Comfort? Yes. Joy? Not so much

Throughout each year I clip out memorable quotations from the daily papers and magazines, quotes that I figure some day I might use for some purpose or other. One of those from a few months back applies today.

I don't know who Chris Heisel is, but apparently he (or she?) is a Toastmasters International member.  This person was quoted as saying, "If I could stop time, I'd spend it just watching my family exist."

I'm thinking that's a good idea this Christmas in light of what happened in Connecticut.

As I sit here on Monday, Dec. 17, needing to come up with a Christmasy column of some sort, it's a raw, gray morning on the other side of the window in Vermillion. So it is also in Newtown, a place whose name I didn't know until three days earlier.  

They're burying a couple 6-year-olds named Noah and Jack there today beneath cold, leaden skies.  A couple more first graders tomorrow. More the day after that. One parish priest has 11 funerals to perform between now and Christmas. Twenty-six people who had been anticipating Christmas won't be around to celebrate it.

Christmas Eve is a week from tonight.  Sleigh bells ring. Hark, the herald angels sing! O come, all ye faithful! Joy to the world! Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. All is merry and bright.

I hear from my daughters this morning that things were a bit different this morning at my grandchildren's schools. At the place my granddaughters attend, a Rapid City police officer was visible evidence that things are different than they were last Friday. A Pennington County sheriff's department officer was outside at my grandson's school.

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