Editorial: Providing comfort is something we all can do
In times of tragedy, it is our inclination to seek meaning, to lay blame and to try to prevent such things from happening again. Some of these things - in their various manifestations - are productive. Others are not. But one thing we can all do that is certain to benefit those in the greatest pain - and even ourselves - is to provide comfort.
Sunday's violence at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, where 49 people were killed, was shocking in its brutality and its incomprehensibility. What followed should not be, for that's what we're made of.
The survivors aided the injured, plugging wounds with T-shirts, fashioning tourniquets and carrying them to first responders.
Vigils were held.
The people of Orlando came together as one - no matter their political or religious stripe - to comfort each other.
And the tentacles of this senseless act reach far beyond Orlando. It struck us all hard. We mourned for Paris during its recent acts of violence, and Paris now mourns for us. You need not be gay, Latino or a Floridian to be hurt by this, nor do you need to be gay, Latino or Floridian to provide comfort.
We've seen vigils in Boys Town in Chicago. On Tuesday night, a Presbyterian church in Wheaton held an interfaith vigil that included representatives from the Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Sikh communities.
A mosque near Glen Ellyn on opened its doors on Tuesday night to anyone. There, Eric Ringquist of Glen Ellyn told the 100 people in attendance, "I am a gay Christian, and the atrocity that happened in Orlando touches me deeply. I am humbled and honored that you welcomed us into your community, into your sacred space."
Such expressions of love and unity start to heal broken hearts.
A group of 20 people working with Lutheran Church Charities' K-9 Comfort Dogs along with 12 of their golden retrievers flew to Orlando early Monday to provide what dogs do best - unconditional love.
"When people are hurting like this community is down here, you just know you have to go," Barbara Granado of Arlington Heights, one of the Northbrook-based group's volunteers, told Daily Herald staff writer Marie Wilson. "They feel safe and the dogs aren't judgmental."
The specially trained dogs wick away the pain, and not only for a moment. They help the survivors and their families, then, before they head home, they will tend to medical personnel at the hospitals that treated the injured, and they'll tend to the police officers who responded to the shooting.