I keep coming back to that picture of the two of you dancing together.

She's in that confection of a white wedding dress, her hand in yours, which is lifting her arm overhead in that moment before a twirl. I can't see your expression in that photo because your back is to us. But I can see it in my mind.

This is your beautiful princess, the tiny baby girl you brought home 21 years ago. Her face is lit with that expression brides often wear. That glow of bliss and joy and expectation of a long journey of love ahead. Your beloved daughter posted this photo and captioned it "Dancing with Daddy."

A little more than a month ago, you and your wife saw that dream parents have for their children come true: Your child found a worthy love and life partner. She was going to start dental school. You would see them begin to build a life together.

And then this nightmare.

Craig Stephen Hicks, 46, turned himself into police Tuesday for allegedly putting a gun to the head of that newly married young woman, her husband and her younger sister in their home. He has been charged with the first-degree murders of Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, at the University of North Carolina.

A murderer robs more than just his victims of their lives. He robs everyone who loves them; he robs the entire world of their gifts. And your daughters and son-in-law had so many gifts to share. They had enormous hearts that wanted to restore the broken smiles in this world. They showed compassion and grace and intelligence. What a remarkable job you and your wife did raising your daughters. What a remarkable job Deah's parents did.

I read your words in news reports after the authorities suggested this heinous triple homicide may have stemmed from a parking dispute.

"It was execution style, a bullet in every head," you said. "This was not a dispute over a parking space; this was a hate crime."

Premeditated killers never seem psychologically balanced. Isn't some degree of madness a precondition to mass murder? But was this perpetrator's anger fueled from a place of hatred? Where does that hatred start? How does it grow? How is it nurtured and reinforced? Those are questions that need to be asked.

It's not hard to imagine what the media storm around this crime would have been if your daughters had not been Muslims who wore headscarves. Or what the coverage may have looked like if the accused had been Muslim and had posted anti-Christian screeds before murdering three students in cold blood.

We know what that coverage would look like. We've seen it time and time again.

But it's not just the Muslim community in Chapel Hill who joins your voice for a thorough and transparent investigation. Every fair-minded person in this country wants justice for your children. Those of us who see parts of ourselves in your family feel your loss as our own. Your daughters were best friends; my sisters are mine. Your girls wore hijab; so do my mother and sister-in-law. Deah's sister said she cried tears of joy at her brother's wedding, as I did at mine. I know the look that must have been on your face when you twirled your daughter because I remember my father's face on my wedding day. Your daughters were your light; my children are mine.

There is bile-tainted grief that comes after a loved one is murdered. There is an incomprehensible pain to your loss. From my heart, I will pray for that to lessen.

I will heed your words to remember the best parts of their all-too-short lives. I will remember Deah, a 23-year-old young man, helping to feed and care for the homeless in his community and raising money to fly overseas to provide dental care to refugees. I will remember his last text to his mother: "I love you mama."

I will remember your daughters for their creativity, kindness and grace. For the manner in which they excelled and gave to their community.

I've visited the memorial Facebook page a relative created for your daughters and son-in-law, where I've stared at that wedding picture, full of promise. I have also reread several times these words posted by a family member:

"Many, many amazing people have condemned this crime from across the world including many random people who seem to want to apologize for the heinous acts of this man. Muslims know all too well that the actions of few may not define the masses. Love shall overcome."

North Carolina will not forget your children, Dr. Mohammad Abu-Salha.

Muslims and Americans will not forget your children.

We will remember their example to fight hate with love.

Surely, it will overcome.

For some questions, you don't really want answers.

Do we really want to know how and when we will meet our demise?

Or what others really think of us?

And perhaps most unnerving: Where does all our time go?

We are a nation obsessed with time. We search for ways to maximize our productivity -- to earn more, to accomplish more -- while stressing about ways to maximize our leisure -- to sleep more, to relax and connect with others more. There are life hacks, parenting hacks and technology hacks, all promising ways to improve our efficiency.

Modern parents are a tribe of shufflers and schedulers, with our color-coded calendars and lists. My God, the lists. The current lifestyle affliction is organexia; you can never be organized enough! You may not feel entirely in control of your life, but you can channel those displaced control issues into hyper-organized systems and Pinterest projects.

Christine Linder, a St. Louis-based co-founder of grantmamas.com, recently co-published an e-book called "Are You Controlling Your Family's Schedule, Or Is It Controlling You?" ($4.99). The section on "How is your family spending its time?" begins by asking if you often feel "stressed and scattered, like you're bouncing from one activity to the next -- like a human ball in a pinball machine."

Why, yes, there have been a few quarters spent in the Sultan arcade.

The manual advises estimating how many hours each member of the family spends at work or at school, commuting, running errands, cooking meals, involved in extracurriculars, you get the picture. There's a worksheet with line items such as "watching television," "chores" and "sleep."

The manual suggests taking this exercise a step further, printing additional copies and asking each family member to complete a form.

"It's fun to complete them as a family so you can discuss each activity," the instructions say.

About as fun as a blindfolded sword fight in some homes, I'm sure.

Our perceptions of how we spend our time may be wildly skewed from reality. Linder, whose goal is to help mothers have better-organized lives and schedules so they can be more involved in their children's schools, filled out her own "time spent" worksheet and shared the results with me. I wasn't shocked by her findings.

"I spend a lot of time doing activities that I could cut back on or multitask or hand off for someone else in my family to deal with," she said. In addition to working about 60 hours a week, she and her husband have a 2-year-old daughter.

"I didn't have a lot of 'me' time," she said. "I don't have time to read. I found I didn't have a lot of hobbies ... I didn't have a ton of downtime. I was constantly filling my time." She has attempted to change that by delegating a few chores and taking more hikes with her family.

"I"m still trying, let's be honest," she said.

Keeping detailed and accurate time logs, which seems to require even more work and honesty than a food journal, is a daunting prospect. But even the guesstimate activity proposed by this worksheet could be useful, if only as a reality check.

If you're tired and feeling stressed, chances are good you're doing too much and expecting too much.

There are 168 hours in a week. That sounds so concrete for something so ephemeral. If we can figure how many hours of that are devoted to various activities, it's tempting to see how the numbers align with what we claim to value. But, there's also a danger of realizing that the entire foundation of what we expect -- time for working, time with our children, time with our partners, time for chores, time for friends and time for our own interests -- is not compatible with the reality of how our society runs.

I'd like to try to log all my family's hours for a week, but I'm scared of what I might discover. What if I discover I'm frittering too many hours aimlessly on the Internet? What if I'm not spending nearly as much time with my children as I think? What if there is an imbalance in the division of labor in this household? Perhaps I really don't want to deal with the consequences of those answers just yet. Maybe the problem isn't that we aren't organized enough, but that the organization is too much.

Ben Westhoff, a writer with 7-month-old and 3-year-old sons, says it could be interesting to get a more specific idea of how he and his wife use their time. But he captured the truth of our fixation with time with his honest ambivalence about the idea.

"I'd like to get a handle on that," he said initially, then considered it a hot minute longer.

"I mean, not really, but theoretically, yeah."

Raising good readers seems pretty straightforward.

Much of the research on it sounds like common sense: Let children pick what they want to read, even if it's comic books or magazines; let them see you read; talk about books to them; make reading material available in your home; and above all else, read to them.

In the same way our children see us watching television, surfing the Internet and listening to music for entertainment, they should see us read for fun. If a parent loves to read, odds are good the child will learn to find joy in words, too.

So, I was surprised when a finding from the latest Scholastic Kids and Family Reading Report caught my eye, because it brought to light a common mistake most parents don't realize they are making.

Most of us stop reading to our children too early.

The survey found that, predictably, the number of children being read aloud to dips dramatically as a child grows up. More than half of children under the age of 5 are read aloud to almost every day. This drops to 1 in 3 children ages 6 to 8, and just 1 in 6 children ages 9 to 11. More telling than those numbers is how the children said they felt about it: 40 percent of children who are no longer read to say they wish their parents had continued.

Their No. 1 reason was because "it was a special time with my parents."

Maggie McGuire, vice president of Scholastic Kids and Parents Channels, says parents and caregivers are a child's first touch point with stories. Reading together is a chance for a child to be exposed to new words, plus a time to relax and bond. All of these positive associations establish reading as a pleasurable and entertaining activity for a child, creating a lifelong connection to it.

"It spoke so loudly (in the survey): Keep it going as long as you can," she said.

I had stopped reading to my children when they became fairly strong independent readers, probably around first grade, and I was skeptical that my now-fourth-grader would still be interested. But I took note of another statistic in the study: The percentage of kids who said they read a book for fun between 5 to 7 days a week is much smaller among boys. About a quarter of boys said they read this frequently for fun, and that number has dropped from 32 percent in 2010. Reading frequency has also declined since then in children over the age of 8. The steepest decline has been in children ages 15 to 17, of whom just 14 percent said they frequently read a book for fun.

These trend lines worry me, especially as the data show children spending ever-increasing amounts of time in front of screens.

That night, I raised the subject with my son.

"Remember when you were younger, and I used to read to you at night all the time?"

"Yes. Where is this going?" he asked. Why are children so suspicious? "Are you writing a column about this?"

"Fine, yes, I am," I told the little cynic. I suggested that we could read together for 15 minutes at night, from whichever book he chose.

He was lukewarm to the idea. It sounded a little babyish, not so cool for a 9-year-old. But with a little convincing, he agreed to give it a try again.

There were some specific instructions the first night: Don't read in a bored voice. But don't read as if it's a baby book, he said.

I can take direction. Plus, let's just say I've always thought I could have had a shot as an audiobook reader. I should definitely get some style points on my read-aloud technique. In my humble opinion, of course.

I kept an eye on the clock and after exactly 15 minutes, I closed the book.

"Five more minutes," he said.

Ah, victory. I couldn't help gloating a little.

"I thought you didn't want to read with me anymore?"

Well, this is a funny book, and it's cozy here, he told me.

Fair enough. Maybe it's not my dramatic flair for reading prose, but I'll take it.

In the course of the week, we have nearly finished the book, and he's even read ahead several chapters on his own.

I couldn't help but smile when I saw him bring a book to me recently before going to bed.

"Can you read to me tonight?"

For a book lover, there are few sweeter words.