I too, had a second grader. Picked him up after school, four parents in our Parish perished that day. They were on AA97, I do not remember what I said to him in the back seat, I could barely speak, but I did say that Daddy and I loved him and we were all going to be alright.
When the tsarnaev’s took out the Marathon.. he looked me right in the face after that and said “You said we were going to be alright”.
I was wrong.
We are never going to be alright until we defeat these animals.
Each of us here does the best we can, with the tools we have.
From 9/11/01 to 4/15/13 was plenty of time to break it to him gently, that you and Daddy were not really in charge of the universe, and that sometimes very bad things can suddenly happen beyond the ability of any parent to control or explain.
Didn’t he graduate high school in 2012?