Unfathomable.

A is 11, sitting on the sofa looking at me quizzically, the toes of her shoes not quite touching the carpet, her hands in her lap, her head tipped to the side.  I've brought her to the sofa with a dramatic gesture: "I need to talk to you about something..." absent the irony and goofiness that has pervaded our home lately, absent the air.

I will tell A that someone she knows and likes very much has died.  She will absorb this as befits a child who knows about death, having suffered losses and learned to grieve. Her eyes well up and she says, "She was young." A is spiritual and knowing.

"Yes," I say.  "She was two years younger than I am."  And for a few minutes we sit in the familiar sadness of loss and remove. Her poor sons. "They are 13 and 10 and 7... " A says. This is an instant, this exchange. Her tears have not yet fully formed. But. Soon, she will ask... "How."

She will ask, "How did she die?" .... and in so doing she will enter a territory foreign to us both. "She was murdered," I will say. "by her husband."

I watch my daughter's heart break. Her eyes flash fear and impossibility and comprehension all at once. She will not ask "How" again, and she will be rewarded by not knowing that this generous, sweet, funny beautiful mother died of multiple stab wounds.  Her sister will ask whether the husband is in trouble and I will say "Yes" which is cagey, because he is dead, too, having been shot by the police. 

When this information comes, it awakens fresh alarm, in the morning, fresh awareness that the boys are terribly, terribly alone.

There is not much to say when the nightmares come. There is no solace to be found, no peace, no readiness for death, no sense. There is a shattering loss - a ricochet of grief, and the seed of a new possibility in a small person's heart. Was a time we thought murder didn't happen to people just.like.us.  But she was one of us - if we may flatter ourselves to say it.  And she is gone.

"Send your hummingbird to her," I tell A.  "You know you have powerful healing, right."

A knows.  She has stopped sobbing. She can eat. But so many things remind her. "She was so good. So nice."

I hold her. She says nothing. She is not searching for answers. She seems to know better than to try.