I've been avoiding coverage of the shootings at Virginia Tech, and now that the initial shock has faded, I've also been avoiding the myriad LJ and blog posts about it. I understood the coverage and the posts in the beginning, but now the publicity has begun to feel uncomfortablely like a Roman spectacle--how much vicarious grief can we squeeze from this tragedy?

I'm generally a highly empathetic person. This works both on a personal and a global level. Today in Latin, the friend who sits beside me became very agitated and angry, and I found that the longer her agitation went on, the more distressed I became. (This isn't the first time that's happened.) I tend to take tragedies rather hard--the tsunami in 2004 upset me a lot, and I still twinge a little when I think of it. Katrina was the same way. So, I do understand the human need to feel involved in other people's pain. But there's a difference between empathy and . . . ostentatious mourning. I heard some seniors coming from Honors lunch table on Thursday, talking about this, about how people appropriate and perpetuate a tragedy like this.

I've been getting e-mails and seeing LJ posts urging me to help send aid to Virginia Tech, and I've been made uncomfortable by it. Getting involved with Dulaan has been helping me rediscover my urge to help other people, and yet . . . the people who died, died. I can't help them. Their families and classmates and teachers have difficult times ahead of them, but . . . their grief is something that will ultimately have to be dealt with on a personal level. I can't grieve in their place--maybe if I could, I would feel differently. I feel for them, but what they need now is time, and that isn't something I can provide.

It's been troubling me how curiously uneffected I've felt by this whole tragedy, especially in light of my recent re-commitment to caring about people beyond myself and helping them. I think the best way for me to explain it is this: I have limited resources, both emotional and physical. I have to believe it's best for me to direct those resources--including the emotional ones--towards people I can help.

I'm going to keep knitting.

Aidan, November 2003 - January 2007


I got Aidan when she was two weeks old. My Aunt Melodye owned her mother, and gave Aidan to me to hand raise after her mother abandoned her. For weeks, I got up at all hours to see that she was fed and adequately warm. She grew into a lovely adult bird, and responsibility for her care shifted to my mother. I took care of Aidan for a few weeks; my mom took care of her for years. So, it's no surprise that she became very much a Mama's bird.

People think that because an animal is in a cage or a tank, it's somehow separate from us, but that really isn't the case. Aidan paid attention to everything that happened into the house, and was always ready to chime in during our conversations, or to welcome us back home when we'd been gone. The house is much quieter and much lonelier without her.

She was a beautiful, happy, friendly little bird. She brought us joy every day. We miss her.

Photographs of Aidan

I'm at my dad's house. I just got up, and he told me that Mom called this morning . . . Aidan, our little budgie, died. I haven't been home yet . . . I'm mostly just stunned. I knew she would die someday, but I never expected it to be this soon. Birds can be fragile, but Aidan was always so healthy. She's been part of "home" for years . . . even when I call home from school, I can usually hear her chirping in the background.

Mom's taking it really hard. I'm the one who raised Aidan after her mother abandoned her, but my mom has been mostly in charge of her since then, especially with me at college. This is the first time we've ever had a pet die . . . I'm kind of in shock. She was just a little bird, but she was a really big part of our lives, and she always made us smile. We really loved that little bird.