“I am indebted to him. Because I get to live and he didn’t.”

I am so sorry for your loss.

Very much this. I read that there’s a Japanese funeral custom where the body is cremated, but only to the point where the bones are still intact. The family then sifts through ashes, picking out the bones to put them in the urn.

This is a terrific article and I am in complete disbelief that with such a raw and human display of pain and vulnerability what follows are people using this for a platform to express that they can not find empathy because race was mentioned. That is the definition of racism.

And I felt my mask always threatened to drip off and reveal the wounded monster that had to negotiate her worthiness daily.

on April 1st this year my brother would have been 28 years old. It nearly brought me to my knees, he was 21 when he was murdered. It’s been 7 years and sometimes I still feel an urge to send him a quick text to check in with him, only to remember that I can’t, that he’s gone and never coming back. He’s always going to…

Your post doesn’t say anything about the reality of the author’s emotional life - you aren’t her, you don’t know her or her experience, and you are clearly uninterested in even trying.

I don’t have the vocabulary to fully articulate how close to home this beautifully written piece hit. All I know is that this part:

My Godbrother was murdered over a decade ago. We were 6 months apart and it’s so difficult not to think of the life he should’ve had.

I want to save your reply to use again and again on hateful trolls like that person. I think you have them pegged. Thank you.

For fuck’s sake, who on earth got this out of the grays?

I can relate to this 100%.

This was some real shit. Thanks for letting us into your world Melissa. Stay true to your brothers life/death, to the lives of those he left behind and most importantly to yourself. You’ll be alright. I believe it.

We don’t need a new word. We need to rediscover an older way of dealing with loss. It’s harder to deal with death in the modern day because we’re more sanitized from it and it is treated as an ugly taboo. Because of that, there are fewer people who truly understand when one of us is slapped in the face with the full…

I’m sorry for your loss, Melissa. All of it. I wish you peace and happiness and fulfillment.

My brother was murdered in New York in 2009. I think about him every day. Thank you for what you wrote.

When a family member dies its always hard but I think when the death is related to a crime especially one that remains without a face to associate without blame. But when it is political there is another layer of suffering and another layer of unresolved emotion. Whilst black peoples lives are still lost due to…

I hope that you know that you deserve to be happy. You matter. Your pain is very real and that your brother would want you to live a full live that are an active participant in. The ghost of someone close to us who died in a terrible way far too young can be crippling. If the situation was reversed would you want him…

I don’t have words, just <3 <3 <3

Sorry about your bro.