I came across this on facebook. I am pretty good friends with the young man that wrote this. I thought it is worth sharing. It is long, so if you don't have the time or patience just scroll on.
This is gonna be a long post. Sorry in advance. I only ask that if you choose to respond, please read the whole thing.
Yesterday, my day really got started when one of my closest friends FaceTimed me. She showed me how she was practicing with her newborn baby on tracking things with his eyes. I got to watch him and listen to the pride in her voice as she talked about him. It was so touching and only deepened my excitement to be a dad one day, whenever that day comes.
Less than an hour after hanging up, I saw a video of a man getting shot in the neck in front of a crowd. Then I saw a close-up view of that same scene. I watched as the shot rang out. I heard the immediate but distinctly separate second 𝘵𝘩𝘸𝘢𝘱 that any hunter knows means the shot connected. I watched the blood spurt out of his neck in vintage Tarantino fashion, spurting out until gravity could take over and bring it splatting to the ground. I watched him reach for his neck but not be able to make it before his body began shutting down, spasming, doing everything it could to cling to life. I closed that video knowing that despite reports he was still alive and fighting, he was dead.
Raised in the age of the internet, with immediate access and insight to all the world's tragedies as they unfold, much the same as many of you who will read this, I have become a bit desensitized to this type of gore. Unlike any generation before, but like every generation to come in the future, we see live footage of death, destruction, dismemberment that humans evolved to rarely see in their entire lives, if ever. For all of human history, the majority of people would never know that this type of stuff happened, and if they did learn of it, it would've been via word of mouth or in the newspaper. They wouldn't have seen it as if they were in the presence of the event, much less the presence of 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 event. But we have the unrequested "privilege" of seeing all of this, all the time, so we see an assassination, a school shooting, a children's hospital bombed and turned to rubble, and we go on about our day. We think about how sad it is and we move on - what else are we to do?
So, I moved on.
And then I saw a video of this man's young daughter gleefully yelling for her daddy, running across a stage in a studio after he finished some spot for TV, and being wrapped up in his arms. I saw the joy in her body language as she ran to see her dad, her protector, her role model. And I began to think about my own life, how it was to grow up without a mom. She died when I was 14, but between addiction, a cancer battle, and her subsequent death, I really lost my mom when I was 11 years old. It was a slow burn and I was prepared for her death - at least as prepared as you can possibly be for something like that as a child. We knew for years what the likely outcome would be, and for the last few months, we had a pretty good idea of when it would happen. We could just about tell you exactly what day it would happen, even from a couple of months out - and we even suspected upon waking the day it finally happened that it was going to be that day.
I've never shared this publicly, but let's go ahead and get vulnerable. I talked to her that day. I told her how much I loved her, how everybody who needed to see her before she left us had come, and that if she didn't want to, she didn't need to fight any longer. She wasn't able to respond, but I know in my heart she heard me, and I know that she understood there was nothing left to do, she'd done everything she could, but the cancer was stronger. And she let go, dying later that evening.
And despite all of that foresight, all of that preparation, growing up without a mom was so $*)Q!#@$ hard. An indescribable heartache to which only those who've experienced it can relate.
And then I thought of that 3-year-old girl, because she may not fully understand it yet, but not only can she relate to that pain, she is—and will continue to be—experiencing it on a far greater scale than I ever had to deal with. And she got no time to prepare. He was there one day and gone the next, forever.
She didn't get to tell him how much she loved him. She didn't get to say goodbye. She didn't get to have her closest friends and family come alongside her and share their love with her dad. She didn't get to tell him, "it's okay to let go, I love you and always will."
She never gets to run across a stage and be swept up into her daddy's arms again. She won't get to celebrate her first hit in tee-ball with him. He'll never take her to a daddy-daughter dance. He won't be there when she graduates high school or college. He won't walk her down the aisle on her wedding day or dance with her at the ceremony.
One day that little girl is going to watch those videos I watched yesterday. She'll learn about her dad through the internet and stories her mom, family, and friends tell her. But she will never know her dad. Just as you and I never knew, will never know, her dad. After she watches those videos, she's going to see celebration in the comments. When she Googles her dad, she'll see elation about his assassination. She'll see justifications and praise for her father's killer, citing his beliefs and his words in support of his beliefs. He was divisive, so he had it coming. That's what she'll see from the masses.
And my heart breaks for that little girl. I feel helpless, confused, angry, and scared. I'm devastated for a wife and two children who lost such an important figure in their lives, who will no longer receive the love and affection every child and every wife deserves and 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘴 to receive from their father. I'm sad for the 1-year-old boy who will never even meet his dad, who will not have the faintest memory of him.
I'm also sad today for myself and what I went through. I'm sad for the brown kids in the Middle East for whose deaths my country is directly and indirectly responsible - for whose deaths 𝘐'𝘮 indirectly responsible. I'm sad for the trans kid who gets bullied at school and kills themselves because of it, and for the children in a private Christian school killed by a trans kid who believes those deaths justified because of the persecution they received and perceived at the hands of people of faith. I'm sad for the immigrant woman in Charlotte indiscriminately killed for being in the wrong seat on the train at the wrong time, and I'm sad for—and angry at—the man whose mental health was so damaged that he felt the need to kill a random woman by stabbing her in the neck in public. And I'm sad for—and disappointed in—the bystanders on that train who did nothing to help her, who just let her bleed in fear of the same thing happening to them.
I'm sad for the people celebrating this death. I'm sad that, whatever the circumstances, they believe people deserve to die for their beliefs. I'm sad they feel persecuted to the extent that blood shed by their enemies is a step in the right direction - and I'm scared of that destination, and how many steps in that direction are needed before we collectively arrive there.
Mostly, I'm scared and sad at the thought of raising a future child in such a dangerous and divisive world, where countrymen and politicians advocate and pursue the deaths of their political enemies, and then those deaths are celebrated. A world where a toddler losers her dad because her dad said things people didn't like.
And I'm sad that the next morning, this morning, I woke up on the 24-year anniversary of something similar happening to hundreds, maybe thousands, of children whose parents innocently went to work and never came home.
I don't understand how anybody could be happy after watching that video, but I'm here to hear you out and love you all the same. And I'm truly, genuinely, sorry for whatever has happened in your lives that led you to that conclusion.
Have to go to second post as it is over the 10000 character limit.
www.theguardian.com
