No words

I took an exam this morning, the last exam in my Life-Span Developmental Psychology course. The content spanned three chapters - middle adulthood, late adulthood, and death. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so affected by the material I've learned about in any class I've taken. True, a lot of it is fascinating stuff - chemistry, physiology, cognition, memory, literature; you name it, we've taken those classes, hated a lot of them, but loved most of them.

There have been fewer moments of feeling any intense or semi-intense emotional response to the topics. Studying for this exam was one of those times. I'm reading from my textbook and it talks about how much we associate negative stereotypes with aging, even though a good chunk of those notions are not substantiated by evidence. 

But seriously, one thing I've always been nervous about is growing old. It really has nothing to do with looking old. It's more about not having control over your life, your senses, your physical wellbeing, your body. It's about losing memory and forgetting loved ones and becoming a burden on them. It's about the end of life as you always knew it, and the end of a life that has become unrecognizable. Even though reading about late adulthood quashed a number of ageist stereotypes, it did only marginally well at helping me cope with the idea of impending death. Everyone copes with the notion of dying differently. 

And when you have an instance like the one Friday in which it's children who have died. Not older people who have lived long, fulfilling lives, but kids -- what do you do? How can you look through pictures like these and not sob with the family members and classmates of the victims in the Connecticut shooting? They were kids. Kids with futures and lives ahead of them, worlds for them to build and expand, families for them to love and be loved by. How do the children, the witnesses, accept or understand a tragedy of such magnitude? What do you tell them? And they were teachers. Teachers who had families and friends and classrooms. They were teachers like this one, who protected their students and reassured them while they hid inside a locked bathroom or a gym closet. How do you handle such a tragic, senseless loss of human life?

And how, when you hear or read about an instance like this, can you not make amends with others, and bring those closest to you in for a hug - to reassure yourself that they are indeed still there, and that yes, you are so lucky to have them with you. 

I flipped through those images above and could immediately put myself in the place of those parents. Not as a parent, but as an older sister to two siblings of elementary school age. And all I could do was be thankful that, this time, these two kids were safe.

Indian poet Neema Alexander once wrote,

"We have no words 
For what is happening-"

No words for this, only heartache.