It has happened again. Yet again. Still again.

Another elementary school in another small town. This time Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was thrust harshly from the bliss of anonymity to the harsh spotlight of the world stage on May 24 after a few horrifying minutes that took the lives of innocent people.

Nineteen children — little children, elementary school age — got on their bus Tuesday morning and went to school. And those 19 children did not go home. And they are not going home. Ever again. Their little bodies laid on a cold floor for hours where they fell that afternoon, lifeless, after someone went into their school and shot the place up.

They didn’t have years of active shooter drills behind them. They didn’t know where to go, or what those terrifying sounds meant.

Our children were 11 days away from Christmas when 12/14 happened. Uvalde’s children were two days away from summer break when 5/24 happened. They weren’t thinking about barricading doors, or hiding under their desks; they were getting ready to go home for the day, play outside for a few hours, maybe even be a little rambunctious, go to bed, and start fresh Wednesday morning.

Their parents, siblings, and immediate loved ones are devastated. Their experience will surely impact marriages and intimate partner relationships. They won’t make it through the hours, days, months, and years ahead, without grief overwhelming every movement and moment for some. Others will likely spiral into alcohol and other substances, trying to bury their pain. Some will reach out on their own for support or accept offers for counseling.

People will talk about the brave adults and educators who died alongside those students. The teachers who drove to work Tuesday morning, their vehicles probably still in the school’s parking lot, waiting for owners who will never drive them again. The adults will be memorialized, just like the children killed with them. People will vow to always remember every one of them.

Their community will rally ... for a while, and people will talk about change, and being kind, and living differently. Memorials will be built, foundations will form, people will send teddy bears and school supplies and portraits of children they never met but felt compelled to create to families of the deceased, and the town will be absolutely buried in gestures of goodwill they may have no idea what to do with.

Money will likely pour in, large and small denominations, because that is what we do when something breaks. We try to pay for repairs, even when the fix is impossible.

Cards and letters, paintings, drawings, signed banners. They’ll all show up.

Those who send them will mean well, but how do you really express your feelings to strangers who are going through the worst moments of their lives? How do you say, “It will get better,” when in your heart you are starting to wonder what this country really values.

Because it isn’t its children, or its teachers, who continue to die at the hands of people who continue to walk into schools and kill people — then quite often themselves, or they are killed — leaving everyone directly and indirectly touched by the latest senseless act of cowardly violence with fear and anger but no answers.

President Biden’s Press Secretary offered prayers to the families within hours of the country’s latest mass shooting. The President spoke a few hours later, offering prayers and condolences along with frustration and anger. Flags have been lowered. That is always helpful. That will start the healing process.

Inevitably it will happen again.

From those of us in Sandy Hook and Newtown to those in Uvalde, we regret to inform you that you are now part of an unfortunate but growing club. And there isn’t anything you can do about it until the next school shooting happens and the next newest member community, and school, and group of families and loved ones joins the club. We pray it won’t, but based on our recent history, it is likely to happen again, as it has been, like clockwork.

Managing Editor Shannon Hicks contributed this week’s Editorial Ink Drops.