I want to step away from the political viewpoints of the major event from last week. I am not asking my Liberal Chalkheads or my Conservative Chalkheads to stand on a soapbox here.
Out of everything that happened, one thing stood out at me. A father turned his son in to authorities.
Let’s take Matt Robinson’s perspective.
I am a father.
That word once meant ballgames, scraped knees, fixing bikes, and waiting in the car after football practice, but now it means something I never imagined. It means looking at a grainy photo on the news, recognizing my own son’s face, and hearing him admit, with his head down, that yes, it is him. It means standing in a kitchen where the silence feels like a casket and realizing the boy I raised is now the man who took another man’s life.
I did what I had to do, but don’t think for a second it was easy. The world will say I chose courage over blood, and maybe that is true, but they don’t know how deep it cuts to hand your son over to the very people who will cage him, maybe even kill him. My duty as a father didn’t stop when I saw those photos, it widened. It became more about truth, about justice, about making sure more fathers didn’t get that midnight knock on the door.
Every parent prays their child won’t be the headline, won’t be the mugshot, won’t fall into the pit. We hope for the best and fear the worst, and one day the worst knocked on my door. I could have looked away, made excuses, clung to the belief that my boy was still good inside, but belief is not blindness.
I had to face what was in front of me and in that moment, I asked myself what God would have me do. What my faith teaches about truth and responsibility. Faith without work is dead. It wasn’t enough to pray in silence. I called in a pastor and leaned on my faith.
Because fatherhood isn’t only about protecting your own. It's about protecting everyone else as well.
Of course there were signs. A shadow here, a silence there, a drift into corners of anger that I didn’t fully understand.
Did I miss them?
Did I ignore them?
I’ll carry those questions forever.
Every father wonders if he should have listened harder, asked again, pushed more, fought more. For me it is too late to change that story, but maybe not for another dad out there. Now I live in the aftermath. I didn’t bury my son in a grave, but I buried him in another way...
...behind walls, behind chains, behind a justice system that will not give him back.
Parents who bury their children grieve with flowers on the grass. I will now grieve every morning with the knowledge that my son is alive but lost to me forever. Prison is another kind of coffin and I am the one who closed the lid.
So, what will my legacy be?
Some will say I did the right thing, that I was a “father of justice,” but what will my son say? What will he carry, knowing it was his own father who handed him over? I don’t know.
All I know is I could not let him run from the law, from the truth, from himself. They say the hardest thing a parent can do is bury their child, and maybe that is true, but I have done something just as impossible. I have buried my son alive into the cold earth of the state, knowing he may never come out. There is no prayer strong enough to soften that blow, no word that can carry the weight. There is only the hope that one day, because of what I did, another father will never have to face this choice.
That is it Chalkheads! I didn't look at this from a political viewpoint, but by a perspective that I could relate to... Fatherhood.
Let's shake away from today's lesson in life and reach for some gusto. It is Sunday Funday and we have some gridiron going on.
Grabber section tells you how much time you have to pick out a trick or treat costume. It also gives you the timeline to prepare for the turkey dinner debates.
Go out there today and measure how long your shadow is getting as Chicagoland sunsets are creeping for the last couple nights after seven o'clock!
