RIP Dwayne Haskins and Thoughts on Mortality

     A soon to be 25 year-old NFL football player dies on a freeway in Florida during the off season. He is young, talented, physically gifted, and Black.

    Rest in Peace, sir. May your family, friends, and colleagues be comforted during the shock and wake of your sudden departure.

    He broke some records with Ohio State in 2018. I watched him play live that year, especially when my Indiana Hoosiers tried to stop his team. Indiana had become better that year, but enough to stop him or them. He was part of a powerful athletic system in Columbus, Ohio.

    Haskins had potential to make it in the most well paid American football league in the world. He had a big or promising future ahead of him, but no more. Football or no, I think he was going to do well. He should have made enough money by now to be set up for life.

    Alas.

    Youth die tragically in many different circumstances. Disease and accidents occur. Not to the same degree as the aged, but it seems too often. To some populations and demographics more than others.

    In poorer countries it can be starvation and malnutrition. Many of these countries, such as most of Africa, have cultures where many children are born in high rates. Higher rates than more economically prosperous countries and cultures. These youth are more prone to die at earlier ages.

    In the United States we see young people die from illness less than in developing nations, per capita, but we have problems with gangs, guns, and vehicle mishaps.

    Suicide, too, has its place among our youth.

    My closest brushes with mortality as a youth involved vehicles, usually. A near mishap with a bus on 3rd Street gives me pause. I was 12 or 13. Cars and trucks pass us all the time, most times we cannot control how they may behave.

    I consider myself lucky and blessed, as most of us seem to survive the speeds and dangers of motor vehicles. We use them and travel around them everyday.

We pray for safety and grace.

__________________

    Some call me privileged by my race being white, instead of Black or brown. Statistically, it is less probable for me to be threatened by heightened rates of mortality as a youth and later in life because I have not been exposed to the dangers that U.S minorities face in greater numbers: poverty, illegal drug trades and gang violence, and even the threat of law enforcement due to accused racist policies and practices, that directly have affected famous cases like Amir Locke and George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Travon Martin.

All dead based on their race, as most Americans believe.

Side note: I am not sure Floyd would not have died had he been white, but we will never know. Chavin himself may not know the answer to questions about his racial actions, if in fact true. Derek Chauvin. The terrible face of police, but not the only one, to include the practices like no-knock arrests that many people decry, especially based in racial divides.

Anyway, statistics are what they are: African-American men are more likely to play in the NFL and professional sports than whites, Hispanics, Asians, and other ethnic backgrounds. 

We lament seeing a gifted athlete, a young man or woman, die prematurely.

God bless his family and all of us.

We pray that at the end of the day it is not gender, race, or athletic ability or success that determines how we fare in life. Or death.

May we all stay safe and drive on, and drive with the grace of fortune and good health.

If anything, I hope a celebrity case of a tragic death as happened yesterday (Saturday 9 April 2022) of Mr. Haskins reminds and educates more of us how to not to fall into the same outcomes of risky and fatal results.

Be careful, and make healthy choices.

Everywhere, at every age.