Adam Lanza's Family

     There apparantly has been some flap about a woman who wrote on her blog, "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother."  I am assuming this woman is someone with a mentally ill son who has had to face issues very similar to those faced by Nancy Lanza in her struggles with Adam which culminated in this past Friday's tragic, terrifying result.

     Please try to understand this woman's perspective because, as I was thinking about what I had heard, I realized I could have been Adam Lanza's older sister.

     When my brother Mike first started showing the most obvious signs of his mental illness/schizophrenia, there were times when it could be quite frightening, although mostly it was just really, really sad.  It got so bad for a time that my parents barricaded their bedroom door at night in the fear that Mike might try to harm our Mom to whom he would make insinuative threats, verbally and via gestures.  At one point (and this is not to imply that no buttons were pushed as I was not always the most gracious of older siblings...) Mike picked me up bodily and threw me upon the floor.  This was after we were both full grown adults, at least physiologically speaking.  Thank God Mike never had the access to guns that Adam Lanza was allowed, as this may have been the only significant difference, at times, that prevented my brother from acting out in a similar way, although I would like to think Mike would never have done anything so vicious even in his worst and most violent moments.

     What, we might wonder, was Nancy Lanza thinking and doing by allowing this son of hers access to guns?  In Nancy Lanza's world guns were recreational, used primarily for target shooting and, perhaps now and again for hunting.  These weapons were not fired at people - or not supposed to be - and this was what she would have taught her son.  What was Nancy Lanza doing?  She was trying to give her son a life, trying to help him find his way in a world he was ill-suited to navigate on his own, trying desperately to do what those six educators died for last Friday - protect her child as they wanted to protect the children under their care. 

     That she was reaching the point of being unable to continue caring for Adam is not testimony to any fault in her parenting, but to her humanity; not one of us is perfect and Adam's mental disorder was too involved, too deeply entrenched, for his mother to be able to continue to care for the adult her son had grown into - the violent, angry, raging, jealous child-man he could not escape from except through death - at least in his own mind where he blamed everyone of the people who loved him, everyone of those children, everyone in his life except himself, for the hurt and anger he felt and the pain he was determined to inflict.

     That's a lot of speculation on my part.  I did not know Adam, his mother, or any of the people murdered so brutally last Friday.  But I do know the fear of not knowing if you're going to receive some stridently demanding phone call telling you something unimaginably horrible has taken place, changing your life and that of your entire family forever; the fear of not knowing if your younger brother will survive the night without his coat after he disappeared into one of the worst snowstorms within recent memory; the fear of wondering if the sweet, wonderful brother you grew up with will ever get to reappear when thisterrible mental disease has run its course or if it will run its course.  It is living with your heart always breaking or constantly broken.  It is a life of constant emotional pain and fear.

     Adam Lanza's mom loved him.  He was her child; her little boy.  She knew him when he was six-years old and as sweet and beautiful as each one of those little ones whose lives he so callously took six days ago.

Dear God,

     Our hearts are so broken.  We are so much in need.  Please, God, help us; love us; be our protecting and loving parent and hold us in your arms now and in the days to come as more children are laid to rest, more questions surface, more emotions make the way into our hearts and minds.  Please God, be especially kind to those families of the children who died, they each lost more than just a loved one - they lost each of their childrens' entire lifetimes as well.

Amen