Last updated 05:30, Friday, 20 June 2008

It’s most tragically unnatural for a parent to survive a child. When life’s anticipated order is overturned by calamity, painful sense of injustice is palpable.

For a child to die a long way from home, in deliberate acts of violence, is unthinkable for most of us – unimaginably distressing for any stricken by loss. When an adored son or daughter is snatched away, sorrow is a burden we all understand and share.

Such has been the case in Carlisle and across Cumbria over the last couple of weeks. Particular, sharply hurtful distress has been felt acutely and shouldered instinctively by communities in mourning.

Unnatural tragedy has visited families, showing no mercy for those left to bear the unbearable.Young people with purpose, ambition, brightness of nature and spirit have been cruelly lost to their home town, leaving parents and others who loved them longing to wake from the dream... and that is unjust.

It happens, of course. Elsewhere; everywhere; all the time it happens that families are broken by tragedy. Friends are left holding only memories. But the depth of feeling here, as the cost of unnatural tragedy is counted, comes close to astonishing.

Kelly Gourlay, Private Charles David Murray and Sarah Bryant shared the same home town. They were of similar ages when Kelly died in a car crash and David and Sarah lost their lives to roadside bombers, as they served in bloody conflict in Afghanistan.

In sad times such as these, we realise how true is the oft-repeated little quip that Cumbria is a village – Carlisle more family community than city – and in sorrowful times there’s extraordinary comfort to be drawn from the closeness of a family of strangers.

Tributes to these three young people, each so strikingly splendid in his or her own way, have poured into this newspaper’s and other national media and social websites. The sheer volume of condolences and special memories, of comfort and support for the bereaved has been overwhelming. None who has witnessed the phenomenon could fail to be amazed by Cumbria’s warmth and closeness.

Over these tragically unnatural days, it has become apparent that in trouble there is a rallying to share its effects, to lighten its pressures, ease its pain.

When Carlisle lost three of its brightest, most inspiring young people, the city embraced grief and offered solace to loved ones burdened by loss. In these days of hardened cynicism, cold suspicion and preferred anonymity, that’s no less than remarkable.

It’s surely true that Carlisle is a city with small town mentality. Nothing wrong with that – most other cities would give their civic insignia and limos for just a taste of it.

Perhaps it does sometimes seem that everybody knows somebody who knows somebody else who knows you well enough to pass comment on what you’ve done – even before you’ve done it. But the wise learn to surrender to that. It is a symptom of the closeness and care that’s such a large part of Cumbria’s character.

Care and faith that all will eventually be well have been tested harshly. There’s little hope to be found in the loss of a beautiful girl in a road crash. There’s next to no sense in the death of a supremely talented young woman and a brave young man in hostilities most of us struggle to recognise as our business.

Loss of young life strikes as a terrible waste. Loss of young life to violence sponsored by remotely powerful men is too appalling to understand as anything other than mindless.

But as those bright young lights went out, a glow of pride and admiration, sympathy and love, rose from Carlisle and the county. And my word, it was dazzling.

Love, sympathy, solace and support for the grieving was spontaneously offered. Pride in the undeniable reality that from one northern border town, such exceptional young people had made distinctive marks and impressions to stir affection in thousands upon thousands... their family of strangers.

To leave a wave of pride in achievements, accomplishments and nature – a pride felt most deeply by the wider community of your home town, among colleagues, friends, acquaintances and strangers – is as much as any, at any age, can ask as a legacy.

These three young people asked for nothing. They didn’t expect to die. They had much to do with their lives and were determined to make the most of every minute – until unnatural tragedy changed the plan.

That they have inspired heart-swelling pride anyway, among those who have recognised and admired their brightness, devotion to duty and care for others, is credit to the extraordinarily splendid youth of this town and county... so often overlooked in the more fashionable sport of demonising the young.

There’s no grief more unbearable than that of a parent for a child. But perhaps comfort can be found in a legacy of deserved, spontaneous pride, rising from the distress of unnatural tragedy.