September 30th 1979, my son Michael fell victim to SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).
October 5th 1979 he was buried. In the intervening time between his death and interment I experienced a whirlwind of sadness, strength and confusion. The night before Mikey’s burial services, my wife wanted to visit her sister, partly to get out of our apartment and partially to care for her sister who took her nephew’s death very badly. I grabbed my car keys and we prepared to leave. My wife grabbed my hand, took the keys from my grip, cupped my elbow and said she wanted to walk in the night air. Her sister was not a short distance away, about twenty city blocks, “20 blocks!”
How could I refuse any request? We had just loss our six-month old son and nothing I could do, to ease her pain was out of the question. We lived in NW Washington, DC at the time and the area was not the safest but we somehow felt nothing could be any worse than what we had experienced in the previous few days. We started our walk, it was a warm night for the first week in October and my wife needed something to quench her growing thirst along the way. We stopped at one of the many local Mom and Pop stores that dotted most inner city Black neighborhoods. Her eyes were swollen from crying her hair was not styled the way she liked and she asked if she could stand just outside the store entrance while I walked inside and bought her a bottle of lemon flavored Snapple.
She was within my eye’s view and I trained my gaze on her while waiting to pay for the bottle of Snapple that I had gotten from the beverage freezer next to the entrance door. I reached for my wallet and noticed a disheveled looking man, obviously inebriated, accosting my wife at the front door. She suddenly shrieked and I could see him fondling her buttocks. She violently pushed him away and I felt my heart pounding with anger and made a maddening dash toward the door, bottle in hand. I leapt over a ducking patron tackled the man and put my hands around his throat wanting to take his life in some odd response to the unfairness of my baby boy being taken away from us. My only thought was how unfair of the God, I had been taught as a child to believe in, to take away my son and leave this sort of vermin to live and wreak havoc on the world. Why? Why? Why? I could see the fear in his eyes as I squeezed and felt a sense of relief and satisfaction. The other store patrons tried vainly to pull me away, the store manager, as well, tried his best to pull me off, but I was single-minded and determined to even the score.
The man was a stranger but he represented all the evil in the world and I was mad at God and wanted to rid myself of the meandering teachings and lessons my great-granny taught me as a boy. I leaned in closer to his face and waited for the gasp of his last dying breaths. The struggles of 3 men, attempting to pull me off, could not stop me from my mission to avenge Michael. I heard a voice, the ethereal sounds of my wife’s gentle voice whispering in my ear, “let him go baby, Michael would not want this.” I immediately released my grip, the stranger with a look of shear panic on his face scrambled to his feet and ran away. Yelling, “he’s crazy he’s crazy!” I was crazy for a brief moment but something I cannot explain restored my sanity and peace for the moment.
I rocketed out of my sleep in a cold sweat, my wife lying next to me resting comfortably for the first time in more the 4 days. Was the incident in the store a dream had it really happened, what had happened? I don’t even remember the visit to my sister in law’s home. I got out of bed hoping the whole thing had been a big nightmare. I pull the sheets away from my feet got out of bed and checked the baby’s room but his crib was still empty, that part had not been a nightmarish dream, he was still dead. I feared telling my wife the story, I think I feared most, that it might be true, that I had come close to killing a man. She told me later, that I had not been myself the night before Mike’s funeral and we never spoke of it again.
I buried my son, October 5th 1979. See you later Mikey