Forward
It happens. You never forget it but it happens. It happens more than you can imagine and it isn’t a forgettable experience. After more than sixty years the memory is still fresh in my mind; that briefly, when I was very young, a boyhood friend up and just disappeared one day.
It was several months later that I learned what happened to my friend. I believe it was on a weekend morning while downstairs in our basement my mother came with the news. She said, “I have something I need to tell you," and went on… “Your friend that disappeared, I just learned, has committed suicide.” Well, I cried of course for a very long time afterward.
I assumed he had shot himself and whether it truly was suicide or not I will probably never know? As an adult, and a parent now, I don’t know how else you are to tell an eleven- or twelve-year-old that his friend has just committed suicide. We as parents aren’t taught how to do that. The fact that it still troubles me at this late age should say something about how these types of events affect us for the rest of our lives. Though many generations have passed, the hurt never goes completely away.
There are similar events, increasingly and continuously, going on around us that we have a tendency to want to ignore. Because, I think, they are too painful to think about. No one wants to deal with them. The events I am referring to are children killing children. When finding a parent’s, or guardian’s unsecured weapon; a child’s guilt can only be their inherent curiosity. It is the parent’s carelessness where-in the guilt lies. I think it is time, we as a nation did something about it.
Statistics show, by the end of 2015, approximately 265 children picked up a firearm and shot someone by accident. Their families, and their victim’s families, will never be able to forget what happened to their loved ones. The pain and the memory of the hurt will forever be unforgettable.
I have spent time looking for records of my friends life to no avail. It is almost like he never existed and that should be a crime in itself. At eleven years old, where did he get a gun and who did it belong to?
