Have you ever been called upon? A moment in time, where you had to push it. Push it to the limit. To do the right thing. To help someone. Over and above?Demonstrated to God your righteousness, your faithfulness and your commitment? Some people, special people, do this on a daily basis. It's part of their job. So that we can live peacefully in a democracy.Others find themselves in a situation where lives are at stake. And there is no time, none to decide.To quote Alec Baldwin, in his famous sales speech, in Glengarry Glen Ross, "It's f--k, or walk." You either do the right thing, or you don't. In Uvalde, Texas, on May 4, 2022, they didn't.Instead of rescuing children being gunned down inside Robb Elementary School, they waited. People in law enforcement, waited for one hour, 14 minutes. Perhaps, the worst one hour and 14 minutes, in America's history.On that day, that terrible day, a day that diminished us all, a part of us died. On top of the 21 lives lost.Pour yourself a drink and sit on a chair, for one hour and 14 minutes. Napoleonic battles, have been won and lost in that amount of time.Charles Darwin once said, "A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life."Think of the pain, the fear, the panic, as a mad gunman hunted them down. Nobody came.This weekend, Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry paid a special visit to a Uvalde family.According to the San Antonio Express-News, John Martinez, the nephew of Irma Garcia, one of two teachers killed alongside 19 children during the May 24, 2022, massacre, said on social media that the royal couple came to his house to celebrate his mother’s birthday.“Meghan Markle singing my mom Happy Birthday was the cutest most adorable thing ever,” he wrote on Twitter ("X"). “She even bought her a cake.".Martinez posted a series of photos from the visit as well as a video that shows Markle holding a cake and singing Happy Birthday surrounded by other family members, the report said.This isn’t Markle’s first trip to the Texas town.She made an unannounced visit to Uvalde two days after the shooting and was seen placing flowers at a makeshift memorial in front of the county courthouse.She has kept in touch with Garcia’s family since the tragedy, going “out of her way” to check in, according to previous posts from Martinez.A lot of royal watchers don't like Harry and Meghan and that, I don't get. I admire them both and wish them well in this often crazy world of social media judgment.And I stand by them, too. Harry is an Afghan war hero and nobody can take that away. The Duke of Sussex served two tours in Afghanistan and during the second flew an Apache attack helicopter. What did you do during the Afghan war? Probably like me, nothing.On Saturday, Martinez posted a photo of two of the children smiling with Markle, accompanied by the caption, “Meghan Markle with Irma and Joe’s girls, they loved every moment, practically besties.”The royal visit comes just days after a packed Uvalde City Council meeting where a consultant presented the findings of a so-called independent investigation into the local police response to the shooting.The investigator, Jesse Prado, said local officers were not to blame for the confused law enforcement response, leading to angry responses from family members of the victims.Not to blame. Imagine that.One hour, 14 minutes. While children phoned for help. Nobody came..I have never been called upon to make a choice. To risk my life and save others. It can't be, an easy choice. But it is the only choice.Let me tell you this, I would rather be dead, deader than Julius Caesar than have it weigh on my conscience, that I didn't do the right thing.That when the time came, I did not respond.That cowardice would get the better of me in a test as great as Uvalde, Texas, on May 4, 2022.I tend to think that, eventually, we are all tested, one way or another.Tested by an unjust and cruel world.And let's face it, there's no closure. That is a total fallacy. So you might as well embrace it.if you've lost someone near and dear, embrace it. Choose to feel it. And to hell with those who tell you to get over it. They will never understand.Maybe, that's how we remember them.That's how we honour them and never forget them.This quote, from Sandra Torres, along with her daughter's photo, haunts me like no other. Torres lost her 10-year-old daughter, Eliahna Torres, in the Uvalde massacre.“I don’t believe in ‘Uvalde Strong’ anymore,” Torres told NBC News. “It’s like nobody cares. Nobody understands our pain. Nobody knows what we’re going through. It’s us against the world.”Eliahna was known by her friends and family for her love of softball, but she never made it to her final game of the season, which was scheduled for the night of the massacre.She had fallen in love with playing softball and was a promising young infielder.A life cut so short.
