SAN ANTONIO — When the students of Robb Elementary needed a safe haven during Tuesday's attack, they found it in an unlikely place.
Some of the kids escaped from the school, ran across the grounds and found refuge at Hillcrest Memorial Funeral Home across the street. A local minister said they found their way into loving arms ready to help in a moment of crisis.
"When I walked into the funeral home and I saw all the children just sitting on benches crying," said Uvalde minister Marcela Cabralez. "It's indescribable how you feel at that moment with so many desperate children, and hearing them tell you – (while) seeing the blood on their legs, on their clothing – telling you that they saw bullets fly by them."
By Thursday afternoon, the barricades had been pushed back and the crime scene tape began coming down. But the feeling of unease persisted in this community of just over 16,000.
The road to recovery is just starting for some of Uvalde's youngest residents who saw too much on Tuesday, just two days away from the end of the school year. During the pandemic, some funeral homes referred to themselves as the last responders.
On this morning, they played an integral role in helping the living.
"There is life after the storm, but also the survivors," Cabralez said. "I think we need to help them because they are so little. We can't take for granted that they're little and they don't know what happened and they'll forget about it. No, they will carry this with them, and it's important for me, for these children, that they heal."
A number of organizations are beginning to offer counseling services, and a family assistance center has been set up at the Uvalde County Fairplex.
Another resources families can order to help grieving kids work through the trauma is a children's book titled "Out Came the Sun," published by the Children's Bereavement Center of South Texas.
Elsewhere in Uvalde, a local flower shop is helping mourning families by helping with funeral arrangements, as part of a regional effort to bring comfort through the beauty of flowers.
Downtown's The Flower Patch will be accepting donations of floral arrangements via donors in the area. Ahr's Flowers in the nearby community of La Coste is helping to coordinate the effort; staff there say they want the families to have one less thing to worry about.