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I've lost count of the number of times I've had this session with one of my patients.
"I can tell something is bothering you, Rachel. What's going on?"
Her eyes shift to the floor, tears slowly tracing tracks down her cheeks.
"It's my cousin's son. He was murdered last night. I was there when he was born, I changed his diapers. Now he's gone. I think I'm still in shock, I don't know what to feel."
Homicides in Chicago have dropped since they reached a staggering level in 2016, but they're still higher than New York or Los Angeles. Not as high as St. Louis, Detroit, or Cleveland, although our city makes the news far more often. I feel a reflexive defensiveness anytime violence in Chicago is brought up because of the way it's become synonymous with this city I love, but I cannot ignore the reality confronted by patients like Rachel.
Death makes us uncomfortable, murder even more so. As a result, we often unknowingly embrace myths about those who have lost loved ones to gun violence. A quote from my recent interview with Alex Kotlowitz has been on my mind since we spoke: "There’s a sense that people somehow get accustomed, hardened, or numb to the violence, yet I think that violence gets in your bones, it shapes you."
Rachel is still in shock. I hope she has time to mourn, but I've had more than a few patients who have experienced loss after loss, their calendars filling with funerals and visitations, which leaves them no time to really grieve. If you spend much time in neighborhoods marked by gun violence, you'll see makeshift memorials erected on the spot where people have been shot, pictures and handwritten memories trying to reclaim the spot. It's somewhat unnerving to look over while waiting for the bus or walking to your car and see them, a vivid reminder of how close death can lurk.
I listen to Rachel, I support her in what ways I can. I help her give voice to her grief when it finally comes, and I'm there with tissues when it becomes overwhelming. It doesn't seem like enough. It never does.
Debates continue over whether access to guns, city policy, police brutality, or the low clearance rate for homicides are "the" reason for this violence; most professionals who study such things believe it is a combination of those and other factors, the precise mixture of which is impossible to determine. I care deeply about these questions, but I don't have answers for them.
For me, the answer right now is to sit with patients like Rachel and not look away. I don't claim that that is sufficient, and I do what I can to advocate for them outside of the office (in part by writing pieces such as this). I hope for change, and I know that what seems impossible today might seem inevitable tomorrow. For now, though, we sit together and remember.
