What Now?

Massacre

Pain may be inevitable, but it should be inflicted by the ones we love.

The classroom was silent as our teacher held back sobs. A family of students had been murdered by their father in their own home, and she was to deliver the news.

I didn't know them personally. Not the seventeen year old with graduation in her sights. Not the fifteen and fourteen year olds, though I had seen them in passing. If I remember right, they had recently put on a skit for the school with other classmates that everyone had enjoyed. And certainly not the five year old little girl, her life ended before it even began.

And even though I didn't know them, I mourned for them. For the lives they could no longer have. I mourned for the mother that found them. What kind of life would be left to live, after finding everything you hold dear massacred by the man you had once trusted beyond measure?

That's what they called it. The Mount Mayfield Massacre. I remember because again, tragedy played on repeat in the classroom that day. All eyes focused on the television screen, taking in the painful truth of innocent lives being snuffed out by a coward. One that took his own life, after destroying countless others.

We were told to pray. Pray for the children. Pray for the mother. Pray for all of those feeling the loss that devastation brought.

But why?

Would prayer bring them back? Would it heal their heartbroken mother? Would it keep things like this from happening ever again?

Any questions resembling a search for answers was met with silence. The only thing I knew for certain was that the idea of their so-called God seemed more distant than ever before.