EDITORIAL: Striving to find healing after tragedy

It is difficult to imagine anything more tragic than the deaths Wednesday of two young children, ages 6 and 7, and the brutal assault on a 10-year-old boy at the hands of their grandmother, who also died.

The question arises: How could something like this have happened?

A simple question. But simple questions often come with complicated answers.

Authorities say the grandmother had a mental illness and had discontinued taking her medication. That is believed to have led to the stabbings that left a young girl dead and the older boy locked in the trunk of a car for 12 hours before law enforcement discovered and freed him. It also led to the woman and her younger grandson dying from the smoke created by the fire that she apparently set, perhaps in an attempt to hide the murders.

There’s simply no way to express how tragic the deaths of these innocent children are, nor to understand the pain the surviving child and the family members are enduring. An effort by those in the neighborhood has gotten under way to help the family, acts of compassion that are sorely needed and something for which they should be commended.

We wish there were magic words of comfort that could be expressed, but there are none. There is only a difficult, uncertain path to finding ways to cope and, hopefully, healing.

Likewise, we feel for the first responders — police, firefighters, EMTs and others — who answered this call. We often forget that they take these experiences home with them as well.

When we look at this event, senseless on so many levels, and others that occur, we, understandably, wonder how they could happen. The fact is, we may never truly know.

What we can know, however, is that expressions of love and support are invaluable at times like these. In a world where divisiveness and vitriol seem to be the flavors of the day, we can show, as these neighbors in the Doublegate Drive area are trying to do, compassion and kindness.

We can’t know how difficult another person’s path in life is, but we should do what we can to make it easier to bear.