Remembering the dead

After a weekend of poetry and Day of the Dead remembrances, I returned to town and found out that a kid from my daughter's school was shot and killed on Halloween.

This is a kid who rode my daughter's school bus last year. This is a kid who was good friends with a boy my son used to play soccer with. This isn't just in the neighborhood. This is close to home.

The media isn't releasing much information. Maybe that's the family's wish, or maybe that's a prevailing attitude. The paper even says that this kid, and the other young man who was shot, were not associated with the high school.

But my daughter tells me this is a guy who was funny and liked—well liked. Students wore mourning black to school today. Counselors were on hand for students who had lost their friend.

The media's message is, I guess, that if you're associated with a gang, your life—and who you are—does not count. And if you cancel out all the young men who are in gangs right now, that forgetting, that dismissal, is another kind of genocide.

I don't think that being in a gang is a good thing. I don't think that smoking a blunt or flashing cash is a good move for a young man. But I don't think that it should cancel out his death or his life. Here was a boy, and he's gone, and his family and friends mourn him and miss him.

Here's a video remembrance that was posted on YouTube.



The day of the dead is every day. And we must keep remembering.