Thoughts and Prayers

and other American blasphemies

When I was a child, my dad was in training to become a doctor. I remember when he did his rotation in the ER; he worked in an inner city hospital in Houston where they saw plenty of gunshot victims. I was maybe two or three years old, but I remember how my dad never wore his hospital shoes inside the house. I didn’t see those shoes often—I was so young, but I can remember drips and spatters of reddish brown blood all over them—almost like paint.

I didn’t know much about guns. I didn’t know why anyone would have a gun, much less use one (or two, or more). I now know that a lot of the people my dad saw in the ER (for gunshots and other things) were desperate—for money, for control, for protection. They thought that owning and using guns would help. And then they ended up there, losing consciousness beneath the fluorescent lights, spilling blood onto my dad’s shoes.

I’ve never known that kind of desperation myself. I can imagine it feels huge and toothy and ravenous. If someone made it easy to buy weapons against those feelings of terror, I might just buy in. There have even been moments these past few days when I’ve wondered—would it be better to have an armed guard standing outside every school, every church, every grocery store? Would those children and teachers and elders still be here, if there were? In those moments, the weapons dealers seem more like friends and allies than enemies.

Here, we will get you a bigger gun, they say—even bigger than those carried by your enemies.

But they’re saying the same thing to our enemies—to the people who want to harm us, or defend themselves against us, or wreak some kind of misguided crusade on our elders and children and neighbors.

These weapons dealers are in the business of desperation. They want us to be afraid of each other, to arm ourselves against our worst fears. It’s working. There are more guns in this country than people, and more deaths of little ones by guns than by so many other means.

I don’t believe in monsters. I don’t think our Congresspeople are monsters, nor are the folks who run the NRA, or even the troubled boys who seem to think that shooting a crowd of children will help them solve something in their addled minds and troubled hearts. These people aren’t monsters. I just think it’s too easy for people to follow their own greed, and enough disconnect between their money and our deaths to make it still feel worth their while.

I don’t know how to change this. I wish I did. I only know what I can do, and that’s to never let money taste sweeter than caring for someone else’s well-being.

There should be some way to hold the powerful people accountable for the suffering they cause. I hope one day there is.

Yesterday I spent several hours in bed. Getting groceries, writing end-of-year thank-you cards to my kids’ teachers, working on comics—it all felt so sluggish and hard, even though all these things have been stacking up on my list for weeks. Last week’s comic has felt doubly true these days. But after a few hours scrolling and feeling that familiar tightness gather in my chest, I got out of bed. I brushed my teeth and did housework and counted the hours until my kids got home.

After school, I drove with my oldest to pick up takeout for dinner. He asked if he could have a bottle of fresh horchata from the restaurant fridge and I said yes, even though normally I would say no. On the way home I missed my exit and we spent an extra fifteen minutes in traffic. Normally it would have shot my blood pressure straight up, but I just didn’t have the heart to be angry. Ten extra minutes with my curly-headed eleven-year-old, drinking horchata straight from the bottle and singing along to the Monkees on the radio. We don’t get to pick when tragedy turns up in our lives, and we also don’t get to pick those magic days, days that feel lucky and breathless and free.

This is what it means to live with death, to let both creatures—joy and sorrow—curl up on the rug together, not knowing where one ends and the other begins.

Sending love to all you broken-hearted folks tonight. I hope you’re not feeling too heavy, but it’s OK if you are.

All my love,

🖤Becca Lee, the Haunted Librarian🖤