Do you feel guilty in the wake of tragedy? I do too.

Pictures always get me. I suppose, "break me" would be the more accurate way of describing it. 

In my line of work, I have to face the reality of deadly violence regularly. Often I encounter it directly, while in the strange position of not actually having been impacted. 

Sometimes the victims have been specifically targeted and sometimes they were not. Sometimes they are adults, and sometimes kids. It seems that no matter the grotesque circumstance, when a photo of that person is shown to me I seem to suddenly better comprehend the enormity of what was lost. In every case, a universe was extinguished and in that universe that person was the Sun. Every planet around them stops moving and all goes dark. This fact is universal. 

I write this after paging through smiling photos of the people who lost their lives in Las Vegas. There were a few I paused to really look at and a few that made me cry. There is no rhyme or reason why certain ones pull harder than others. 

Most everyone feels some sort of internal conflict in doing this. It is heartbreaking and scary. Photos make these incidents seem more horrifying because they become easier to relate to. In this, there is a guilt. Personally, I have this rush of feeling wrong for grieving from afar when so many more people have to grieve up close. I think of how lucky the people I see on Facebook are, in posting #_____Strong following tragic events. That's a gesture of a person who is somewhat distant to an incident. Their universe, like mine, has not gone dark the way that it has for direct loved ones. I feel that in a way, my combing through photos is an attempt  to bear some of the burden of grief, so that it might weigh a little less on others. Doing so makes me feel sad, and perhaps I want to be sad and feel like I deserve to be - given that my family/friends woke up safe this morning. Is this healthy? I don't know, but I know that many of you can relate.  

This then forces the question, "What do we do?" Do we pick up and move on as normal, because we don't want to let fear win? Do we serve up mild political protests on social media, with the hope that someone else will do the actual work?

Do we pray? Do we grieve? Do we hold our own families tighter? 

Or do we settle into our distant bystander's guilt? Perhaps admitting that, yes, we are relieved that it didn't happen to us this time. 

I truly have no answers here, and if you don't either then I think its OK just to feel. Maybe.