I'm back home and I just feel raw.

[frazzled]

32. Every time I see a television ad

that features a happy little child opening a Christmas present (a frequent genre in this season), I start tearing up, and I have to change the channel immediately. This is too much for most of us, and I don't even celebrate Christmas.

Because I live in a city where many little children have died, one by one, across time, from gunshot wounds (here in Chicago, in fact, more children are killed each year from guns than the number who died in Sandy Hook), this sadness has occurred with me many times over. But because each of these other deaths has come and gone fleetingly in the media, the sadness is unfortunately all too fleeting, too. Too often we forget and move on ... until the next one.

This time, I have vowed not to forget again, not these children from Connecticut nor any of the little girls and boys who have lost their lives to senseless gun violence in my own town. Especially not them, because nobody remembers their faces or names.