United In Grief
The tragic events in Kansas City on Wednesday just hammers home the sad reality that nowhere is safe in America...
I’m going to let you in on a little secret - when undertaking and digging into mundane tasks, I place my AirPods into my ears, turn on my trusted and favorite playlist and let the music guide me through.
It works like a charm every time.
Well, until today, that is.
As I was going through this very same ritual earlier today, ‘United In Grief’ by Kendrick Lamar - just one of a number of hits on the excellent and critically acclaimed ‘Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers’ album, an album I constantly have on repeat and one that was the soundtrack to my life in summer 2022 - came on and I suddenly found myself engulfed in yet more sadness. And ‘United In Grief’ probably does a pretty solid job of describing how we’re all feeling today.
That sudden explosion of deep-rooted sadness is a helpless feeling I’ve been hopelessly battling with since Wednesday afternoon. Since yet another senseless and heartbreaking mass shooting brought America to its knees. Again.
On a day that began with so much joy and celebration, a day that saw the Kansas City Chiefs throw a parade to celebrate its stunningly dramatic victory in Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday - the franchise’s second consecutive championship and its third in five years - ended in similar heartbreak and tragedy as one person was killed and another 21 (according to the latest reports) were left injured in a shooting near Union Station in downtown Kansas City, Missouri.
It has also been reported that at least half of the victims injured were children.
My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a Kansas City DJ who sadly lost her life on Wednesday. My thoughts and prayers also go out to all those impacted by the tragic events in Kansas.
I’ve been in a deep haze ever since the first notification popped up on my phone alerting the world that gunfire had broken out at the victory parade thrown by the Chiefs. It feels like I’ve just been absently floating through the standard minutiae of everyday life ever since.
As news started to break that something awful had taken place at the heart of the celebrations taking place in Kansas City, I was in the middle of editing two podcasts and putting together some post Super Bowl content. It has been a busy start to the week for me from a freelance standpoint, so I was using Wednesday to catch up and craft my final thoughts on the breathtaking ending to Super Bowl LVIII.
However, as all major news broadcasters began the all-too familiar process of reporting another mass shooting at a public event, everything else ceased to become important or relevant. It didn’t feel right to be writing about a sporting event or releasing podcasts breaking down the X’s and O’s of a game when families were left shattered and wracked with grief.
Again.
At this point, I don’t even know what to say. I mean, what can any of us even say at this point?
Mass shootings in America are as commonplace and routine as going to the dentist. It fills me with utter dread that I’m even able to type out that sentence without hesitation.
It tells you everything you need to know about the state of America when, just as news began to filter through that gun sounds had pierced the sky in Kansas City, a prominent news channel was in the process of interviewing family members of a victim claimed by a previous mass shooting. Their lack of surprise to the horror that was just unfolding in front of all of us - yet again - paints a very sorry and downright scary picture.
The fact that this keeps happening and no place is now seemingly safe - be it schools, concerts, shopping malls, churches, nightclubs, bars, public streets and now at sporting parades - is just inconceivable.
And, yet, we have somehow become numb to such tragic events because they now happen so damn often.
The mass shooting in Kansas City on Wednesday was at least the 48th such event to take place this year.
I’ll admit; when the notification first popped up on my phone that a shooting had taken place, I can’t say I was at all surprised. I mean, doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know about gun crime in America and our attitude towards it today?
During CNN’s coverage of the shooting in Kansas City, a young boy who couldn’t have been older than 14 or 15, was being interviewed. He wore a fresh and bloody graze on his head from where he tried desperately to escape and outrun the cascade of bullets being fired through a crowd of millions of people who had come out to bask in the glory of their beloved team’s latest crowning achievement. The kid - I mean, again, this was just a young boy - recounted how he had been separated from his friends in the process, and he had no idea if they were still alive.
Just imagine that. Please, stop whatever you are doing for just a minute and put yourself in the shoes of that kid. He, like thousands of others, woke up on a beautiful, sunny Wednesday morning to go and celebrate and cheer with his heroes as they paraded through downtown Kansas City with the Lombardi Trophy. He ended the day stuck in a total nightmare.
We all love sports because it has the power to bring us together like no other entity on this planet. It makes us feel things that nothing else possibly could. It brings us together as one.
There would have been thousands upon thousands of families who all took the day off work in order to attend the parade together on Wednesday, uniting in their shared love and passion of the Chiefs. Dozens of kids would have eagerly leapt out of bed, thrown on their Chiefs gear and danced out of the door in anticipation of a magical day ahead. Instead, they are now left with the deep, deep, deep trauma that such a horrific event inflicts. It is something they will have to deal with for the rest of their lives.
We’ve now woken up today to a world where not even sporting parades are safe. Fast forward to the summer when a Stanley Cup champion is crowned and the Larry O’Brien trophy is hoisted, there will be parents and families reluctant to risk taking their children to such events in fear of something like this happening again. For those that do attend, you wonder if they will be able to fully enjoy the festivities, knowing full well that carnage and terror could erupt in any given second.
Just read that paragraph again and really think about what it says about the state of the world we live in today.
It isn’t a world I’m exactly happy to be a part of.
I mean, how many of you go to theaters or shopping malls or even churches now and frantically search for exits and hiding places? How many of you find yourself in a constant state of being on high alert?
Now, as regular readers and subscribers can attest to, this site is a politics-free zone and I’m going to try my damnedest to keep it that way today. However, I fear that may prove almost impossible.
You want to know why? Well, simply put, it’s because I’ve had enough of all of this. Something has to change. And I’m pissed that nothing is being done about the regular merry-go-round ride of abject horror and terror we are subjected to.
We see the same bullcrap script play out every time a mass shooting takes place. Utter heartbreak and tragedy followed by a cacophony of thoughts and prayers, all against the backdrop of empty promises by politicians who have no intention of actually doing anything about the epidemic that has ripped the very heart and soul out of America.
How much more of this can we all really take?
And just what will it take for those in power to pull their head out of their asses and actually do something about gun violence in the United States? How many more lives need to be lost before real, tangible action is taken? How many more families need to be ripped apart before those able to take action actually do just that? And how many more mass shootings need to happen before new and (much) stronger gun laws are implemented to put an end to this avoidable wave of terror, heartbreak and utter destruction?
What makes the events of Wednesday even more deplorable and gut-wrenching is the fact that, per multiple reports, the cause of this latest mass shooting was down to a personal dispute. Two of the detained individuals are juveniles. If a personal dispute broke out in nearly any other country, we’d never hear about it because it would be a glorified punch up and nothing more. But, in America, a personal dispute results in over 30 people seriously injured, half of which are children, and a woman dead because guns can be purchased with as much ease as a bag of M&M’s.
I really don’t know what to say anymore. I’m utterly heartbroken by all of this and something needs to change. And fucking fast.
Anyway, I find myself still enshrouded in a thick haze as I finish writing this. Honestly, I just needed to unload my torrent of feelings and scream out into the world, so thank you for indulging me.
I have no idea if any of this makes any sense. I have no clue if I should even be writing something like this. But I just knew I had to flush out my feelings someway, somehow. And, as always, I turned to the written word.
This is just yet another sad, sad, sad day in America, one in a long line of them.
I understand this is a sports site and I’m fully aware some of you will be looking for a distraction from the horrors of everyday real life, so I promise I will get back to writing sports just for you later today. It still doesn’t feel right, if I’m being honest. After all, so much about writing is feeling and I don’t want to fake what I write, but I will try my best to get back to sports.
But I needed to get this off my chest and share with you all my broken heart at how another normal day in America descended into devastation and absolute sorrow in a matter of seconds.
How did we even get to this point?
