There are not satisfactory words, besides Thank You,
to express my gratitude to those members
whose posts here are supportive and empathetic.
Your encouragement is something to cherish.

There are some obvious connections between
the two different stories about which I posted.

One occurred on Christmas Eve/midnight-ish;
the other, on Christmas Day in broad daylight.

In both cases, a mother and all of her children
were killed,
and the husband/father was left alone to deal with it all.

Perhaps that last is the most primal part of the trigger in my case.
The Christmas Eve deaths, after all,
had nothing to do with domestic tensions within a family --
it was a case of a head-on collision
with someone driving under the influence.

But an entire family, in each case,
was reduced to a bereft husband/father, the others all gone.

Helen,
you have MY support in broadening this topic to include your own experience,
and I thank you.