My Heart is a School Bus
Mad reflections on school shootings
I remember seeing a photo or a video on the news in the aftermath of Newtown. It was a picture of a police officer. Some kids and adults in the background. Crying. Holding hands. Various emergency vehicles. And a school bus. A school bus parked alone without passengers. I don’t know why, but that image saddened me deeply, perhaps more so than the carnage and blood itself: All those kids wanted was to get on that stupid bus, that loud, bumpy, uncomfortable, smelly old bus.
They wanted to hear someone say, “I love you, kid. You’ll be okay.”
In my heart was an old familiar ache. A creak. A deep knowing sadness.
I think my heart, maybe, is a school bus. As big, anyway, as a school bus is, bright and yellow and coughing diesel lungs. It bumps down streets and carries the souls and carries the memories of the dead and the laughter of the past and the losses of love and life like a battle’s casualty list: each name a tragedy. It carries the breaths of my wife and my daughters’ giggling, my angels and saints while it groans with the noise of it all and complains on the way to bring them to school, but drives them around all day pretending to miss the turn and never drops them off because of the loneliness it will feel without them.