Explaining the Orlando Murders to My Son

“Mommy, what are they talking about?” 

“Mommy, why are they sad?”

“Mommy, why is everyone crying?”

These are the questions my four-year-old son, Reagan, peppered me with earlier this week, while watching the news coverage of the devastating shooting in the club in Orlando. 

“Because they’re upset, baby,” I said. “Someone did something bad, and a lot of people got hurt.”

And then I turned the TV off. I’m not ready to explain to my child – the one who, dressed in his Captain America costume, waved and yelled hello to a stranger walking by our house – that 49 people died at the hands of a gunman whose radical religious views made him think he was doing something good.

I’m not ready to explain to him why 137 people died in Paris last November, inside a theater, or why ten people died at the movies in Colorado four years ago.

I rocked Reagan by the lights of our Christmas tree on Dec. 14, 2012, while 20 six-and-seven year olds, and six adults, died at the hands of a mentally ill man. 20 children who believed that being good would bring them presents from Santa Claus, who instead saw the face of hatred right before their murder.

I’m not ready to explain evil to him yet. But apparently it’s time.

To be honest, when I first heard about the Orlando shooting, I barely flinched. Isn’t that sad? 49 innocent victims lost their lives and I barely flinched. Even watching the news coverage, my heart wasn’t breaking as it should have been. It was sad in an abstract way, until my son needed me to explain it to him. And then, my heart exploded – for the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and sons and daughters and friends who are in unspeakable grief. And also, for all of us, who have to explain to our children that maybe, indeed, the world has gone a little mad.

We need to fix this. We need to fix a world where we barely blink when people senselessly die. We need to stop turning it into a political debate, or a pro-guns and anti-guns debate. We need to stop turning it into a religious debate. We need to stop debating and start fixing.

I shouldn’t have to explain to my four-year-old why 49 people were killed by an assault rifle in a club, making it the largest mass shooting in US history. At four years old, he should be worrying about playing a superhero, not growing up in a world where we desperately need one.

Orlando TV reporter Jaye Watson, after spending her morning talking about the tragedy, shared on her blog, “The problem is that all roads to sanity are blocked by people so busy running their mouths and pointing their fingers that others have plenty of time to pull the trigger and take more innocent lives.”

I don’t know how to fix this. No one does. But unless we all stop being desensitized to the hatred and the anger and the violence – unless we collectively scream, “ENOUGH!” at the top of our lungs, our children will grow up in a world where no one is safe. They will look to us for safety, and we will have to turn and look the other way.

We can do better. We are better. We need to be better.