Grief is a tricky thief.
It kidnaps sleep, erodes trust, destroys focus, can damn near kill you.
Ahead of Memorial Day, a nervous city braced for blood and murder statistics, while anxious parents in dangerous neighborhoods wondered which gunshot might affect their family forever.
And then there it was. Twelve killed, 48 wounded — the deadliest Memorial Day since 2016.
Chicago’s unofficial start of summer — a homicidal mess.
If a member of your family becomes a victim, grief unloads another trajectory, a gut-wrenching challenge when loved ones can be dehumanized, called “the victim” or “the body” or “the deceased.”
Victims who were so much more to those that loved them, who gave birth to them and watched them until the point they were lifeless bodies.
The Sun-Times’ story of Nicole D’Vignon’s red, purple and gold memory garden of plastic flowers “planted” in an alley where her 24-year-old son Nicolaus Cooper was killed in March, was strangely remarkable.
“We just want justice for him,” D’Vignon told Sun Times reporter Mohammad Samra.
It was a grieving mother’s way of turning a grisly murder scene into her version of “a sacred paradise” via a plastic flower garden
For Marge Hair, whose son William Hair was shot and killed in Lake View, it would be all the Mother’s Day cards she saved, rereading them in an effort to find some solace.
Both mothers had created a ritual, a way to handle the most traumatic situation in their lives, a way, they hoped, to move forward, a place where their spirits could soar … if only for a few minutes at a time.
In the summer of 2020, amid the height of fears over COVID-19, I decided to plant a victory garden of vegetables in my backyard. It would erase handling grocery store veggies touched by a finger of COVID or moistened with a droplet from a sneeze at a farmers market.
And there was finally a reason to dig out my 78-year-old, World War II “victory garden” pamphlet encouraging Americans to grow their own food to supplement their diet.
“Grow your living,” proclaimed the L. A. Hawkins pamphlet published in the early 1940s by Chicago’s International Harvester Co., then located at 180 N. Michigan Ave. “Grow your living because it may not be available for you to buy during wartime.”
It’s ostensibly wartime in Chicago now, especially for those who have lost loved ones to the epidemic of violence, children dead in the casket of a car seat, youth lying dead in the loneliness of an alley.
A little more than a week ago, I headed to my garden and planted something for Nicole D’Vignon in memory of the child she will never forget — a vividly colored hydrangea called “Endless Summer” that will return every year. It’s not plastic, but it is perennial.
And it’s just a little way to remember a child lost to a mother who will never forget.
Life, they say, never stops in a tended garden.
The name game
Big Chungus?
Say whooooo?
In the midst of all the pre-2024 presidential maneuvering, Sneed was reminded someone named “Big Chungus” filed forms and was declared an official candidate by the Federal Election Commission to run for president of the United States in 2020.
It could be almost anyone running for office now.
Getting Trumped
The men’s room: Former Republican U.S. Rep. Liz “Anyone but Trump” Cheney, dissed by a batch of pro-Trump boys turning their chairs away from her 2023 Colorado commencement address recently, also had this underreported piece of advice ostensibly encouraging female graduates to run for office.
“You may have noticed that men are pretty much running things these days, and it’s not really going all that well,” Cheney said. “You can change that.”
Amen.
Sneedlings
Saturday birthdays: tennis great Rafael Nadal, 37, basketball player Al Horford, 37, and first lady Jill Biden, 72. Sunday birthdays: actress Brooke Vincent, 31, actress Angelina Jolie, 48, and actor Russell Brand, 48. ... A belated happy birthday to RTA chairman Kirk Dillard. ... And a special belated birthday to legendary Chicago TV stalwart Larry Wert, ageless, priceless and the adoring son of one amazing mom.
