A kick in the gut reaction

On Tuesday morning, the rest of the country was introduced to the quiet east Parker County burghs of Hudson Oaks and Willow Park (located west of Fort Worth, Texas) in the saddest way possible – unspeakable tragedy. The grisly discovery of four dead bodies (three of whom are small children) at the Oak Hill Mobile Home Park is now known far and wide – with the video from the mobile home park splattered on widescreens from Washington, D.C. and New York to Los Angeles.
And all points between. By mid-afternoon, a scan of all the major Texas online newspaper sites (Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, Houston) led with this story, complete with photos. It was the lead video on the Los Angeles Times website and it was a major component to MSNBC and Fox News online viewing.
A friend from Charlotte, N.C. has already read it and was verbally upset by 10 a.m. when he communicated with me.
No one will ever know what really happened that morning or why Gilberta Estrada did what she is alleged to have done. That would require a time machine and the ability to undo events that all the rest of us deem as horrific and seemingly unnecessary.
But no one has invented such a device and no one possesses the power to see such things in advance in order to stop them. That is only reserved for books, fictional television or motion pictures.
Such tragedies affect more than immediate families but communities. This will shake the very core of those living in Willow Park and Hudson Oaks because outsiders will only identify the two cities with this single event. The stain will be that permanent.
I do not mean to be flippant about all this but I do wish that those contemplating murder-suicide will do all of us a favor and reverse the order of action. Try the suicide first and then see about the murders after you’re dead. Might not work out the way you plan it and perhaps some innocent women and children could be spared a horrible way to die.
I’m sure Gilberta Estrada might have had issues and problems. But to choose to erase the lives of such young children, as is being presented by law enforcement investigators, is unimaginable, especially by a mother.
In this country, you have to pass tests in order to drive a car, and in some states, present rigid proof to vote. But absolutely nothing is done to assure that people who have NO business being parents, do not have children. At least nothing is done to ask them to think a smidgen before conceiving, or go through the process of producing children.
I won’t get into any political debate of sanctity of life other than to say this: We have to care for children AFTER they are born and try to avoid such scenes as happened in the Oak Hill Mobile Home Park. Alternatives for desperate people even slightly contemplating this course of action need to be made available, and well known to all. As is usual inmost tragedies, this might have been avoidable.
So now the people of Willow Park and Hudson Oaks must live with the national exposure and pain. Empathy, not disdain, is what many people need to share with these people.
Sorry, but this is my gut reaction and it’s raw, exposed and probably totally inappropriate. But, perhaps not, wrong.
P.S. - The smalltown paper that directly serves those two communities is the one for which I do online copy editing. It's a small world some times. - CB