Since I haven’t done it, at least in writing, I’d like to send this note into the ether in the hopes that some of it skitters about the cosmos and finds its way to Rep. Giffords and her family, and those of the other victims of last Saturday’s shooting.

To the families of the six dead: nothing can replace your loss, or make up for the arbitrary, demented nature of it all.  I can only hope and pray that you find some peace and comfort, sometime.  I am sorry beyond words for your loss.

For those wounded: I  hope you recover completely physically – and as completely as possible, mentally, spiritually and emotionally.

And to Representative Giffords: I pray that the miracles keep coming.

In all sincerity, I thank the God we both believe in that the bullet took one of the infinitesimal paths it could have taken through the human brain that left you (as I write this) not only alive, but responsive enough to leave doctors optimistic about your prognosis.

I know you have a couple of young children.  The thought of being yanked away from them by any of life’s arbitrary caprices – to say nothing of this sort of evil – used to haunt me when my kids were that age; I hope you and yours are together again as soon as humanly possible.

Political differences should be tabled at times like this.  It should go without saying.

Anyway – for whatever its feeble worth, I hope for the best for all of you.