This week in the Bronx, a family stood under candlelight and spoke words no parent should ever have to say.
“My son was a good boy.”
Christopher “CJ” Redding was 16 years old — a high school football player, a teenager with plans still unfolding — when he was shot and killed after a dispute between other young people escalated into gunfire.
He wasn’t the target.
He was trying to run away.
And if you’re a parent, or an aunt, or a mentor, that detail stays with you. It also stays with anyone who has ever loved a young person in this city.
Because it reminds us how thin the line can be between ordinary life and irreversible loss.
His father shared something that stopped many of us in our tracks. He said, “Me and him finally had our last one-on-one basketball game.”
And it made me think about how grief works. It reaches back. It takes one ordinary moment and turns it sacred.
The last ride.
The last laugh.
The last game.
Moments we never knew were last when we were living them.
Stories like CJ’s travel quickly across boroughs. Every urban community understands proximity. This means our children don’t have to be involved in violence to be touched by it. They only have to be nearby.
And that truth sits heavily with families from the Bronx to Harlem and beyond.
At the vigil, CJ’s parents spoke not only about justice for their son. They also addressed a larger frustration. There is a sense that systems, communities, and even other adults have allowed youth violence to grow too easily.
It was grief speaking.
But it was also fear.
Because when teenagers have access to weapons and conflicts escalate faster than maturity can manage, parents everywhere feel the vulnerability.
This morning, we hold CJ’s family in our thoughts. There’s also an invitation here — to notice the ordinary moments with the young people in our lives.
The rides.
The games.
The conversations we almost rush past.
Because none of us ever knows which moment will become memory.
Maybe the most powerful response to losses like this is demanding safer communities. This action is essential. We should also lean more intentionally into presence while we still have time.
Because every child deserves a future longer than a headline.
To support the family: https://gofund.me/c91019362
By Jarvus Ricardo Hester
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