I sat transfixed in front of the television, as did all of America. Seven months pregnant with my second child, I watched TV as my first child slept upstairs. I was distraught and scared. I was hoping and praying that rescuers could get to the girl and would find her alive.
Baby Jessica was still stuck in a 22-foot well. She was the same age as my son, born the same month of the same year. In my mind, it was my baby who was in danger. I didn’t want to imagine the horror, but I couldn’t keep myself from feeling horrified. My pain was nearly unbearable.
That was October 1987. Now it’s June 2016 and Baby Jessica is 30. She was brought out of the well alive.
It is June 2016 and again I feel unsafe. This time my second baby, my 28-year-old son, is in danger. Once again I sit transfixed in front of the television, again horrified, again in pain. This time, rescuers couldn’t save 49 babies.
My son wasn’t physically in Orlando, but in my mind he was there. In my mind all his friends were there. In my mind I was the woman on TV who was looking for her son, desperate to know if he was alive.
My son could have been in that nightclub. Had Pulse been in New York, in Boston, in Providence, in Chicago, in Anywhere U.S.A, my son could have been there. He was not, but 49 mothers’ sons or daughters were. I am devastated, and I fear not only for my children, but for humanity. I struggle to understand hatred, and I don’t. I want to protect everyone, when in actuality I can protect no one.
Susan Adelson
Florence