Instead, I am focusing on the victims. I am getting to know their favorite foods and how they celebrated their birthdays and where they worked.
I read their names and feel closer to them through what loved ones are sharing. I study their photos, and I see my sons. The same youth and sweetness and joy for living. And, I cry.
I cried when I woke up to the headline. I cry with every new update. I cry and cry some more thinking about the mother of Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, a mother who received one final text from a son locked in a bathroom with the gunman approaching, "Mommy I love you."
I cry most for everyone in the club that night, their youth and sweetness and joy irrevocably damaged, or worse, stolen, gone, gone forever.
I choose not to read about the shooter, but the headlines seep in, "assault weapons bought legally."
"England," I say to my husband, "or Australia." He shakes his head. He's seen and heard this before, after Sandy Hook, where my dear friend's daughter was locked in her kindergarten class, the carnage a few doors down.
With every mass shooting my husband watches my catatonic obsession with the victims unfold. "Japan," I implore, "you've always wanted to go to Japan." Each time he shakes his head. "No place is perfect."
I had a dream just a few nights ago, before a crazed gunman would take the lives of 49 young men and women, that I moved to London. In my dream, vivid and real, I walked through the neighborhood of brick and wood buildings, and it felt right, right to be there. I visited the flat where I was to live.
The current tenants, sitting on their bed ready to move out, said that I would like it, like it very much, except for the train that rumbles underneath them. As I listened, I weighed the pros and cons, thinking "no place is perfect." I woke up not knowing if I chose to stay or leave.