The weight on the shoulders of a Black mother who has violently lost her child is immeasurable. Especially when that loss comes at an unexpected time, for an unexpected reason that adds her sons name to a list of names that we are reminded to say. As this mother shares her experience of trying to hold her family together in the midst of the pandemic while also keeping a close watch on her strong-willed teenage son, our heart breaks for her reality. Her son is inquisitive. He asks all the right questions and even at a young age wondered why Black boys like him had to die and why they too couldn’t rest in peace. Where a peaceful protest with good intentions begins, the fear of the evolution of unrest begins. The reality for this mother that no matter how strong the child/ parent relationship is there will always be a topic of protest that children don't want to share with their parents. What this mother learns in the end is that she raised an amazing son, he was empathetic to the human struggle, who had he been given the chance would have grown into an amazing young man. But daily she faces the reality that her son is gone and she wonders if she'll ever truly be able to say his name without it being surrounded in grief. She hopes one day to be able to say his name the way that she used to… before he died.
First Kick, Final Heartbeat
“An angel, a gift, a daughter, a lover of life.”
“A mother, a daughter, a daddy’s girl, a friend to so many.”
I tried my best back then to make it not sound like poetry or bullshit. Sometimes those things can be one in the same. We live our full lives and you get to a certain age when you start thinking about death. If you haven't thought about death yet consider yourself to be lucky. When I was a teenager the only thing I thought about was making sure my grades were in order so I would never be grounded and could go out with my friends on the weekends, to do things that teenagers do, which in my life was getting dropped off at the mall or going to the movies. I had a simple childhood where I felt safe. I had an active teenage experience where all I had to do was keep my head down, keep my grades up and my parents batted their eyes at me as if I were the best child that ever walked the earth. It was simple. But now, in moments of silence, I can hear the clock in the kitchen ticking. Have you ever listened to that, just sat in a room of silence and really paid attention to the things you can hear that you've never been able to hear before. The hum of the refrigerator, the birds chirping outside, the slight roar in the distance from a car that stopped at the light that's almost a whole block away. Just simple. But then you become an adult, you get married, you decide you want to give your child what your parents gave you and life has a way of getting very complicated.