You hear the gunshots, and pray it is fireworks

[FrodosPet]

Then you hear the sirens, and turn on the police scanner app on your smartphone and learn it isn't. One of your neighbors is dead, killed by her ex-boyfriend, upset that she broke up with him.

Or you get a text saying one of your coworkers won't be in because his wife was shot on Easter morning. Killed by the random gunfire of a piece of shit who was mad because he was bounced from a nightclub.

Or you sit in your office, waiting for customers, staring at the spot where a young man was killed because some teenager was shooting a rifle at nothing in particular, just for the fun of it. You look to your left and realize "I remember hearing on the police scanner when a body was found by that lake. You look to your right and realize "I remember reading about someone being killed in a robbery in front of that party store over there. And it strikes you, "I remember when someone was killed in in the party store behind me, and when the body was found behind the grocery store next to me".

Or you visit a friend and are told that one of your high school chums had killed himself, devastated because he came home from a trip to find the love of his life raped and murdered.

Every time it hits that close to you, it takes another chunk out of your soul. Your faith in humanity is decreased as you wonder, "How much closer will it get? When will a family member be next?"

Sorry to be so depressing. But sometimes you just have to let it out.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Then you go cover a fire

And the local folks are giving water to fire, police and media, and the local restaurant feeds all for free.

It does not happen often, but it did yesterday.

In fact, I think I will write a small editorial on that.

[FrodosPet]

8. Thank you

I need to remember things like this.

I got set off on my path of melancholy by finally meeting in person the gentleman who's wife was killed today. I cannot imagine the pain he has been through, and I hope I never find out for myself.

But, like you mentioned, there is also kindness and charity in the world. We have to embrace that, and contribute to it, in order to stop the ugly actions and attitudes that diminish us.

[Sunlei]

2. have 2 friends both had their freshmen in college sons shot dead.

One had a dorm robbery ran out after the robbers and they shot him.

The other was his first month in college, party and had something to drink? and went out to drive alone at 3am. he called 9-11 from the car asked for help. was speaking to the dispacher for a longtime..police caught up with him and he stopped the car for them. They shot him because he was still holding the cellphone. "police in fear" type deal.

[Journeyman]

3. When I was young, the Mother of one of my friends had passed through the death factories. . .

from Treblinka by way of Theresienstadt. She told me one day her life in sunshine was made possible by her capacity to love.

She and her husband, Viktor (who had also passed through the death factories), never had children of their own but instead adopted little ones who had been brutalized by life. For example, her son, my friend Ron, had been torched as a babe by his drug-addled mother. Another child, a daughter, was abandoned by her birth parents because she had an incurable disorder that took her life at 15.

And through it all, Sarah tried to make sense of the world and of what she had endured by giving freely of her love. So much had been taken, so very much denied, yet she found the capacity to make the world better, even if it was only within the confines of her small family and its duration admittedly ephemeral.

Everywhere I look in the world it is with hope. Having known and loved Sarah, what other option do I have?

[Hekate]

4. The best possible reply

[Rowdyboy]

5. What a breathtakingly beautiful story. And what an honor to have known

such a person. The answer to your question is that you really don't have a choice-to deny hope in the face of her life is to defy reason.

I've known older special people too-maybe not with that compelling a backstory but certainly well worth appreciating and their overall opinion on life echoes hers. If not for hope, then most of life would be unbearable.

[DesertFlower]

6. i live north of phoenix in the county.

just about every night there's news of a shooting.

[DiverDave]

7. Geez, I'd move

no it doesnt do anything for the underlying problem, but do YOU want to be next?

[FrodosPet]

9. You live where you can afford to live

I no longer work at the office overlooking where Ronnie Greene was shot by Nathaniel Abraham, nor do I live in Pontiac (mini Detroit), so I am away from the worst of it. But where I am at, just on the other side of 8 Mile from "The City", is still a rough place to inhabit.

I am at an age where I feel lucky to have any job at all. I am blue collar: went in the military after high school, and afterwards vocational education in electronics and computer networking. But I never went to college, so I am probably not going to find a corporate management job (even though my imagination, talents, and experience would make me much better than many if not most people with those positions). I had to take several years off from employment in the computer field to care for family, so my skills are rusty (not to mention that most of those jobs in this area go to H1Bs) and I don't have the right keywords on my resume. My back is bad and my heart is iffy, so physical labor is out of the question. And the job I have can be stressful - often times working with the drunkest, rudest, and most impatient members of the public in a fast-paced, multitasking environment, that there is not a lot of physical or emotional energy left to go find a second job.

You gotta play with the hand you were dealt, not the one you want.