WORTH THE WEEP

I arrived early enough to stick my head into the chapel and be hit with a sight that was beyond jarring: Two caskets facing each other, each one “occupied” by a 20-year old Black male.

My eyes were immediately drawn to the hoodies and baseball caps that they were sporting, and I couldn’t help but notice how smooth, how wrinkle-free, and glowing their skin was.

Like babies.

Like dudes who really hadn’t lived long enough for life to have had the opportunity to etch deep and permanent creases into their faces.

They were best of friends in life and, here they were now, sharing the same space again as their journey on this side of the river was coming to an end.

True friends.

Ace boon coons.

In life, and apparently also in death.

Caskets, caps, hoodies, and all.

I was there.

There at the funeral home.

There in the chapel.

There staring at two young Black men stretched out in coffins.

Their lives had been brought to an abrupt and violent halt and their names etched in that “book” of persons whose right to life was “ no more”— “no more” because their breath had been snatched and their blood spilt as a result of a gun homicide.

And the racial disparities in what’s killing young males is wild. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

• 5.4% of White males aged 1-19 died as a result of homicide in 2018. In contrast, the figure for comparably aged Black men is a stunningly high 35.1.

• For those aged 20-44, 2.8% and 26.1% of White and Black men, respectively, died as a result of a homicide.

Barely in that second age range— the 20-44 span— these young brothers in those caskets are further visual evidence that, in this country, what these dudes were —young, Black, and male— puts you at increased risk of involuntarily and prematurely spilling blood and losing breath as a result of homicide.

And the vast majority of these homicides involves the usage of a firearm. To be young, Black, and males is also to be disproportionately impacted by firearm homicides: In 2021, there were almost 49,000 gun deaths in the United States.

Although only 2% of the population, Black men aged 15-34 represented 36% of those 49,000 gun deaths.

Shit is sad.

YEARS OF POTENTIAL LIFE LOST

I wonder, but will never know, what their lives would have looked like had it— that is, their life— not been prematurely and violently ended by a bullet.

I wonder what they would have ended up doing if, instead of living just twenty, they had lived 65 years. Or 75. Or 80.

When you check out at twenty, you lose the potential to grow in wisdom.

When you check out of here at twenty, you lose the time it takes to correct serious mistakes you may have made as a teen.

When you check out at twenty, you lose the opportunity to build long-term relationships that are mutually enriched and sustained over decades.

When you check out at twenty, you don’t get to experience maturation processes, and all that that entails.

Bottom line is, if you’re laid out in a coffin at 20 years old, you didn’t get—and never will get— the opportunity to truly shoot your shot.

This sense of “lostness” of life is captured in what public health researchers call “years of potential life lost” or YPLL. The basic idea behind YPLL is simple: Researchers use an average age to which people can be expected to live—say, 70 — and then calculate how many years of life are lost before that age from a particular cause of death [click here or here or here for descriptions and examples of calculating YPLL].

If seventy is the average age or standard used, then those two young brothers represented, amongst other things, 100 years of potential lost life [(70-20) + [(70-20) =100]. That’d be a century of potential years of lost life due to gun homicide.

A recent study finds that, between 2009-2018, the YPLL for White men due to firearm homicide totaled up 1.7 million years.

For men like the two in that chapel—the two young, Black dudes stretched out, and wearing baseball caps and hoodies— the YPLL for Black men due to firearm clocked in at 3.2 million years. Over that 18 year period, the years of potential life lost for young Black men was almost twice as high as that lost by young White men. Both numbers are disturbingly high. But, relatively speaking, the figure for Black men is bananas!

WORTH THE WEEP

That was a difficult eulogy— and it should have been.

I pray that I never get to the point that I’m immune to feeling grief at the sight of young Black bodies reposed in that box.

I pray that I never make peace with theologies that relentlessly seek to place God’s fingerprints on the weapons and that seek—however well intentioned— to comfort people that their “loss” is an opportunity to find purpose in their pain.

I hope I forever want to scream every time I hear somebody suggest that the killing of young Black men is orchestrated by God as part of “calling” them home.

Them boys— Jon ‘Tavion and Jeriyous— didn’t get “called.”

They got “sent.”

I hope I’d forever detest a deity that spends time plotting and setting up a scene that culminates in the death of young Black men.

For Jon ‘Tavion and Jeriyous

For the memories of young Black men who had their lives snatched out here in these streets

For the mamas, pa-pa’s, aunties, uncs, cuzzos, and homies they left behind

I weep.

Them is babies.

And they worth the weep

A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are no more. [Matthew 2:18]