On, Teb. On. *

Officer Sean Collier was laid to rest today.  To refresh your memory, this is the MIT officer who was ambushed and murdered by the Boston Bombers.  I will not use their names and I really don't care about their politics or the politics against them.

Do you know what I care about?  The fact that another officer was gunned down.  Another police family lost a member who was just doing his job protecting others.  And all of this within days of something else that was horribly senseless and tragic.

As Monday turned into Tuesday, the names of the dead were released, the horrific images of the wounded were published, and then a cop was killed, I started to lose my faith; my faith in humanity, my faith in God, my faith in my country.  How much more of this can we take?  Will there be a national tragedy every six months from now on?  More people going to the movies and never coming home? More students never getting to grow up?  More photos of happy people, happy moments flashed across the screen; the faces of lives cut way too short in a senseless way. It makes me want to never leave the house, never go anywhere, yell, scream, throw things.

I looked over at my son.  My happy, smiling, ABC singing light-of-my-life and felt a pit in my stomach.  This innocent little man screaming his ABC's with this tragedy playing out on the TV behind him, what sort of world did I bring him into?

Then a friend of mine posted a quote from Mr. Rogers.  "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers.  You will find people who are helping.'"

I pulled myself up off the floor after reading this and focused on the hundreds of people who rushed INTO the bombing immediately to help those mortally wounded knowing full well a second bomb was likely.  I saw the man in the cowboy hat clamping down an artery with his bare hands for a stranger where a leg used to be.  I saw cops, EMTs, marathon volunteers, marathon runners, and bystanders creating turniquets from anything and everything to stop the bleeding.

The helpers.

It took two "men" to carry out this atrocity.  In mere seconds it created thousands of helpers, no questions asked, no hesitation.

That is the world in which I'm raising my son.

In the words of Big Papi, Mr. David Ortiz, "this is our fucking city and nobody is going to dictate our freedom."

(*From "Galaxy Quest")