RIP

Tonight I said goodbye for the final time to a guy I grew up with. Early Thanksgiving morning he was stabbed twice in the back while walking away from a bar. He had gone there to pick up his fiance as she was getting off of work and exited the building to wait for her outside. He never saw them coming. 2 men exited the bar and attacked him, murdered him. His fiance found him as she went outside. The 2 suspects, no murderers have since been apprehended and it's probably a good thing the cops got to them before the old neighborhood crowd did.

I teared up as I knelt down by his coffin. To me he was just another one of the neighborhood guys. Busting his ass day in and day out to escape the poverty and drugs that had come to plague the neighborhood streets we once called home. As I knelt there it was a surreal moment. It was when I looked up and saw the note from his children. It created a lump in my throat like I've never had before. I read the note but I honestly couldn't tell you what it said. It was raw emotion and something I had never experienced before and hopefully something I won't have to again.

I don't miss the old neighborhood. It's a ghetto of the worst sort now. But I realized tonight that I do sometimes miss the people. Most of them were never able to escape, trapped inside of their homes by fear of a stray bullet striking them. Drugs and sex are sold openly on every street corner and garages become brothels and crack houses. Products of their enviroment they struggle on the only way they no how these days and sadly that leads them into shady territory. Unfortunately while no one spoke of it tonight I believe that was exactly what happened that Thanksgiving morning.

I sold my house in the neighborhood 5 years ago and haven't looked back. I considered myself lucky and put behind me the grim fear of living in the neighborhood. Tonight I shook the hands of many that are still living there. All aged before their years the area had sucked whatever lust for life they possessed. Many of them felt like shells of the people I once bumped into on the streets. On the streets when they were safe.