HOLD THEM CLOSE
thoughts on grieving
It’s May 25, the day after 19 small children were shot in their school. I woke up, and called my husband. It was 7 AM, he was already in the city, 90 miles away from us.
“Should we keep them home?” I asked. It wasn’t a question. More a request—a hope.
Yes, yes we should. I thought he might say.
The night before he’d been next to me on the couch as we read through the news. Fourteen kids I had said. Nineteen, he corrected me. Nineteen.
Then, it seemed rational to grieve, to hold our kids, to join (or re-join) Moms Demand Action, cry, donate, and collapse into bed—only to wake up and send our kids to school.
What else could we do?
Hold them close. Everyone says. Extra cuddles. Thoughts and prayers.
I talked to my daughter at the breakfast table. I begged her—firing questions about school safety, lockdown drills, how hard it would be to get into her school—to tell me should we be fine. She is eleven years old; how could she know?
An hour later, I held my young son in my arms and told him again why mama doesn’t like him to pretend play with guns—no water guns, no nerf guns.
Guns kill, I said for the 100th time in his young life.
“I know mama. You already told me that.”
Yes, but some bad people went into a school with a gun.
“Was anyone hurt mama?”
Yes, baby, badly.
“Did anyone die mama?”
Yes baby. Yes they did.
I held him, sobbing silently into his hair.
Moments later, I walked him and his best friend to school. There, I stayed, in the school garden, pulling weeds outside his classroom window, for nearly two hours.
For two hours, he was safe.
They’re safe. I told myself. We’re safe.
My children’s schools are tucked away, around the corner from our home in a small village in Upstate, NY. I can hear the kids laughing in the schoolyard from my home. If I need to, I could get to my son in five minutes on foot; my daughter— 8 minutes by car.
But five minutes isn’t fast enough in the face of a weapon—a weapon that can take down a classroom in just one.
////
At 2:30 PM my daughter bounds off the bus—her french braids bouncing off her shoulders with every confident stride. Her best friend walks home with her.
Inside, I’m waiting. I cut them pineapple and put cookies on plates for them, fill water bottles, sign paperwork.
How was school today?
The girls discuss as I busy myself around them, listening. The delicate balance of curiosity and faith.
It’s ok. We’re ok, my body language tells them. But my heart is screaming.
I ask them if any of the teacher discussed the events in Texas.
“Yes. Our teacher told us—I’d take a bullet for you.” Her friend said. She was smiling, almost cheerful.
This made the children feel safe, loved.
This made me feel sick. A hurricane of bile in my stomach.
///
That night, my daughter is inducted into the Junior National Honor Society. I sit in a school auditorium with 100 students, plus 250 parents and siblings. My mind shifts to the entrances——how easy it had been to walk in the door. No guards, no waiting lists. No armed cops. No one asked for our names, if we were family. The doors were not locked—they weren’t even closed.
If someone wanted to target a room full of future leaders, this was it.
That’s irrational. You’re irrational.
I dismiss the thought. The ceremony is beautiful, hopeful—as hopeful a moment as I’ve witnessed in ages. One-hundred kids, from every background—driven, poised, full of purpose. Future marina biologists, athletes, singers, scholars.
My daughter bounds across the stage as they called her name—shoulders back, the world before her. She flashes me a smile that goes directly to my heart. A gunshot.
Every child should live to see these moments. Every parent.
After, we eat sponge cake, smashed in a school cafeteria with a hundred families, little brothers, proud parents, grandparents.
We go out for root beer floats. My daughter and her friends walk home beside me, hand in hand, singing—kinked hair from her unbound braids twirling around her. It is warm, almost balmy; the cusp of summer.
We are safe here.
///
That night, I think about my business—the content I prepared for this week, buried. An easy summer dinner how-to. Reels of dreamy summer platters. Recipes for the big weekend. I think about all the times I’ve held back work—to honor the suffering. George Floyd. Afghanistan. Ukraine. Buffalo. Uvalde. It goes on.
How different my business would be if I could put head down, carry on. Plenty of men witness tragedy, then get up and go to work the next day. Plenty of women.
We put our heads down, mourn a day or two, then move on.
And guns remain. Haunting mothers. Haunting us all.
///
May 26. I wake up groggy. I send my daughter to the bus without blinking, then pour my tea as my mind awakens.
Gunshots. Babies. Nausea.
I find my son’s pajama pants, wet, in a heap on the floor by the back door. He can’t explain how they’d gotten there (He hasn’t wet the bed in years and years). Was he sleep walking? Had he come down to find me? Why didn’t I hear him? What if he had walked out the back door? What if someone had been there? With a gun?
I’m untethered. Haunted.
Nothing feels as it had two days ago.
I pack his lunch and slip his homework in the folder. Again, I walk my son and his friend to the school door, hug them goodbye.
I love you, boys.
I return to the school garden, but there are no weeds left to pull, no warrant for my presence. So I walk, my usual morning mile. Only this time I loop around the school once, twice, then again.
There is his classroom. Check. There is a tiny hand being raised. Check.
They are safe, inside. But, for how long?
The windows are shut, tightly. The same windows I worked and pleaded and begged them to keep open in months and weeks past, a covid precaution. Wide open, I’d said again and again. Please.
Today they are all closed. A wall of glass, a poor defense but still —defense. A small measure of comfort for the teacher, if for no one else.
I walk the school grounds, through the parking lot, scanning cars. Who owns that running car? Why is there no police presence (there had been—one day before).
A beat-up Jeep pulls into the drop lane too fast. I’m unnerved, suspicious.
The Jeep produces a harried father—disheveled, harmless—bringing his daughter to school, late. A dentist appointment maybe. They ring the bell; the secretary buzzes them in.
I keep at it—studying details. As if I could stop an assault weapon with pure, obsessive love. A reckless kid with too much access and a terrifying plan.
I watch as the gymn teacher—Coach—the kids call her, lines cones up around the school yard for gymn. She counts them, audibly. One, two, three….
A white van pulls in—the driver, gloved.
Van. Gloves.
Everyone’s a threat.
I stop at the corner, the hairs on my neck on edge. Should I call the office? Warn them? Or, question them? Are they expecting a delivery? Is my son safe?
Coach waves at the man in the van, a regular, I guess. My shoulders soften. He opens the doors to his van—reaches for something long and awkward. I don’t leave until I see with my own eyes. A shovel, not a weapon.
It’s irrational. I’m irrational.
Other parents are already at work: bank tellers and school teachers, nurses, cops. Are they haunted, too?
I give it up—the pretense that I can prevent disaster with my diligence, with my fear. I walk home. The beat-up Jeep passes. Scruffy dad gives me a nod.
I’m sorry. I apologize in my head. It’s not you, it’s me.
///
In 2012, during Sandy Hook, we lived in New York City. My daughter went to school in Queens, 45 minutes from my mid-town office—on a good day.
One Friday in April, she slipped in the schoolyard and cut her eyelid on the front gate. It took my husband an hour to get to her (he was the first parent they reached), another hour still to get her to the ER. There were stitches and tears and a pacifier she should have long outgrown, reserved for such things.
There’s a scar—tiny—splitting her left eyebrow in two. She still talks about it, ten years later.
But the wound healed.
Wounds from an AR-15 don’t heal.
///
Years ago, Sandy Hook felt like an isolated incident. A horror, never to be repeated.
In the decade since, our kids have learned how to hide. To report threats of violence. To call 911 from cell phones under their desk.
They’ve learned that their teachers will take a bullet for them, if they need to.
The school board sends out condolences—kind words—with links to PDFs: how to talk to our kids about violence. It’s all there, in black and white.
Schools are safe places—we’re instructed to tell our kids.
I think about who they hired to write it. Who might have designed it, how much the district paid to have a document created for moments like this. Prepared. With the right words.
“They’ve been practicing for this day for years,” the teacher said, referring to the active shooter exercises that have become as much a fixture of public education in America as math, science and reading. “They knew this wasn’t a drill. We knew we had to be quiet or else we were going to give ourselves away.”
These are the words of a teacher from Uvalde, as reported to a reporter.*
Practicing, for years. For the day an active shooter would come into their school. We prepare our kids for this, like a rehearsal for the spring play.
We’re missing the point—by a landslide.
///
In 2010, well before Sandy Hook, before schools were even in our minds, we bought the house we live in now. As we stayed here on weekends, I started noticing how busy the street was. The speed of the cars. The way they raced from stop sign to stop sign, at a speed I knew could kill an adult, much less a child.
My daughter wasn’t born yet—but I started writing letters to the town. I asked for sidewalks. Speed bumps. Cross walks. Speed zones.
Children live here, I wrote.
I know the cost of a life lost. Two women I love lost their sons to a car—one of them, my own cousin.
I’ve written over 40 letters in the last ten years. Sometimes I hear back with empty promises. Sometimes, excuses (the cost, the legislation—it’s someone else’s jurisdiction; no one wants to take responsibility). Often, I don’t hear back at all.
In every letter, I close with this: Don’t wait for a tragedy to happen in our own town before you take action.
The irony is, cars aren’t our children’s biggest threat.
The irony is, the tragedy has already occurred. Again and again. All around us.
///
Back at home, I open the window. I hear laughter, from the school yard. Or is it shrieking? It’s hard to tell. The way you think a baby is crying in their crib, as you listen from down the hall—only to run in and find them in bed, cooing.
I shut the windows.
It is only day two (since the tragedy). Or day 202. I’ve lost count. The death toll rises.
We are processing. Grieving.
Some cry in anguish. Some, in anger. Some text or join up or donate. Some protest. Some write. Some speak out. Some slow down and hold their babies tighter.
There is no correct response to a tragedy of this size.
Also, there is no incorrect response— except one: to do nothing. To turn the page and move on.
//
May 27. I am up too late the night before, reading about gun safety in other countries, how grossly we got it wrong. The politicians who won’t budge, the NRA backing.
Still, by morning, I’m hopeful. I send both kids to school. There’s an early release—11:15 dismissal—for the holiday.
In the two hours until pickup, I resolve to call senators, writer letters, then— shift gears. Muster up joy, prepare to gather my people, soak in our aliveness. The gift of them.
Hold them close. Extra cuddles. Thoughts and prayers.
People have gone back to posting shiny reels and cheerful recipes. I will, I tell myself. Soon. Maybe tomorrow.
And then this pops across my screen:
“Pediatrician here. I want people to know that death by firearm is not rare in kids. It has been the #1 cause of death in this age group since 2020. In 2020 alone, 4,300 children died from firearms. That’s equivalent to one Boeing 474 crash every month for 9 months.”
4,300 children.
It is irrational.
I am haunted.
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This was beautiful, thank you Sarah.
Always beautifully written Sarah. Thank you for sharing such poignant words.