The death penalty is the stupidest fucking thing ever.

My life has been shaped by monumental amounts of loss and I consider myself very well-versed in what it feels like to have death heaped on your heart like hot coals. I also feel confident that I know what it takes for a person to come back from such a searing degree of loss.

The man that was convicted of murdering executing my uncle was executed murdered in the gas chamber of a Missouri penitentiary and, listen, nothing fucking happened. My family lived with the ache that comes from having someone you adored just slaughtered by some junkie stick-up man. We ached at every memory of my uncle and the grief erupted less and less often with time. What didn’t serve to help anyone in my family was having the man that killed him be executed. When the death penalty was finally carried out all those years later there were no miraculous clouds of relief that appeared over me. No rays of healing light washed over me. There was nothing good that happened from that. Not then. Not now and not even close.



I think of my Uncle Andrew all of the time and I’ve learned to let those thoughts be of ones filled with love and peace and sweetness. My memories of him are almost only ones of compassion and appreciation and smiles. I feel sad for not having more time to spend with him and I cry sometimes when I see that his son is now the same age as he was when he was killed. [And who now has sons of his own who will never know their Grandfather.]

If I had to list the things I think and feel when I close my eyes and think of my uncle it’d be a long time before i ever mentioned devastation or hurt. The ache in me has been transformed into loving-kindness. And, listen to this one please because it’s important: That’s not an easy thing to do. And that’s something that I did all on my own. The death penalty had just zero to do with it.

The absolute truth of the matter is that every time there is an execution in the news it causes me some serious degree of hurt. It reminds me of the horrible shit attached to the whole thing and becomes this albatross of upset around so many peoples’ necks.

The death penalty only ever makes me think of the man that murdered my uncle. The death penalty strips me of that hard-fought peace I’d come to feel and it replaces it with images of my uncles murderer.

[Everybody’s process is their own I guess.]