When I saw my son’s lifeless body, a breathing tube hanging from his mouth, I wanted to run to him and embrace him.
Before I could move, a police officer stopped me. “You can’t touch him,” he said. “I’m so sorry, but he is a piece of evidence.”
I begged him to let me hug my son for the last time. What more could they find from that embrace than the fingerprints of his mother? How, I wondered, could that contaminate their investigation? But the laws of our cruel and unjust system for processing violent death and dealing with its aftermath denied me the right to hold him one last time.
I could only shout from afar, “Son! I’m here. Let’s go home!”
To the system, my son was a statistic. To me, he is my son. His name is Zadkiel. Fernando Zadkiel Vega-Diaz.
I used to tell Zadkiel that he was my teacher, that I was learning how to be a better mother and a braver person every day because of him.
Now, after Zadkiel’s death, I am learning how painful the justice system can be for survivors. I learned that there were no support groups in my neighborhood. And I learned that the pain of losing Zadkiel is going to be there forever.
Now, I’m learning to live with pain and love at the same time. The memories of Zadkiel’s bravery and his sense of justice continue to show me how I can use this hurt to make things better. Because of Zadkiel, I am learning thanatology — the study of grief and death — to help make the process of loss and navigating the justice system easier for everyone else who has the misfortune to become enmeshed in it.
I’m trying to understand the loss we’re all going through. Seeing the ways the justice system can reinjure survivors has inspired me to push for changes in how police and the courts interact with us. It feels like they just want to close the case and be done with it. But every time we sit in the courtroom – facing our loved one’s killers, hearing them called “the defendant,” hearing the worst days of our lives referred to as “the incident” — the memories come flooding back.
‘That can’t be true’
The day he was killed, my son went to a job interview downtown. He wanted to save money to buy a car.
I sent him off, saying: “I’m so proud of you. I love you.” I felt like I should have turned back and hugged him, but I was running late.
At 9:10 p.m. he sent me a message saying he was on his way to the bus stop. I messaged him back, “Please be careful.”
Ten minutes later, I got a call from his cell. My heart beat fast. I heard yelling, crying, sirens. I yelled “Zadkiel? Zadkiel?” The call dropped.
Finally I got a call back. “Are you the mother of Fernando?”
They told me he had been shot in the chest and the ambulance was taking him to the hospital. They didn’t know whether he was alive. At the hospital, no one gave us any information for 40 minutes. Then someone told us that Zadkiel didn’t make it there alive.
“No,” I said. “That can’t be true.”
The detectives said he was at the bus stop alone when a car approached and someone started arguing with him. From a street video, they said my son had his arms up and was nodding his head. The person took out a gun and shot him. Zadkiel ran for a block before he stopped and fell.
A woman there called the ambulance, and held his hand until the end. Maybe God put her there so my son wouldn’t die alone. I thank her with all my heart.
My son died on October 6, and they didn’t let me touch him. Later, when I went to the morgue, they only showed me pictures. I didn’t see him or touch him until October 16 in the funeral home. I did not have the opportunity to say goodbye to my son for 10 days because he was “a piece of evidence.”
Fernando Zadkiel Vega-Diaz, human
If there is one thing I could change, it’d be to make sure that moms can say goodbye to their children after a homicide. If we can’t be with them when they die, we should be able to touch our children, hug them, say goodbye, not just identify their bodies.
I want the system to see more than the body. I want everyone involved to see the person, the human, my son – Fernando Zadkiel Vega-Diaz. He was kind. Every time we got into an argument, he brought me flowers.
He took care of others. When Zadkiel got his first paycheck, he took the whole family to our favorite restaurant and he paid for everything.
He was brave. In second grade, he saw a bigger kid bullying a kindergartner. Zadkiel told him to stop, then pushed him away. His bravery always inspired me.
Sometimes when I don’t want to get up to go to work, I look at his room, and I do it for him. Everything I did was for him. So now that he’s not here, I asked myself, “What am I gonna do?”
After six painful months, I started a group for mothers like me, who are living with loss and navigating our often cold, unfeeling legal system. It was hard to find the words. The only thing we all agreed on: This is hell.
But it’s a hell we’re in together. We have a WhatsApp chat, so we can be in communication every day, and we have a code. Sometimes we don’t want to talk; we just want to cry. So we send a flower emoji, and we all know that whoever sent it needs us. The first one who can calls them and listens.
The wounds that open
This September was the first time I saw the person who killed my son. Being there as Zadkiel’s mom, in front of his killer, in front of the evidence, opens the wound again and again.
I didn’t feel any hate for him, but I felt hate and envy for his mom, even though I know it’s not her fault. I envy her because she still has her son. Even if he’s in jail, she can visit him every Sunday. On Sundays, I visit my son at the cemetery.
But there’s no support for such complicated feelings in the justice system. It can feel devoid of humanity. From identifying a loved one’s body to the legal process, it all feels harmful and cold.
I often think about the woman who held Zadkiel’s hand while he was dying. She risked her own life to be with someone she didn’t even know because she saw a person in need. I never got to thank her, but I know that we need more people like her to reinfuse humanity into the justice system’s “evidence” and “incidents” and case numbers. We need support and understanding like that when we see our loved ones at the medical examiner’s office. We need it when we must face our loved one’s killer.
