An Open Note to Whom it May Concern

 

"Those who sow in teas will weep with joy."

I preface this presumptuous blog with a critical disclaimer.  You may not be ready to read what follows.  You may reject my thoughts out of hand.  Reflexively.  That often happens with trauma, grief, and its unyielding aftermath.  Make no mistake, you may be experiencing an unexpected and chilling turn of events accompanied by a complicated mourning process.

Since I write as a mother whose daughter died suddenly one Sunday, I typically would not qualify as a spokesperson for victims of depraved violence.

 No, I haven't walked a mile in your mocassins, not even a step.   Yet, I defy quibblers to argue about what I feel   Parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, casual acquaintances, and even third cousins once removed, of a victim who has been slaughtered, might benefit from my voice.  Truth compels me to equivocate no longer. Here goes.

Quickly and like yeast added to the dough of homemade rolls, the blog expanded to include anyone who has survived the ravages of violent death.  Why? The abject finality of life's cessation, no matter the genesis, gives pause.  A pregnant one, it mushrooms into disbelief, shock, denial, anger, impotence, bargaining, and even shame! 

No matter what, when, where, why,. or how violence knocked on your door, knock it did.  As bad and more than a SWAT busting through your door.  Except it karate-kicked the door to your heart. Yet, it happened.  Emily Dickinson put it this way, 

"Because I couldn't stop for Death---
It kindly stopped for me---
The Carriage held but just Ourselves---
And Immortality."

Not yours, obviously; each death carries its peculiar stamp. No matter if it tallies as the 30th murder during a Chicago weekend or a mass school shooting of children on a weekday, nothing obviates the pain.  Details matter, of course, and the need for justice---even revenge---may pose a gruesome specter.  But. The. Pain! Will it never end? You neither want nor need voices that do not attend to the pain.  But no one can.  Ever, it feels like.

Quincy Jones' reminder reassures,?Everything must change.  Nothing stays the same," only because it rings true, however vaguely.  Even so, "Where is the balm in Gilead?" Inconceivability cannot quell  countless questions that subsume into one eternal, "Why?"  Why? Why? Why him? Why her? Why now? Why me? Why them? Being at the wrong place at the wrong time can't be an acceptable rationale!

Adrift.  Words cannot undo what violence does.  Like a bloodsucking leech, grief does its malevolent work.  It sucks the life from every vein and capillary a body holds.  If I felt like a ship without a sail when Courtney died suddenly, how must the congregation of survivors feel? Aimless drifting once marked my days.  I felt purposeless, without the person whose smiles, laughter, and determination demarcated my days and charted life's course.   All else faded into wallpaper with no pattern or print.

Hope! Richard Smallwood penned these lyrics, probably not realizing how they would minister to pain everywhere:

"I'll see you again
Where the sun is always shining

I'll see you again where trouble lasts no more
And we'll join hands together
As we sing around the throne
Can't hardly wait till someday
I'll see you again."

Till we meet.  Till we meet again.  God be with you till we meet again.