Today we mourn a wound that will forever remain another ugly scar on these so-called united states in North America.
The very public funeral of Jayland Walker who was slaughtered in a barrage of bullets fired by eight officers of Akron, Ohio’s police department on June 27th is happening as I type this. I arrived about ten minutes after ten and followed the local chapter of Zulus in to pay my respects.
Undertaking is an art unto itself. What I saw when I stood before this beautiful, valuable and worthy young man who unjustly lost his life was nothing like the pictures that stood on either side of his casket or the videos that flashed on the adjacent screens. Like seeing a disfigured person in a public place and catching yourself staring, I impulsively rushed myself along unnecessarily. Afterwards I sat and watched others walk up, so many did the same. It is not easy to see the repaired features of a human face no matter how talented the artist and I must say, whoever the undertaker was, they did do an amazing job considering what they were left to work with.
The courage, insight and immense strength Pamela Walker has shown by making her son’s funeral public is nothing short of miraculous to me. I’ve lost my husband and still feel like I’m barely surviving that. Receiving news of my son’s death would surely be the end of me and I quickly banish those thoughts when they come.
Mourners continue to walk through Akron’s cherished Civic Theater to pay their respects and bare witness to this historic event. Never in my life did I envision we would have to fight against racism and hatred like I saw in books about the “civil rights era”… it’s still the civil rights era and there has never been reprieve or repairs! Promises made fifty years ago are still not honored and actions speak louder than words. This is why we can all see Jayland today. We can see what abuse of power and excessive force does to a person, a family, a community, a country. We can see.
Justice has always been only for those of a certain group, the rest of us…well, it’s just us.
A Musing Stef 