It’s going to be a long, cold winter, and I can’t help but fear we’re going to be seeing more stories like this one, from California:

Karthik Rajaram had fallen hard.

The 45-year-old Porter Ranch financial manager who once made more than $1.2 million in a London-based venture fund had lost his job. His luck playing the stock market ran out.

On Sept. 16, he bought a gun. He wrote two suicide notes and a last will and testament. And then, sometime between Saturday night and Monday morning, he killed his wife, mother-in-law and three sons, and took his own life.

“This is a perfect American family behind me that has absolutely been destroyed, apparently because of a man who just got stuck in a rabbit hole, if you will, of absolute despair, somehow working his way into believing this to be an acceptable exit,” said LAPD Deputy Chief Michel Moore. “It is critical to step up and recognize we are in some pretty troubled times.”

In a letter addressed to police, Rajaram blamed his actions on economic hardships. A second letter, labeled “personal and confidential,” was addressed to family friends; the third contained a last will and testament, Moore said.

The letter to police voiced two options: taking his own life, or killing himself and his entire family. “He talked himself into the second strategy,” Moore said. “That that would be the honorable thing to do.”

Authorities believe Rajaram killed his family and himself after seeing his finances wiped out by the stock market collapse, according to a source familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

There’s more at the link.

On this feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, we pray to the mother of God for strength, for courage, for consolation. We pray for all those who are suffering and in pain, fearful and anxious. We think, in a profound way, of the Sorrowful Mysteries, and meditate on the sorrowful mother who had her own heart pierced, again and again. We ask that she intercede on behalf of all those whose hearts are wounded — that they know the hope that is Christ.