2/2/23, Heartbreak

Hi Everyone,

I hope you’ve had a good week, I’ve been buried deep in writing a book, weaving the story, which always transports me to a quiet place, far from the real world. I don’t go out or see people when I’m writing, and at times real life intrudes, and wakes me up out of the spell I am weaving in a fictional world.

I am not a political person. I’ve never had a strong interest in (or understanding of) politics. Certain issues and injustices catch my attention at times, emotionally, but I grew up in two countries, and I focus on my family, my loved ones, and their well being and my books, which are my job and something I love doing. although politics are an important part of our lives and responsibilities as citizens, politics always seem very remote to me, run by people we really don’t know, and it often seems to be about who is the best orator, or has the best speech writer, rather than who is truly the best person for the job, which is hard to know.

What I am writing to you does not come from politics, or about race, or color, it is purely and only about motherhood, about love. It has weighed on me for days. And I cannot write to you about fashion shows, or about petty gripes or new books, or holidays here, or on my Instagram with pictures of pretty plates, new shoes, or pictures of my dogs….with this weight on my heart.

I speak of Tyre Nichols, brutally, wantonly senselessly murdered, for no reason, out of pure rage, seemingly just for sport—-a young man of 29, in the full bloom of his youth, barely more than a boy, and the father of a little boy himself. Whatever he did or didn’t do, was or wasn’t, no one of any color deserves to be murdered. He didn’t even anger anyone, he just was, going home to his mother’s house. I cannot read about it, or see his mother’s face, or think about it without tears filling my eyes. I lost a son, he committed suicide at nineteen, a greatly loved, infinitely cherished, wonderful special boy I loved and always will. I know the pain in Tyre’s mother’s heart. When you think of how much we love and cherish our children, the touch of their skin when they are born, the first moment you see them, the smiles and the laughter over the years, the nights spent with them when they’re sick, the fear for them as they grow up, the touch and feel of them, the joy they give us and we try to give them, the pride when we see them in the school play, or when they give you the Kleenex box they made you as a gift. Just holding our children in our arms is an immeasurable gift. We would do anything to protect them, they are part of us forever, the idea that someone can take that loved being, so cherished by his parents, his loved ones, his children once he’s grown. They took that loved being and murdered him for no reason anyone can fathom. Did not one of those five men who beat him to death, or those who watched it happen, have a child of their own whom they loved so tenderly that taking someone else’s child and murdering them would have been an unthinkable act?

There is no explaining the vagaries of man, the terrible things people do to each other in wars, and even more impossible to explain murdering a young man going about his business in an ordinary life. Where was mercy? Where was kindness? Where was humanity? Where was the unwillingness to injure and destroy another human being, and to rob parents of their child? I don’t think we will ever understand it. Children are killed every day by people who are beyond understanding. I am equally unable to understand this one shocking death.

It weighs on my mother’s heart, on the memory of what it was like to lose a child I had nurtured and loved for nineteen years. Tyre’s mother, his parents, have a hard road to travel now, and will have to learn to live with it, until their grief softens to something they can live with.

I write to you tonight, only to tell you how sad I am, how deeply sorry I am for them. How little comfort we can offer for what they lost.

May God bless his soul, may he be in a better place now, may his parents find comfort, and remember the warm memories of the joy they shared during his life. And may each of us remember him and be reminded that a world without mercy, humanity and compassion is an unlivable place for us all. May it be a reminder and a lesson to us all. And may the memories of him be sweet for those who knew and loved him.

with all my love,
Danielle