Jasmine and I were coworkers for a time at Youth Alive, where she was a crisis responder and coordinator of the Khadafy Washington Project, which supports families in the immediate aftermath of a homicide in Oakland. Jasmine lost her only son, David, to the gun, in 2016. In an interview last week, Jasmine told me a story of supporting a mother whose son had been killed in Oakland, of arranging to meet the mother at a mortuary to help plan the funeral, one of the invaluable services the Khadafy Washington Project provides in a time when your brain has shut down from the shock and trauma. The mother had chosen a mortuary in a nearby town, east of Oakland. Jasmine had done the same when it was time to bury Davey; she did not want his service to be in the city that had killed him. Now she found herself seated next to this devastated mother, at the very mortuary where she had held Davey’s services, across a desk from the very mortuary staffer with whom she had planned his funeral. The mother began to lose her composure, so Jasmine escorted her outside, to take a break from the planning, and both of them sobbed. Jasmine herself asks, Was I being unprofessional? I don’t know. Seems to me that it was what the moment called for, and I would not be surprised to learn that that moment is what the mother remembers from among all the helpful things KWP and Jasmine did for her in those dark days. If she remembers anything, she remembers not being alone at that moment of despair. Perhaps the memory of that kindness helped her in her struggle to heal.
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