30
“From the moment Mike Mike was born, I knew my life had changed forever. I was sixteen years old with an infant. I didn’t know what kind of mother I was going to be. But when I held him in my arms for the first time and felt his soft skin, he opened his eyes, and I could see my reflection in his little pupils. I suddenly wasn’t scared anymore. It was like we were communicating with each other without words. I was saying, ‘I got your back, baby,” and he was saying, ‘I got yours, too, Mama.’
“I can’t just say he was mine, though. When Mike Mike was born, he was adored, doted on, and loved by me and his daddy, my siblings, and his grandparents on both sides, who helped with his rearing. He was our beautiful, unplanned surprise — my first son, a first grandson, and the first nephew in my family.
“And then, one day our Mike Mike was shot and killed by a police officer on Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri and suddenly his name was being spoken everywhere: Mike Brown Jr., Michael Brown or just Brown … but never Mike Mike, never our family’s name for him, the name that marked him as special to us and those who knew him for real.”
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“I closed my eyes. ‘Mama, I need you, I’m scared.’ I could hear his voice.
“It was my son under that sheet, my son’s yellow sock sticking out, my son’s red Cardinals hat, my son’s finger. All at once, it his me what Brittanie had said was true. Mike Mike was dead. I tried to open my mouth, but my words were stuck, trapped in my throat.
“My husband, Louis, suddenly appeared at my side and held me up as my knees gave way. I tried to reach for Mike Mike, but it was like trying to grab air. I opened my mouth, and a moan broke loose.”
-Lezley McSpadden, “Tell The Truth and Shame the Devil”
Behind every hashtag.
Every #SayHisName, #SayHerName, #SayTheirName
Behind every moment or movement sparked by a lynching
… there is someone’s dead child.
Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor
Mike Brown
In an instant they are frozen in time … those who become hashtags enter the public consciousness at the very moment they leave the world …
They will never be older than this.
Always in his high school graduation gown
… never in his classroom at Vatterott College
… never showing up at your house to fix your air conditioner
… never holding his own child, seeing his reflection in their eyes and saying:
“I got your back, baby.”
and hearing their reply.
In an instant they are frozen in time.
They will never be older than this.
Never.
That truth is immutable.
Irrefutable.
Behind every movement sparked by a lynching … there is someone’s dead child.
There are parents and family, lovers and friends who for the rest of their lives will have this one they loved in the corner of their mind and heart
… imagining them at ages and stages they will never receive
… watching their peers pass those milestones and being genuinely happy for them even as the hollowness in your heart aches knowinghe should have gotten that chance, too.
“It’s a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he’s got and all he’s ever gonna have.” — William Munny, Unforgiven
Every death leaves a wake of sorrow … even if God is the only one left to weep.
Deaths get reported as statistics.
880 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the “ceasefire” began.
At least 20 people who are unhoused die on American streets every day.
18 people have died in ICE custody this year.
Yet each number has a name, a story.
Each number once gazed into the eyes of their mother and at least for that one moment there was something there, an acknowledgment of something greater than ourselves yet contained in the smallest human form.
Each number has a name that is now etched on a tombstone or lost in a mass grave.
Each number has a story that will have no more chapters.
Each number is not just a number but an infinitely precious image of God.
It is enough to deal with the deaths, the stories cut short, the wakes of sorrow from those things we cannot control
Cancer
Accidents
Natural Disasters
What I will never understand is when we have a choice, we still choose to take life.
When we have a choice, we still choose to create the conditions that shorten life.
When we have a choice, we still choose to beat and oppress people to the point where they see and perhaps have no other option but to take life.
Death can happen in an instant.
The impact
The emptiness
The wishing it weren’t so
The wondering what could have been… is never ending.
In journalism school, I learned that when you turned in a story, at the end you wrote a number to let the editor know that was indeed the end of the story.
It was a number based on the telegraph shorthand used by the Western Union and the old Phillips Code, which meant “end of transmission” or “no more.”
That number was 30.
30 is a number that signifies ending.
But too many don’t make it that far.
Michael Brown, Jr. … Mike Mike to his family and friends … was born on May 20, 1996.
30 years ago today.
30 years ago today, Lezley McSpadden saw her reflection in her son’s eyes, and suddenly she wasn’t scared anymore.
“I got your back, baby.”
“I got yours, too, Mama.”
It’s been 4,302 days since Lezley moaned and screamed on Canfield Drive, unable to even get to her son lying dead in the street.
4,302 mornings where she wakes up with that hole in her life.
4,302 evenings where her son only ages in her imagination and in her heart.
My friend Alex Templeton moves me every time I remember him saying:
“This movement is summed up for me, and always has been summed up for me, in one statement: Mike Brown saved my life… Mike Brown gave me the desire to live, showed me love, ignited a fire inside of me I never knew I had…. I was able to put my struggle in this bullhorn.”
Mike Brown didn’t save my life … but he changed my life forever.
And neither one of us knew him.
And so on days like today … days with a round number attached to them … we pause and reflect and remember what happened in the wake of his murder as the best we can do to honor the person himself.
And … behind all that happened in the wake of lynching, there is a mother, a father, a friend, a lover, an auntie, a niece, a teacher, a companion … of a dead child.
Of a child who will only grow older in the imagination and aching heart of those who held them close an increasingly distant number of days ago.
Who are left to wonder, and mourn, and go on…
So there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about you, Mike Mike. I’ve accepted that you were God’s before you were mine. He just let me borrow you for eighteen years. Eighteen of the most incredible, tough, beautiful years of my life.
People always say they OK when tragedy happens and some time passes. Well, I’m not OK, and the way you died wasn’t OK. So I’m not going to say that any of this is OK. I’m confused and lost about why this had to happen to you. Why this happened to me, us. I don’t get it. So what I have to say is really more like a list of wishes.
I wish you were still here. I wish you had been around the house with me. I wish I had been off work. I wish we had been together. I wish you’d been at the house for me to fire up the grill and put you some chicken breasts out there.
I wish, I wish, I wish…
There were three people out there on Canfield that day. So there are three sides to the story. The truth hasn’t ever been told. Your truth. You’re not here to tell the world what happened. So I’m gonna represent, baby, as best I can.
Sometimes, when I’m laying in my bed awake because I can’t sleep, you come to me. I see you so vividly, and I know that you are just watching out for Mama, I know. And I know I’ll see you again one day.
I love you,
Mama
-30-
Very moving. Very effective.