This morning I actually cried.

No one saw me, I would not let them see the tears that jumped from my eyes. I got up and went outside and threw frisbies to the dog. He did not judge me and he did not ask me why I was crying, but he did notice a few sobs that issued from my chest.

I had been sitting reading the newspaper, watching the Today Show, while my wife got ready for work.

They brought on the parents of one of the children killed this week in Ohio, and as they began to speak, I began to cry. Suddenly, spontaneously, no warning, it just hit me like a sledge.

I am not the simpering sort, but that pain shown on television is becoming an all to frequent thing. The reason for that pain, the loss of a child to a violent and senseless act is now becoming part of our fabric. I can't abide the pain, and now when confronted by it, I CRY WITH THEM.

We need to go back to the idea that each person has value, and each person is here to help each other person. We need to reach out and care. By all accounts the boy who shot the others was the product of a home life that lacked natural affection. His background speaks to a father of violent actions, who brutalized those he should have loved. That father's legacy is pain to an entire community. All to often the concept of natural affection is lost. That is the affection parents feel for children, children feel for siblings, parents feel for each other. We are now confronted with children and parents perpetually at war, spouses who last said a civil word to each other when they said "I Do". We need to go back and reach deep to get the feeling that "I will do all that I can for you , my wife, my child, my mother, my father, without complaint and without regard to my own selfish interest. That is natural affection.

My mother and father buried a child in February 1968, my brothers and sisters lost a sibling. That pain is real and long lasting. My brothers death was natural and searing. How much more painful is the death by violence unexpected, unatural and inexplicable.

I cry with them for I know what love a parent can have for his children given the right circumstances. We need to get right. I would like to not cry over dead children anymore.