I’ve been thinking a lot about the shootings at the Virginia Tech campus. Thinking how one person was able to destroy so many people’s lives. For some reason I have been thinking about all the emails, and text messages, and voice mails that these students have left. Never to be opened and read, never to be answered. They have died, but their electronic ghost continues on, churning away on some server. Like digital memories of some massive electronic brain.
I wonder if they have unchecked mail from friends and family desperately trying to find out if they are OK. Text messages on cell phones that will be running out of batteries about now. Phone messages that will never be returned. The record of the anguish preserved for as long as those hard drives are left alone.
I am deeply disturbed as I listen to news reports of survivors talking about how the escaped death by pretending to be dead. The only way we are safe from death is if we are dead ourselves. I think of the pain that will radiate out from this event. Each dead student like the epicenter of a pain earthquake sending shock waves into their community.