DAILY PROMPT: Ripped From The Headlines
Head to your favorite online news source. Pick an article with a headline that grabs you. Now, write a short story based on the article.
I honestly don’t have a favorite online news source. My favorite way to receive news is via an old fashioned paper, you know where you get to turn pages. But, I do from time to time come across articles that I enjoy online via Facebook. The Onion is news with a twist that never disappoints. However, yesterday was different….
I came across this article on the Inquisitor Noah Pozner’s Mom Describes Newtown Victim’s Body, And Why We Should All Listen. Within this article you will also be able to read the original interview by Naomi Zeveloff, which appeared in The Jewish Daily Forward. Ms. Zeveloff interviewed Veronique, the very courageous mother of little Noah. She poignantly describes what she saw when she viewed his body prior to the formal services.
“We all saw how beautiful he was. He had thick, shiny hair, beautiful long eyelashes that rested on his cheeks. He looked like he was sleeping. But the reality of it was under the cloth he had covering his mouth there was no mouth left. His jaw was blown away. I just want people to know the ugliness of it so we don’t talk about it abstractly, like these little angels just went to heaven. No. They were butchered. They were brutalized. And that is what haunts me at night.”
Veronique’s methodical account of what she saw and why she needed to see Noah is raw. It’s personal, honest, horrific and necessary. She personally walks us through our own fears with dignity in this piece. This is not an easy read by any means, but listening to these horrific details is necessary in order for us to fully grasp the extent of harm that can be caused by these assault weapons.
I think Veronique says it best in this statement:
“I owed it to him as his mother, the good, the bad, the ugly … It is not up to me to say I am only going to look at you and deal with you when you are alive, that I am going to block out the reality of what you look like when you are dead. And as a little boy, you have to go in the ground. If I am going to shut my eyes to that I am not his mother. I had to bear it. I had to do it.”
We owe it to ourselves to do the same. Thank you Veronique.
Life With The Top Down 
Didn’t really want to push “like” on this post since it doesn’t exactly describe my reaction. Such thing as an “appreciation” button? It’s kind of funny, our paper’s editorial page (yours as well I’m sure) is loaded with letters from Free Gunners who label anyone who advocates a ban on assault weapons as ’emotional.’ Damn right we’re emotional. Thanks for posting this. Hope you don’t get hate mail.
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Hate mail never entered my mind. Yikes! I think it’s emotional to immediately jump to arming teachers. Sadly, there are some teachers out there that I don’t even trust with a sharp pencil let alone a gun. I was in a trance reading this mother’s account of burying her child…I could not shake it.
The responses to this tragedy are based with emotion, how can they not be? But serious decisions need to be made regarding safety with clarity, not reaction.
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We can empathize, but I don’t think any of us can really feel the emotion this mother expresses in seeing the results of the brutalization of her child. How does one ever recover from such an event?
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I would imagine it’s a lifetime of recovery. Thanks for stopping by.
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Excellent post. Thank you for sharing this, well done Life. Appreciate you. DAF
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A very brave woman to to be able to speak in this way.
The families will never get over this. The Town will in time and American society has already done so, time to move on, sell a few more guns, start another war, arm the icecream salemen in the park, lock down the airports – but don’t solve the problem.
People need to see the reality of gun fire.
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I am unable to read full stories such as this.. while for many it’s informative and necessary, I just get entirely too emotional.. Just these excerpts here have my heart feeling heavy..
(I’m a Huffington Post, UK Telegraph headline reader 🙂
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I was bawling like a baby. I also like the Huffington Post.
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Oh, Tops. This just breaks my heart. Everything about this senseless tragedy. What a brave soul to be able to face the absolutely unthinkable.
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I couldn’t imagine having to bury one of my children. How horrible.
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Both you and Veronique make an excellent point. Maybe if more shootings were covered to this depth, there would be fewer shootings. Well, one can hope….
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Great story, and great idea. I’m trying to find a way to apply this to funny names…
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This reminded me of that kid who got hit by that truck when he didn’t hear it backing up. How parents get through something like this is beyond me. The way she wrote it threw me. You were brave to write about it. I’d have had nightmares.
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Amen to that!
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Just hearing the words “Sandy Hook” bring tears to my eyes so this one hit me pretty hard. I even started crying during Obama’s speech today. Thanks for sharing this one 🙂
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It’s so painful. When I first read the article I was a mess, I just couldn’t shake her words or her theory on why she had to see him….now I get it.
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Thanks for posting this. I had a hard time dealing with my emotions after Newtown & couldn’t write for a couple weeks, but how much harder it was for the parents to deal with not only losing their beautiful children, but also losing the beautiful memories of how their children looked.
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I know how you feel. I was tearing up at every report. When I read that mother’s story I just couldn’t get it out of my head, probably because I could never imagine being in her shoes.
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