"Unimaginable," was how Carthage Police Chief Chris McKenzie described it. "Horrific. Everything that you can possibly imagine that's bad in the world."

On a crystalline Sunday morning in our normally peaceful county seat of Carthage, a great many of the things that are bad in the world converged on the Pinelake nursing home. They came in the person of shambling, disturbed Robert Kenneth Stewart and visited themselves on the helpless inhabitants there.

At this point, we can only speculate what deadly cocktail of mental poisons could erupt into such a fit of blind, indiscriminate rage. Included among those "bad things," apparently, was a seething hostility born of broken relationships, longtime resentments and personal failure, stirred together with lethal firepower.

Tragically, there is no evidence that the eight people who died at Stewart's hands had any connection to whatever grudges and hatreds he harbored. His estranged wife, who worked there, was not among the victims, though she now has a nightmare to live with for the rest of her life.

What Possible Motive?

There will be plenty of time in the coming days and weeks to speculate about a "motive," which the reporters from national media kept asking about at press conferences on Sunday and Monday -- as if any act of such insane butchery could ever have a remotely logical purpose behind it.

Given past experience, we will also need to be on the lookout for possible "copycat" crimes. This event will, no doubt, also prompt more debate about gun control.

There will be plenty of time to talk about things like nursing home security -- which on the surface does not appear to have been notably worse or better at Pinelake than the level prevailing at most such institutions.

We'll also have ample opportunity to piece together the law-enforcement reaction to this outbreak of unspeakable violence and see what lessons can be learned from it -- though youthful Carthage Police Officer Justin Garner certainly appears to have responded promptly and performed with admirable courage, saving many lives in the process and earning his community's unending gratitude.

Townspeople will be talking for a long time about the media circus that descended upon them, winning few friends. Carthage residents could hardly venture out without having microphones stuck in their faces and rude questions asked. McKenzie and Town Manager Carol Sparks held up well despite it all, conducting themselves with small-town grace and composure.

Consoling the Inconsolable

Though it's too early to speak of healing, this is a time for striving to comprehend the incomprehensible and offer whatever consolation we can to the inconsolable.

It is a time for the shocked and grief-stricken people of Carthage and the families of the innocent victims to pull together, and for the rest of us to pull for them and provide whatever support we can in their time of trial.

It is a time for honoring the dead and the heroic living -- who included not only Officer Garner but also staff members who risked their lives to wheel residents into locked rooms. One of their colleagues, Jerry Avant, gave his own life to save others.

Thus it is a time for gratitude that a tragedy capable of summoning forth all that is bad and horrid has also brought out much that is good and decent and -- something sorely needed right now -- hopeful.