Facebook has a lot to answer for. Worst at this time of year, there is a deluge of those brief [or lengthy] homilies paying tribute to loved ones, alive or deceased, although more often deceased. I’m not knocking this. If such tributes help the bereaved to feel better that is fine by me. You have to assume that folks posting up these ready-made eulogies had/have close relationships with their parent/offspring/best friend and now they miss them. Fair enough.

I can’t help feeling curious, however about the composers of these tracts. Are they paid to write them? Or do they sit at their computers thinking up heart-tugging sayings and finding photographs of misty sunsets to accompany their writings out of the goodness of their hearts? Are they, perhaps cast-offs from greetings card manufacturers who’ve gone out of business now that paper is turning to digital?

Anyway, it is good to find that parent/child relationships are strong enough for such offerings to be utilised on a regular basis. Myself, as an adult I had an uneasy relationship with my parents, whose disapproval of some of my lifestyle choices eclipsed the affections they held when I was younger. This was sad but had the beneficial effect of teaching me a strong lesson regarding my own offspring, whose choices, whatever I may think, are their own.

Last week America had its own taste of terrorism when a couple who’d become radicalised went on a shooting spree, gunning down fourteen innocent workers at a disability centre in San Bernardino. Sadly these incidents no longer surprise or even shock us in the way that ‘9/11’ did. They have become all too common, all too frequent. The attack was, of course devastating and horrific for the injured and the bereaved, as well as those who had the unenviable task of dealing with it all.

But amongst the horrifying, stupid destruction of life, one overwhelming, distressing issue stood out for me. They idiotic, foolish perpetrators of this horror were not only a married couple, they also had a tiny, helpless six-month-old baby daughter. Film of their apartment shows the interior filled with baby items; toys, soft animals, a cot, tins of baby milk. They did not mistreat the infant. She was not abandoned. She was well cared for. She must have been loved. They took her to family members and left her in their care. Then they gathered their arsenal of weapons and went off to kill as many fellow humans as they could before getting themselves executed.

Someone has to care for and bring up their child. One day she will want to know who her parents were. She will want to know how they died and why; the truth. This is her legacy. This is what her mother left her, the fact that she so loathed her fellow human beings she wanted to kill them. This was a human mother without even as much instinctive love for her baby as a wild animal, and this is what I find the hardest to understand or accept.