I’ll never forget what the pastor said in a Bible class I attended two weeks after my son was shot and killed, “Gun violence won’t take you and yours out.”
I looked at the girl sitting next to me and said: “Too late. It happened.” Then, I walked out.
All my life, church has been where I go when I have a problem. I knew the pastor had probably said something like that before. This time, it took me out, because I couldn’t understand why God didn’t protect me. I knew I needed more help.
I wasn’t the only one. Two years before my son was killed, he weathered a loss of his own, and it sent him spiraling downward. I watched as he became a different kid, and people told me he needed therapy. If I knew then what I know now, maybe I could’ve gotten him the help he needed.
When it was my turn to seek help after his death, I learned that there were no support groups for gun violence survivors in North Lawndale, one of the neighborhoods in Chicago that has struggled the most with gun violence. Ironically, shootings had decreased in 2017 when Fontaine was killed. Still, I knew other families here had experienced this kind of loss, yet I had to travel to the North Side to find the support I was looking for.
As I talked to more people in my community, it became clear to me that the city’s emergency services treat the wound, but not the resulting mental state. Studies say that exposure to community violence is a risk factor for a person becoming a perpetrator or a victim of gun violence. It’s why I created a group for survivors in our community — to help heal it by addressing our individual traumas. It’s what I wish Fontaine had.
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Fontaine loved basketball, but injuries prevented him from playing professionally. He was attending Robert Morris University in hopes of becoming a physical therapist to help other injured players.
In 2015, Fontaine’s cousin was shot outside my hair salon. Rock was his favorite cousin, a brother to him. Fontaine was angry. He didn’t understand how something like this could happen because we were church people, family people.
It created this downward spiral with my baby. He became a totally different kid. I watched him struggle in school, where he rebelled against teachers. He would do his work and then just walk out of the classroom. He became combative. He came to church in a white T-shirt and jeans. I was so embarrassed. But I love my pastor, because he said: “He still came. Let him get up there on them drums.”
That’s when people started telling me he needed therapy. I didn’t understand therapy at the time, but they told me he needed somebody to talk to about what happened. So he was connected with an agency in our community that was supposed to help, but I’m not sure they did.
Eventually, he was ready to begin his life again. He was supposed to shop for prom clothes with his cousin Rock. We told him that’s what Rock would have wanted, so he went and had a good time.
He was accepted into college. He became more cooperative. I had my baby back.
But my relief didn’t last long. On April 10, 2017, Fontaine went to a park in North Lawndale to play basketball. Two people got out of a car and fired into the crowd. My son died the next day. He was 19.
At first, I went back to my job at the salon, even though I had no clients, because I didn’t want to stay home and feel that void. I didn’t want to keep walking past a room I knew he wasn’t going to be in. I had to keep moving. I wanted to survive this.
I kept going to church, but this was the one time in my life that praying over it did not help me get over it. I had to find something more.
The nearest group I found was Parents for Peace and Justice in Rogers Park. I tried to get other families from my neighborhood who had been affected by gun violence to go with me, but they didn’t want to travel so far north.
I was skeptical at first because I was the only Black person there. The things they talked about were relatable, but some coping mechanisms might seem weird to people not used to therapy. There was a technique where you pull certain fingers on your hand to relieve pressure and stress in your body. They told us things like “it’s OK to just scream to release the chemicals in your body.”
I didn’t necessarily understand it, but it helped, so it became a habit.
That support group helped me navigate back to my path – a different path, but a path of living still. Before, my life was all about what I was going to do for me and my son. Now, I have to learn to live for just me, and to keep his memory alive.
The day after I buried my son, I went to a basketball game held in his honor. People were coming up to me, giving me their condolences and sharing stories of my baby, and I spent hours comforting them.
Then one of the girls said: “We just had a session here! We need to do this on a regular basis.”
A week later, two more young men in our community were killed.
We began to meet up regularly and talk about how we were feeling. After I joined Parents for Peace and Justice, I realized we could benefit from something more formal. So I founded Help Understanding Grief, HUG for short.
I asked my pastor if we could meet at the church, because even though the therapy and support groups helped me understand the pain, memory loss, and new health issues, my relationship with God has sustained me through these seven years without my son.
The first time we met at the church, the room was packed. People came, and they talked about my baby and the other two boys that got killed. We kept meeting. Some days, one person showed up, some days they filled the room.
The North Side group had therapists and clinical professionals. In HUG it was just us families.
At a recent HUG meeting, one survivor said: “Black men don’t get flowers. They only get flowers at their funerals. We need to give them flowers while they’re alive.” That’s what I hope HUG can do, give people their flowers while they’re still alive. I wish my son had support like this.
Since the day my son was killed, I’ve tried to survive by always being on the move, always doing something. Now, I take time away from work. I make choices based on what I feel is gonna make me live. I ain’t trying to just survive any more.
I’m trying to get my flowers while I’m alive.
