Twenty-six police officers in the United States have been fatally shot in 2016 alone. Twenty-six officers left their homes for another day of work and never came back. Twenty-six families watched a parent, a child, a sibling walk out the door, blissfully ignorant of the fact that they would never walk back in. Twenty-six individuals spent their last breaths fulfilling an oath in the most horrific and irreversible way possible. Does anyone know what their last words were? Does anyone care?
Five hundred and nine United States citizens have been killed by police thus far in 2016. Five hundred and nine people got out of bed and ate breakfast, not knowing it was their last morning. They tied their shoes for the last time. They kissed their kids, their spouses, their parents and siblings. They never would again. Some of us know what it’s like to lose someone with no warning, but many of us don’t. Which of us understand what it’s like to have our heartbeats stopped forever when we thought we had years to fulfill all our dreams and loves?
Five hundred and thirty-five people. Five hundred and thirty-five lives. Five hundred and thirty-five families. Five hundred and thirty-five mouths, 1,070 eyes, 1,070 ears. Countless possibilities. How many heroes have been killed? How many soldiers, electricians, preachers, doctors, janitors? How many children will never be born because their fathers and mothers never had a chance to meet and fall in love and stay in love? When we lose a person, we lose a future. We lose the future.
Some years ago, a woman holds her infant in her arms and stares in joy and terror at the tiny lips and eyelids that have only been outside the safety of her body for a few hours. Her hair is still damp with the effort of giving birth; the child’s lungs are still wondering at the new sensation of air. The woman thinks about how her baby’s future is like a blank sky and this is the sunrise — who knows what clouds and airplanes and stars will fill it someday?
This is what the woman is thinking about now as she stares at the grown and motionless body of her baby, stuffed and powdered and dressed and tucked into a box for everyone to stare at one more time. She is thinking about the first time she saw her child’s heart beating on a blurry screen and the first time she felt that beat under her fingers. She is thinking about that bright and clear day that begun with a small baby’s first breath and ended when the sky fell at noon, shattered by one hatred-driven bullet.
Put yourself in this woman’s shoes.
Look at the body in the casket, the body that came from her body. See through her eyes. Feel her pain. Her confusion. Her anger. Her desire and inability to remember the good things about her son or daughter’s life without every memory bearing the stamp of murder.
Now multiply this 535 times.
You cannot feel a fraction of the sorrow necessary to truly grieve the people lost last week — the people who are only a fraction of the 535, who are only a fraction of the total of brutally ended lives. But you can show their memories and their families respect by trying.
Believe what you like about justice and injustice. Believe what you like about weapons. Believe what you like about minorities, about law enforcement, about love and hate. Have conversations. Write letters and essays. But do these things of your own volition and conviction, not because murder has given you an excuse. Mourn the people, the lives, and the future we have lost. Mourn the future we still have, in which crimes such as these 535 are only more fuel for rage.
Take the time to feel sorrow fully before you let it push you to a course of action.
