ex-coworker, on the day of the shootings. She works in McBryde Hall, very near Norris. It sounded like everyone there was shook-up. Then I started reading about what had happened. As each report comes out, it just becomes sadder. How could this happen?
I wish there was a simple answer to that, but I know there isn't. I've faced enough facts in my life to know there's no way to predict the future. No way to protect everyone from everything. But it's so incredibly hard to think about the small town where I went to school and worked, suffering through this tragedy. Impossible to understand how so many people could die just a hundred yards from where I went to work every day.
It just fills me with grief to read about those who died. And to imagine what those who are left behind must deal with. Tonight, I was reading about Dr. Liviu Librescu. A Holocaust survivor - when Dr. Librescu heard the gunshots, he blocked the door to his classroom so his students had time to jump from the second floor. Cho Seung-hui shot and killed Dr. Librescu through the door to his classroom.
It is the bitter twist of fate that Dr. Librescu, a random victim in a terrible situation, died on Holocaust Martyrs' Remembrance Day. Such a stupid coincidence makes a pointless loss of life even harder to understand.
The emotions from this week have to be controlled while the tasks at hand are handled. But not a day has gone by that I haven't shared the sorrow of my fellow Hokies... not a day has gone by that I haven't sat and wept for the senselessness of it all.
