Today I’m going to try something different. Usually, I try to keep my writings humorous. However, with the recent deaths of well-known individuals such as Michael Jackson, Steve McNair, Farrah Fawcett, and the Oxy Clean guy, reality doesn’t always seem so funny. But in addition to the deaths of celebrities with whom we’ve never shared the same air, taking a brief gander at the local newspaper or the nightly news will reveal that people are dying right in our front yards and it’s not due to bouts of cancer, drug use, heart attacks, or bad choices. Instead, the cause of one’s demise could be that person sitting beside you on the bus, or across from you in a business meeting. It could be the person you pass before entering a store, or the person you accidentally cut off in traffic that may decide whether you’ll make it to see the next day or not.
On Saturday, I stopped at the local liquor store. Now, I hate the use of “liquor store??? because it has a bad connotation regardless of whether you drink responsibly or not. And if something horrible happens at such an establishment, the victim is looked at as a lesser person than they would be looked at had they been assaulted in a grocery store. It’s almost like we blame the victim for being in a liquor store in the first place. Anyway, I pulled up in front of the store and noticed that the lights were out. There were people standing out front. It wasn’t until I got out of the car that I noticed about 60 roses taped to the outside of the front door. I then noticed that the people, who I thought were just congregating outside, were signing posters and shaking their heads in disbelief.
When I approached the crowd, I asked what happened. At that point, I hadn’t yet peeked through the glass door to see the blood on the floor less than three feet away from where I stood, or the various broken bottles that remained in the same spot where they’d landed two nights before during a senseless altercation. I was told that the owner, a man I’d seen each time I stopped at the store, had been killed in a robbery less than 48 hours earlier. Two masked gunmen, at some point, had been standing in the exact same spot where I was standing before they took the store owner’s life. And for the victim who had gone to work that Thursday just as he had done for years since he purchased the establishment, he, too, had stood where I was standing to open his business for the day. Of course, he had no idea that day would be his last.
His car still sat in the parking lot where he’d parked it.
I will never understand how a person could kill another human being. What reason does anyone have to end another person’s life? And how does one live with themselves after committing such an act? How does one eat, sleep, or watch TV after killing someone? It’s sad to think that we live in a world where a person can strive to do the right thing and live there life the right way, but be murdered because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because they had more than what others are willing to work to earn, or for some other senseless reason.
I’m not sure how to end this because, as I read the paper about the 5-year-old who was struck by a stray bullet discharged from the gun of a 17-year old, the shootings of the police officers who were simply responding to a domestic violence report, and the 26-year-old who was found shot to death in his car at a park, it appears that these incidents are becoming the norm. With each occurrence, the shock value decreases as we become more and more desensitized and began to expect these types of things to occur. In fact, after being told of the store owner’s death, one former patron asked a Baltimore Sun reporter who was covering the story if “the store was going to open.???
So, no laughs this time around. Instead, I’m hoping and praying for change and a miracle. My heart goes out to anyone who’s been affected by these or any other senseless acts of violence. To those of us blessed to have seen this day, please be careful and stay positive through these trying times in which we live.
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