When Horrible Things Happen Way Too Close To Home

Usually I post photos of our lives and things that we eat and do.  Sometimes I post about our travels.  Recently something happened that was horrible and way too close to home.  On Monday, April 23rd a mentally challenged individual drove a rented van along the sidewalk on Yonge Street.  For those of you who don't live in Toronto, Yonge Street is the longest street and at Yonge from Finch to Sheppard there are many office buildings and a public square (Mel Lastman Square named after our former Mayor) and central library.  As you can well imagine, at lunch time, the sidewalk was really busy with people out for a walk, buying lunch and just enjoying the nice weather.  But that day would turn out to be anything but enjoyable because a crazy man decided that he was going to drive his rented van along the sidewalk and mow people down.  He killed 10 people and injured 16 more.  Was it a terrorist act, was it an act against women as some are saying?  I'm not sure we'll ever really know.  Does it even matter in the long run?  It won't bring the people back who were killed.  My Mom was shopping at the pharmacy in the area and had no idea what had happened until she got home.  The last thing I heard when I called home at lunch was my Dad saying goodby to her as she left to run errands just up the street from where it happened.  Thankfully I would hear that she was fine and didn't know what was going on or how close she was until later when watching the news.  My aunt's neighbour was one of the 10 people killed.  Auntie Lily was on the news talking about her neighbour.  Auntie Lilly's daughter who lives one street over was safe as well.  My neighbour who works in one of the office towers in the area was out walking over her lunch hour with her co-worker.  The only reason she's alive today is because she forgot her sun glasses in the car and went to get them. 

I'm having a hard time processing this.  The news media keeps talking about it.  Keeps speculating about what might have been the motive.  I just wish that they would stop.  The story has been told now, the evil criminal has been caught and put in jail.  We as a city, as people, need time to heal from this and every time the news brings it up, it's like opening up a wound.  It's really difficult to process the evil in our world.  How could someone be filled with so much hate and rage as to go and drive over people?  How could someone show such disregard for human life as to do this?  How can the law and our police and government protect us?  The sad answer is, they can't.  If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time something bad can happen.  It makes you want to gather those you love and want them to be close, to hold her tight, to keep them safe. 

We went to the vigil at Mel Lastman Square over the weekend because I thought that would help us start to heal.  Millions of people came out to pay their respects and tried to heal.  During the whole time that Neal, my cousin and I were in the crowed I felt scared and anxious.  I was on high alert even though we found a spot where the crowd wasn't so close, where the police and paramedics were on standby just in case directly behind us.  Native drummers started off the memorial with loud drumming.  I heard that loud noise and I jumped.  I felt panic, even after learning that it was only the sound of a drum.  You hear about bad things happening in the news every day, but those bad things usually happen in another city to people we don't know and we move on with our lives.  This happened in our city, to people we know in an areas that we've been to millions of times in our lifetime and it's like we've lost something.  How do we begin to process this and move on?  How do we not jump at every loud noise?  How do we not fear interactions with strangers we are going to meet?  How do we not fear?