Acting Without the Drama

July 7, 2009.  There’s so much to say about what happened over the Fourth, I’m not sure that I really want to go into it any further.  It also feels like I need to get it off my chest.

Watching a twelve-year-old handling something like a gunshot wound is heartbreaking.  The wound happened when he was about 2 or 3 blocks away from us.  Somehow, he had the presence of mind to call me on my cell and say, “Dad, I’ve been shot through the foot.”  When I got there, the only thing he said was, “It really hurts.”  He never cried as far as I remember.  That actually made it worse for me.

When something bad happens to your child, no matter how strange or unexpected, as a parent you agonize about whether or not you could’ve prevented it.  The wrong lessons get learned, if you’re not careful.  The desire is to remove your child from the world, to keep him or her from ever getting hurt.  The thoughts of what could’ve happened run through your head again and again.

Really, when it comes right down to it, I’m so grateful that it wasn’t worse.

I handled things pretty well up to the point that we got my boy to the hospital and into the care of the ER doctors.  I then excused myself from the room for a minute, went out and lost it.

Going through this experience helped me, in a very small way, understand what a parent must go through when something truly traumatic and life-altering happens.  If there was ever any judgement in my heart for the way that the parents of a crime victim behave, that judgement is gone.

The other challenging part of all this is that I feel like I haven’t had a second to truly process it all.  Life goes on, and boy…is it going.  Our projects are popping right now.  Chances for success are presenting themselves.  There’s so much to do right now.  I want to find a way to stay present, to keep from muscling my way through.

What a wonderful opportunity for me to do this differently… 

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