The Chiefs had just over 24 hours from the time Belcher had shown up to talk to his head coach and GM before shooting himself to having to play Sunday afternoon. How they managed to focus on preparing for the game I'll never know, but not only did they play the game, they also won. But what was particularly noteworthy was after the game, quarterback Brady Quinn had some really excellent thoughts on his teammate. Quinn's words are far stronger than anything I could have ever thought of:.
I've been guilty of some of the things Quinn talked about. My phone is attached to me at all times, so much so that it's been more of a distraction than anything else. I've never done something so blatant as text someone while holding a conversation face to face with someone else, but Facebook has been a vice of sorts for me for a long time now. I've seen many posts on there with something as simple as, "UGH," and most times I don't do anything about it. More often than not posts like that are meant to be attention-getters, so rarely are they truly indicative of anything. In fact, lots of times when I've seen those posts there are very generic comments of encouragement with stuff like, "Keep your chin up!" or "You'll get through this!"
But every so often, there is a post I come across where someone is truly going through something awful. A loved one could have suddenly passed away, they lost a job, a bad break-up, or some other kind of tragedy happened. In cases like those, I do try to reach out and offer my ear and any kind of advice I can. I can say from personal experience that something as simple as a telephone call, text message or an IM can go a long way to making a person feel better, knowing there's someone out there who truly cares about them.
I like to think I'm good at picking up on when one of my friends is really hurting about something. There have been a bunch of times when I got an IM from a friend, and all they said was, "Hey how are you?" Knowing how a lot of my friends normally talk over IM, I've responded with something like, "I'm good - what's wrong?" On more than one occasion I caught a friend off guard by asking that, and more often than not my instinct was right. In fact, people have even asked me, "How in the world did you figure out something was wrong just by me saying hello?"
I don't know what kinds of demons Jovan Belcher was fighting, but he allegedly shot his girlfriend 9 times before he killed himself. If that were true, he clearly had some kind of rage built up against her for some reason, and we may never know what the source of that rage was. The natural human reaction is to ask whether this tragedy could have been prevented, which is what Quinn talked about in his video. I don't know if even the most intuitive person could have picked up on the battles Belcher was fighting, but Quinn's words are very honest and accurate in today's society of social networking. We're all involved in each other's personal lives as the result of Facebook and Twitter, but we also don't want to get too caught up in each other's business for the most part.
What's lost in this entire tragedy is that there's a 3-month old girl who will grow up without either of her parents to raise her. From what I've read thus far, other relatives have been caring for her the last couple days, and the Chiefs will also provide financial support for her long term (which is a very generous offer and the right thing to do, in my opinion). I doubt she'll know the truth about her parents until she's well into her teenage years, but I pray she will grow up in the kind of loving household that every child deserves.
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