Ramon Price, a funeral home counselor in Oakland, California, has worked every Thanksgiving and Christmas for the past 18 years to avoid questions from family about how he is coping with the loss of his two sons to gun violence. His 17-year-old son Lamont was killed in 2012, and his oldest son Ramon Jr was shot dead in 2021. Price says the holidays are especially painful for grieving parents, and that the trauma never fully heals.
Sparkle Davis has not celebrated Thanksgiving or Christmas with her family since her 19-year-old daughter Oshiana Thompkins was shot at a Halloween party in 2019 in Orinda, California. Davis says seeing holiday decorations reminds her of the murder, and she initially shut herself off from the world for six months after the killing. A vision of her daughter telling her she was okay helped Davis begin to recover.
In the past year, Davis and her family opened a community centre in Richmond, California, to provide a safe after-school space for children. She plans to attempt celebrating Christmas again this year, as her daughter loved the holiday. For Thanksgiving, Davis reunited with family for dinner at the centre for the first time in a year.
Brenda Grisham, another parent who lost a child to gun violence, used to spend Christmas and New Year's Eve at church with her family. The article notes that the end of the year is a particularly difficult time for those grieving firearm-related deaths, and that forming new traditions can help ease the trauma.
