Editors, Vineyard Gazette:

As a grandmother, and I specify grandmother rather than mother, it saddens me to my core to know that our grandchildren are living in a world where just another horrific event has occurred. As we grew up in the 1940s and beyond, never did we witness violence to the degree it is happening today. Nor did our children experience such tragedies as young ones. Yes, there was cultural, ethnic and all kinds of world events, but domestic atrocities such as we are seeing today was not something they lived with. And now this young generation sees it all the time.

Can we protect them from everything? No. Should we protect them from everything? We can try. But psychologically, we are mere mortals doing our best to support them, encourage and love and adore them. But what kind of effect this has on their psyches, it is hard to know. And why should they be subjected to these new normals of what this world has wrought?

I guess, as grandparents, we can be appalled and sad. As parents, we can only revere the job being done by this generation of parents who are doing their best to make some sense and explain to their children the new world of unexplained and dastardly acts of violence that will never be understood.

Susan Lamoreaux, Edgartown