June 17 will NEVER be the same again for me…

My firstborn son turned 39 today and, given the egregious number of Black men and women who’ll never see another birthday due to the machinations of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy — I’m glad he was able to.

As I do every year, I woke up this morning and called him to sing “Happy Birthday.” And as has happened every year since June 17, 2015 — I was kicked in the chest by the realization that my annual, joyful-love celebration of his birth, would forever be linked with the painful deaths of the nine people Dylan Roof murdered in my home town…