Bobby.
Goddammit, Bobby.
I wasn't even 5 when he was murdered. Even if you weren't alive yet when he died, when we lost him, you feel his absense. You may not know it or have words for it, but you feel the Bobby-shaped hole in our public square. Martin was a robbery; they took from us the voice that explained so gorgeously and etherally how we, as The People, can matter in a democracy. But Bobby's death wasn't a robbery; it was a cold, violent detour away from what could have been.
That's the phrase that will always haunt. What could have been. Even if, like all martyrs, he is changed in our hearts by the missing of him from what he was in flesh and in hustings. There is that weight in us, in what we needed him to be, perhaps what we need to be in ourselves, and the gravitation of that shadow of knowing: it won't ever be perfect.
But we miss him, in places we can't give name to sometimes, we who need to miss him, we who need to believe in someone who drew the line and let no hesitation for what is convenient or hard stop him from standing for what is right. We miss him in places that hurt for those among us who have always been forgotten and thought of as less. Bobby, for his life of pain and grit, never thought of anyone as less. We miss him for the imperfections in ourselves that need that crowd stirring "vigah" and that heart-felt, soul-deep toothy grin that beamed out bring on the fight; I know where right stands. We miss him for his arrogant challenges, like David with a slingshot, against the mighty and the corrupt.
Goddammit, Bobby. Why? Why is it you still?
I know what you'd say. Why not? Why wait for the dead? Why not do it yourselves? Roll up your sleeves. Sweep the mess where you're at.
Goddammit, Bobby. I miss you anyway.
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