GRIEF

This one is a little different because my mind has been a little scrambled lately. This is something thats been on my mind.

I was picking my brother up from football practice one day during his 6th-grade season. I was kinda early so I decided to go watch in the stands for a bit. The boys were doing some drills, the ones I had seen my dad coach his players through multiple times before. Nothing was different from these kids to the ones I had seen before doing the same drills, but one kid, in particular, had caught my eye. The kid was good, pretty fast on his feet, he had real potential. Practice ended and I went down to the field to get my brother, Lucas came towards me with the same kid by his side. Lafrance Johnson wasn’t actually on the team, he was just practicing with them because his mom couldn’t afford for him to play that year. He said next year he planned to join the team. I remember seeing him a few times after that hanging out with my brother, from what I knew they played video games together every day after school. Lafrance was always really polite and tried to make people laugh, overall just a good kid. As I had learned, Lafrance was one of my brother's best friends, Lucas said he was like the brother he never had. Maybe that’s why it changed Lucas so much.

 Lafrance and his little brother had found a gun at their aunt’s house back in May of 2022. They didn’t know any better, they were just kids playing. Lafrance Johnson was 12 when his 10-year-old brother accidentally pulled that trigger. They didn’t know it was loaded, they didn’t even know it was real. Lucas found out at school when they pulled his group of friends into the office that morning. I will never forget getting that text from my mom letting me know what had happened, asking me to be there for my brother. During his lunch, Lucas called me, it was hard to understand what exactly he was saying through the tears but I got the point. My mom called me out of school and I went and picked Lucas up. When he got in the car he didn’t buckle up right away. 

“Is he gone?”

“Yes buddy”

“But he can’t be, he said I’ll see you tomorrow before we went to bed. He can’t be.”

I went to the funeral, it was an open casket. Lucas was quiet, he wasn’t crying as we walked into the church, he hadn’t cried since the day he found out what had happened. But when we got to the casket he broke, “that’s not Lafrance,” he said. Lafrance had been shot in the facial region, they had used an almost plastic substance to make it seem as if nothing had happened. We sat at the end, three rows back from the front.  I remember Lafrance’s youngest brother had toy cars with him, there was a little space behind the flowers and the area of the casket in which Lafrance’s head was laying. The little boy had slid into that area and was playing with his cars, he kept trying to put the cars in the casket as if to play with his brother. Lucas said the little boy is only three. So he doesn’t understand, he just wants his brother to play with him. The rest of the family was sitting in the front, the ten-year-old brother was sitting next to his mom, “I’m sorry I didn’t mean to Mommy.” It was an accident, it wasn’t anyone’s fault, yet he thinks it’s his fault. How is a 10-year-old supposed to live like that? How are we supposed to tell him it wasn’t his fault? These are kids, how are we supposed to explain to them what has happened? These boys don’t understand, they are too young. These kids are too young to be losing their brother and friend like this, he was just 12.