Daniel “Peace” Smith was dancing in a Raleigh nightclub when he accidentally spilled another man’s beer. Thirty minutes later, that man stabbed Peace to death in the club’s bathroom. Peace’s parents were notified of their son’s death in the early hours of a Friday morning. Before noon, his father, Andre says he had forgiven the man who murdered his son.
Andre is a practicing Buddhist, and was already teaching meditation and anger management to incarcerated men at Nash Correctional when he lost his son. Losing Peace, he said, makes him even more dedicated to his practice and his teaching.
Some people are still living their loss after seven years, twenty years—they still can’t let it go. What can you do? There is nothing I can do or say. People hear my story of forgiveness, but they don’t see how they could get there or even if they should get there. I thought my daughter would be angry at me for forgiving her brother’s killer but, after a time, she told her mom, I’m not mad at Dad. I am just angry at myself because I can’t get there. You do question yourself and ask, What is wrong with me? Is it because I do not love my son? It is not an easy path.
I lost my son. And not wanting the guy who killed my son to suffer, this is contentment for me. I feel content. I’m not trying to get my son back, I know that’s never going to happen. I’m not trying to seek revenge. I am content. And so therefore I am able to experience some happiness as a result of that.
Also, we’re all looking for closure, if this has ever happened to us. I don’t think you find closure in this person’s death. That’s not closure. Closure is when I feel happy, and when I’m not suffering. And the only way that I know of that I can feel happy and not suffer is to wish this guy no harm. And if possible, to serve him in some way. To help him to be able to never to do this again. To help him to be able to see, God, what I did was wrong. That’s what I want to do. That is what’s gonna make me happy. That is what’s going to make society happy. Because this person will never go out and kill again. Because this person understands what that is now. And this person has a new set of tools now that he can use, that he can apply to make sure that he never does that again.
And that is what we should ultimately want. We erroneously think that if we take this guy’s life, then I have closure, and society has closure. But it doesn’t stop the killing. Yeah, that guy won’t kill again because he’s dead, right? But there will be someone else.
If I can teach Wallace Bass, the man who killed my son, if I can teach him how to deal with his anger. How to do differently, how to become a better human being, then he will pass it on to someone else. And this is how we will begin to see a world without this kind of stuff.
It’s a slow process. But it is a process. And it is moving forward. And it does make a difference. Just taking someone’s life, it doesn’t make a difference, it doesn’t move us forward.
