By Jessica Barnes
I was changing clothes after singing at a funeral when I got the news that my son CJ was killed. He was 18 years old.
It was December 31, 2018; I had just arrived home from church as CJ left the house with a friend to go less than a mile up the road to the gas station. I was still changing out of my church clothes when I answered a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize; the voice on the other line said, “Ms. Jessica, CJ’s just been shot.” I said, “Ok,” and hung up in disbelief – I didn’t know the number, and CJ had just walked out the door.
But he called back two more times before I answered, and he told me again that CJ had been shot at the Pit Stop right up the road. This time, I knew it was true.
By the time I arrived at UAB Hospital it felt like the whole world was there working on CJ. Although I couldn’t visit him because the staff were treating his gunshot wound, I wasn’t panicking because I didn’t feel like he was about to die.
But when they finally let me in, he was dead – and I was in shock for a while afterwards. Remarkably, I didn’t scream or break down, and despite my shock I felt a calmness come over me at that moment.
I still went through all kinds of stages of grief, but at the same time, I had a strange peace. I went to several sessions with a therapist, and one day she told me, “I’m not supposed to say this, but you’re okay. You need to help other people.”
That was when I realized my calling. I would help other grieving mothers navigate the trauma I just endured from losing a child to violence.
I knew my CJ would not want me to stay in despair. He was a fun, outgoing, loving soul who would do anything for anybody. Despite living only 18 years, he had completed his earthly assignment because he touched so many lives in the community. I knew he would want me to pick myself up and move on, looking for ways to help others. So I had to do that for him.
The opportunities soon presented themselves. That March, a boy who lived three doors down and who was the same age as my son died in a horrific car accident. I found myself with his mother helping her through her grief as I had worked through mine.
Six months later, another friend of my son was killed by a neighbor – and I again found myself helping his mother grieve. A few months after that, my friend’s son was also killed. We were both in Bible study when we found out, and again I found myself helping her.
I found that as I worked through my grief, I had become everybody else’s rock.
I now work with a Woodson Center project called Voices of Black Mothers United. We help other moms who have lost children to violence as I did. The best part of what I do is helping mothers and siblings who have lost a loved one to violence see that it’s going to be okay; you can go on.
The hardest part of what I do is thinking back to that moment in December 2018, when I lost my son. For a moment I reflect and cry, but then I snap out of it and come back to help others.
Looking back, I truly believe that before all of this had happened, God had been preparing me for CJ’s death. Shortly before his death, I had returned to the church and begun reading the Bible more. I believe that God was strengthening my faith and kept me in perfect peace during that trying hour of CJ’s death.
I am grateful to be a chapter lead of Voices of Black Mothers United, an initiative of the Woodson Center, here in Alabama. Working collectively with mothers like myself from all over the U.S. gives me additional strength to help other mothers here at home.
On April 23, during National Crime Victims Awareness Week, we’re hosting an event at Greater Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church to celebrate and encourage our survivors of violence to know they are not alone, that there is life after tragedy.
If you’ve had a loss like mine, there’s never going to be a return to normal, but instead a new normal. You’ll have your moments where you could fall back. But have your moment, shake it off, and get going. That’s what my CJ would want me to do, and because I love and miss him I want to help others do the same.
Jessica Barnes is a member of Voices of Black Mothers United, Alabama Chapter.