Theresa Wery has been searching for that answer for five years.

In July 1997, her daughter's beaten body was found partially buried beneath some shrubbery in the Wailua area of Kaua'i. Kimberly Washington-Cohen had been beaten, her hands, feet and mouth bound with strapping tape, her body taped into a blanket while she was still alive.

She was murdered by distant relatives. She was much older than Kahealani. She was 23, all grown with three children of her own. But she was Theresa Wery's baby, the youngest of four children.

There was a trial and convictions. Kimberly's murderers were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But that does little to ease the grief in her mother's heart.

"A lot of people say, 'Oh, you'll forget with time and as time goes by the pain will subside,' " Wery says. "But it really hasn't. It's the most painful thing that can happen to a mother."

At first, Wery says, she didn't want to live anymore. She's still not sure how she made it through those first awful weeks and months when grief and anger felt so huge and desperate.

"I just survived," she says. "I just survived."

Wery gave up her home on Kaua'i and came to O'ahu with Kimberly's daughter, who was 5 1/2 at the time."She was the reason for me to live. We kind of helped each other heal."

But it's been an incomplete healing. It's hard around the holidays, and there's a delicate balance between remembering the best of Kimberly's life and suppressing the worst of what happened to her.

"I think if she died from a car wreck or maybe sickness I could accept it better than somebody just taking her life like that," she said. "Kimberly was a sweet, sweet girl. She allowed them to beat her up, I mean, she didn't even fight back, poor thing. She was very trusting and she wanted to be accepted. She wanted everyone to love her."

Wery and her granddaughter have made a new life for themselves. Wery says Kimberly would be proud of how well her girl is doing in school. And in some ways, Kimberly's death has brought the family closer to each other and closer to their faith.

"Mothers always believe that they're gonna' go first, right?" she said. "And so it was just kind of a wake-up call for me that we need to really enjoy our children because we never know what's in store for us. And I think it's changed my children's lives, too, to appreciate their parents.

"Most people would hate God, right? 'Where were you?!' But it didn't do that to me at all. It in fact made me get closer. So hopefully this family, if they have any beliefs in God, will seek his guidance and hang on to that because, sometimes, ... the only way that we can survive is having some belief that our children are safe wherever they are."

Theresa Wery thinks of what Kahealani's family must be going through right now, and she sighs heavily.