When the blow came, it was absurd in its clumsiness. If you are in this room, the state governor acknowledged, it means that your child is dead. The parents of Sandy Hook elementary school pupils, who had been waiting hours for news, knew they would walk out of that room as different people.
“I could feel the tension holding on to that hope, just like you’re holding this little flame, this flicker of hope,” recalls Robbie Parker, whose six-year-old daughter Emilie was among the dead. “And then with his words, that being snuffed out. It was like a big eruption of emotion and then like a vacuum because none of us had any hope any more. I have a really weird relationship with hope now.”
