.And so it ends.

I debated all night on whether or not to make a post about the death of Osama Bin Laden. It feels out of the scope of this small blog written by a stay at home mom on the literal opposite side of the Earth from the infamous. However, this blog is has always been in my mind a written account of my journey through motherhood written for my children to someday read should they choose. And with that in mind I thought it would only be correct and fair to make at least some comment on my thoughts and feelings on an event that my children will someday read about in their history textbooks.
In all honesty I have mixed feelings. I know how that sounded to many of you so let me elaborate. I am not sad that a horrible killer is no longer on this Earth. I am not. I also know that my entire thoughts and feelings leading up to my current state is much too much to cover in a single blog post. However, I cannot rejoice in the death of a human being. As the news hit and after President Obama's briefing my entire neighborhood flooded into the streets with fireworks and much merry making. A few of my friends on Facebook updated their statuses claiming to be toasting a drink or cheering in glee {though being my friends most were like-minded with me and a bit calmer}. As it was happening all that I could think of was how beaten my soul felt on September 12th when images of rejoicing Middle Eastern people flooded their own streets. How would I compare to them if I rejoiced at the death of Bin Laden? What would that say about me as a person? I value life and I value due process and the judicial system. I absolutely believe with every single ounce of my being that Osama Bin Laden needed to pay for his role in the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent victims but I feel torn about the way that "punishment" was handled. After so many years of grieving as a nation for the events of September 11th and the subsequent lives needlessly lost in the pursuit of this end I'm left a bit empty. I wish that he had been brought up on trial much like Saddam Hussein or Nazi's at Nuremberg so that he could answer for what he has done, so that we could show him that we still grieve but that we are strong and resilient and we will move forward and although we refuse to forget what happened or stop missing those we lost he did not "win" anything. Instead an old man with kidney failure hiding in squalor in a far off desert was taken down in a Wild West style shoot out. I wanted more than that. I cant say exactly what I wanted but I feel like this wasn't the answer to the 2,985 lives lost on 9/11/01 or the thousands of lives lost in two subsequent wars that I never supported. Nothing will bring those people back but this didn't feel right either.
To make a topic that I feel is very large {from my point of view alone} into a very small nutshell I'm left with this thought: I cannot rejoice for the loss of life, for the untold billions of resources spent in pursuit of this end, in all the lives lost on this journey... in which this is but another day & another night.