Letter of the Month winner: Carla Nickles, of Midwest City

Meet the writer:

Carla Campbell Nickles grew up in Nicoma Park and graduated from Choctaw High School. Since 2006, she's worked as an intellectual property assistant at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. Nickles and her husband, Brian, live in Midwest City with their two sons; a grown daughter lives in Bixby. She has done volunteer work promoting organ and tissue donation. She attends Nicoma Park First Baptist Church, where she sings in the choir. One of Nickles' sons died in a car accident when he was 17.

The letter:

As I stood at my son's grave to check on the Christmas tree I bought him, I couldn't help but think of those lives cut short in Newtown, Conn. My heart ached for the families, knowing the utter despair they'll feel for months and years. This isn't about gun control, whether you're for or against it. As a mother who has lost a son, I would be peeved that people who have no idea what it's like to lose a child make my son's death about anything political or to further their own agenda.