Two days later

Two day later I sit here and watch my son who is in first grade, my son who made me a mother and is the sweetest child in the world.  I sit here and know that 20 mothers a few states away are grieving for loss of their first grade children.  I do not know how to process it.  I just cannot fathom how you move on in the face of this kind of tragedy.  How do you get up and get dressed.  How do you face the world?  I sit here and think about 20 mothers I do not even know and think about how scared their children were in that moment.  I do not understand.  When my son is afraid, he wants me.  Keep in mind that my husband outweighs me by a good 80 pounds and is 7 inches taller than I am and most assuredly much stronger, but my son wants me as if I can protect him in a way that his father cannot.  In the last moments of those children, who did they want and who did they think of immediately.  I know it was their moms.  That thought just tears me to shreds.  I do not understand why he did what he did.  We are all searching for understanding and I am not sure that understanding will ever come.  How can one ever truly understand hurting a child?
A report this am was talking about one of the teachers who told her students to shut themselves in their cubbies ad she distracted the shooter and was, as a result, killed.  In her last moment of terror, she thought of her students.  It is what we do for children.  We do not shoot them.  We protect and save and do whatever we can to help them.  We do not hurt them.  I am not sure that it will ever make sense.  I pray for peace for those families, peace that I know cannot come this Christmas.  I pray for those mothers I will never know.