A decade later, grief is still fresh
Mother and daughter look for blessings as they live with the pain of loss
It was the floor that held her up.
Joyell Gibbs’ worst fear was confirmed when she saw her mother’s distraught face, her head shaking back and forth. In that moment, all the energy siphoned out of her own body, and Gibbs collapsed — fully conscious — to the emergency room floor.
“Who do we have to pay? How much do the doctors need to save him? What do we have to do?”
Gibbs asked these questions repeatedly as she lay there, inconsolable and disbelieving. Her baby brother was gone.
The one who drove her crazy, but who only she was allowed to mess with. The one whose radiant smile flashed wide from ear to ear. The one who never stopped loving her, hugging her, kissing her.
Her mom had gone into his room at Albany Medical Center Hospital to see him, saw the white tube sticking of his mouth. “Wake up,” she told her son. He didn’t answer.
If the two bullets had struck him just a fraction of inch to the side he could have been saved, the doctors told them. But there was nothing they could do. Richárd “Shaddi” Gibbs was gone, his life taken in 2011, when he was just one month away from turning 26.
For a decade, Joyell Gibbs and her mother, Roslyn Stevens, have held on to
each other as they’ve coped with a world without their Shaddi. The pair could have easily turned inward, sitting in the darkness of their grief in the aftermath of his killing in Albany’s South End. But that wouldn’t do his life justice. So they’ve turned their grief toward something positive, keeping Shaddi’s name and memory alive as they advocate against gun violence in the Capital Region.
Such advocacy is particularly crucial during a year like this one, when the level of gun violence in Albany is catching up to last year’s record 17 homicides at an alarming rate — already reaching nine homicides by the end of May — a trend being seen nationwide.
If they can touch just one person at any event, Gibbs and Stevens think, maybe Shaddi’s life wouldn’t be lost completely in vain.
So much potential
When the Gibbs family was dancing, everything was OK.
Whether at cookouts with loved ones or at home, Stevens — who works at a nursing home and was a single mom for much of her two children’s lives — and her kids loved to dance together. Dance, and wrestle.
The trio would spend hours watching wrestling and boxing matches on TV, turn it off and then practice among themselves. Stevens taught Shaddi defense — “block, block, block,” she would say, throwing her forearms up to protect her face from his practice uppercuts.
One time, she wasn’t quick enough, and the “blocks” turned into a “bam” — Shaddi accidentally popped her in the chin. She couldn’t even get mad, and still laughs at the memory.
Shaddi was a kid with so much potential. He was bright and charismatic, a social butterfly with the gift of gab. Everybody knew him, and still remembers him, stopping Gibbs and Stevens with recognition 10 years after his passing. He was adventurous and athletic, picking up any sport — biking, basketball, or baseball, his favorite — with ease. He was a family man and mama’s boy, he and his sister often fighting over their mom growing up. If he loved you, you knew — thanks to his constant affirmations, his hugs, his long arm draped around your shoulders.
But not everybody loved him: His first week at Albany High School, Shaddi got jumped.
He had just moved up to Albany from the Bronx with his mother, who was ready for a pace of life different from the city. But since Shaddi was the new kid on the block, people either wanted to be his friend or his foe. And trying to break into the tight-knit community of Albany, where everyone knew each other, proved to be a challenge. Shaddi just tried to figure out where he could fit in.
“I wish he was more of a leader and wanted to be, in his own way, because he had so many of the characteristics,” Gibbs said. “But I felt like once he moved here, you’re trying to see where you’re going to be accepted. And that was one of the greatest challenges he had.”
Eventually, Shaddi got pulled down the wrong path, one that’s all too common. He served time in prison.
His mother and sister insist he wasn’t a violent person. They say he pulled back from his old circle. He went to New York
City for a bit to get away from it all, worked odd jobs here and there and got his GED. He had a dream to open up a youth center. He had a newborn son and wanted to focus on being a father.
But seven months after Shaddi welcomed his son into the world, his own life was taken.
‘... this is real ‘
She doesn’t remember driving.
Gibbs remembers getting the call while sleeping in her Schenectady home at 1 a.m.: “Shaddi got shot.”
She remembers pacing back and forth in her bedroom, in a state of shock. She remembers seeing the Exit 24 sign. She remembers running into the emergency room at Albany Med. She remembers the look on her mom’s face when she got there. She remembers crumpling to the floor.
Shaddi had been driving near the corner of Fourth Avenue and Clinton Street. Surveillance footage Stevens saw showed four men come up to Shaddi’s car, two bright flashes of light, then the men running off. Shaddi’s car skidded down the street, striking a home before finally colliding with a light pole on South Pearl Street.
In the days after Shaddi’s death, everything felt dystopian and foreign to Gibbs — even her own body. Her mind kept drifting away. She couldn’t eat properly. She started putting together pictures for Shaddi’s funeral service and cycled through the emotions: shock, then anger, then confusion.
It didn’t help that in the immediate aftermath of his death, Gibbs and Stevens didn’t know why Shaddi was killed, whether he was the target.
On top of the family’s grief, they were constantly looking over their shoulder, wondering if they might get targeted by whoever had killed Shaddi. It wasn’t until his killer was sentenced to 15 years in prison two years after his death that their fear was slightly subdued.
When they first lost Shaddi, their house was full of community members offering their condolences and support. But eventually, there was no house full of people grieving with Gibbs and Stevens — it was just them, and the core people closest to Shaddi.
That’s when it hit.
“Now we have to realize this is real — he’s not here,” Gibbs said.
The temptation to turn to darkness pulled at Gibbs and Stevens. But they knew that wasn’t what Shaddi would want, and that wasn’t who they were.
So they chose to live, for Shaddi.
Grieving out loud
The Exit 24 sign is still a trigger.
The area where Shaddi was fatally shot on Nov. 29, 2011, is another trigger.
“To know that that’s where he took his last breath ...” Gibbs trailed off.
And the “Rest in Peace” Facebook statuses she sees for others.
“It’s triggering whether I knew the person or not, because I know their family,” Gibbs said. “Their lives are never going to be the same.”
With each new fatal shooting, Gibbs and Stevens start to sink as their anxiety spikes up. Yet another life senselessly taken. Yet another loss for the community to grieve.
And so while some people choose to grieve silently and privately, Gibbs and Stevens have chosen to grieve out loud.
Soon after losing Shaddi, the mother-daughter duo organized a march against violence in his honor. Each year, they mark the anniversary of Shaddi’s death with “Sport a Cap Day,” where they and their loved ones post pictures on social media wearing caps — one of Shaddi’s fashion staples — in his memory. They speak at various community events that aim to prevent and spread awareness about gun violence and its impact.
The speaking is an outlet for them, a way to unburden their grief and trauma. But it’s also an opportunity to make a difference. Gibbs, who works with people with developmental disabilities, identifies herself as a helper, a rescuer. Her mother is similar.
“Even though it’s so hard for me to speak, and painful, it’s rewarding for me,” Stevens said. “When I get youngsters to come to me, and tell me that my story meant something, or my story was going to change their lives. It feels like I did something, I made a change.”
They warn young men about the real and permanent consequences of gun violence, whether it’s death or prison. They ask community members to come forward with any information. But the real, long-term solution, Gibbs and Stevens believe, lies not in increased police presence, but addressing the root causes of gun violence by providing more resources and opportunities to communities suffering from systemic inequities.
Maybe, they hope, they can get somebody to put a gun down. Maybe they can prevent another parent or sibling from ending up in their shoes.
‘Left with a blessing’
“If you weren’t just like your daddy.”
Stevens says this to her now-10-year-old grandson almost every day. Even though he didn’t have the chance to grow up with his father, Mhy-shawn often gives his grandmother and aunt goosebumps because of how similar he is to his father: in the way he talks, the way he laughs, his sense of humor.
But also his strength. Mhyshawn excels in school and, having cerebral palsy, has become an advocate at his young age for creating more accessible playgrounds. Shaddi would be proud, Stevens and Gibbs remind him.
Stevens has reminders of her son all over her Schenectady home. There’s a photo of baby Mhy-shawn with his father, cut into a heart shape, pinned to the middle of his vanity mirror in his bedroom. More photos of Shaddi decorate her home: their last Thanksgiving together, when Mhy-shawn was born, at family cookouts. At the entrance to her home, Stevens has photos and memorabilia of her son on a stack of five shelves. In the middle of the top shelf is a glass lantern filled with his cellphone, wallet, watch — the belongings he had on him when he was killed.
On another shelf is a small statue of two elephants, one pulling the other up by the trunk onto its platform, where the words “Lift me up to higher ground” are engraved. The elephants symbolize Mhy-shawn and his grandmother.
Ten years after losing her little brother, Gibbs still feels robbed.
“I’m about to be 40 in September, I have two small chil
“
Even though it’s so hard for me to speak, and painful, it’s rewarding for me,” Stevens said. “When I get youngsters to come to me, and tell me that my story meant something, or my story was going to change their lives. It feels like I did something, I made a change.”
— Joyell Gibbs
dren; he has a son that he left behind who’s now 10 — he’s supposed to be here,” Gibbs said.
Dancing brings the family joy, a release. They know Shaddi would be happy to see them dancing together. But their coping mechanisms lie elsewhere, too.
Between Gibbs’ two
daughters and Mhyshawn, the women have also been able to find more purpose in their lives amid the abyss of grief. At first, raising Mhyshawn after losing her son was a challenge for Stevens. But she chooses to see the positive.
“I lost my son, but (Mhy-shawn) is the blessing,” she says. “I was left with a blessing. And you just embrace it for what it is.”
With Mhy-shawn, Shaddi’s loss feels a little less definite. A part of him lives on in his son.
This story was written at the suggestion of students from Green Tech High School in Albany as part of a collaboration with People’s Perception Project, which works with journalists and educators to represent and engage with the communities they serve.