There’s a kind of heartbreak that doesn’t come with rage.
It comes with confusion.
With this hollow, echoing sadness of how did it end like that?
This week I’ve been feeling the death of someone I’ve known for over a decade. Someone who’s been in my home. Someone I’ve hiked with. Someone who would send me show dates and music links long after I moved away. We knew each other. We shared space. We shared community.
And he is dead now.
Shot and killed by law enforcement this past Monday morning outside his home.
And when law enforcement arrived, they shot and killed him.
Those are the facts.
And I keep turning it over in my head because I can’t make sense of how the guy I knew ended up there.
To make that call,
He must have been so scared.
So unsafe in his own mind.
So certain that he didn’t have another move.
That’s what breaks my heart the most.
Not blame.
Not outrage.
Just this deep, heavy sadness that in that moment, calling the police felt like his only option.
And then for the officers to arrive and feel like ending his life was theirs.
Everyone in that situation believing they were out of choices.
It’s very normal in the culture we live in to rush to blame when something tragic happens.
We want a culprit. We want a sequence. We want to identify the exact moment it all went wrong.
Who escalated it. Who’s responsible. Who failed. Who should’ve known better.
And then the questions start circling.
Was it drug-induced? Was alcohol involved? Had he been suffering for a long time? Was this a gradual unraveling or a sudden break? Was this what people sometimes call suicide by cop? What could’ve been done differently? Couldn’t they see he was unarmed? Was shooting to kill the only option? What should’ve happened instead?
Our minds are desperate for something that makes it make sense.
But I don’t have those answers.
And I never will.
The one thing I do know — without any of that context, without any of those details — is that it’s tragic.
It’s tragic that a man called 911 because he felt unsafe.
It’s tragic that the response ended in his death.
It’s tragic that everyone involved believed they were doing what they had to do.
Even if every single person involved was acting in good faith, it’s still tragic.
There were so many other ways that could have gone. So many other options that could have been available long before that moment.
And I’m just so sad that it didn’t.
A couple of years ago I heard a prayer that landed right in my soul.
May you be aware of all your options.
That’s it.
And as soon as I heard it, I knew it would stick with me.
If there is a universal prayer that can only ever be of benefit to the person on the receiving end, it’s that one.
May you be aware of all your options.
Because awareness expands the frame.
Awareness interrupts panic.
Awareness creates space between impulse and action.
And from there, courage becomes possible.
The courage to make the right call — even when it’s the hard one.
There is nothing harmful about someone remembering they have options.
There is nothing dangerous about someone realizing they are not trapped.
That is a universally good thing.
To know there is more than one door.
To remember you can turn around.
To remember you can choose differently.
May you be aware of all your options.
Because sometimes your thoughts will lie to you.
Pain will lie to you.
Fear will lie to you.
They will shrink the entire world down to one narrow path and tell you that’s it. That’s the only way out.
And if you’re overwhelmed enough, scared enough, isolated enough, you’ll believe it.
But crisis doesn’t start with a 911 call.
It starts earlier.
In isolation.
In untreated trauma.
In exhaustion.
In shame.
In stress.
In whatever was building that none of us could see.
I keep thinking about how lonely it must feel to be afraid of yourself.
To fear that you might hurt someone.
To be so scared of your own thoughts that you call the police on yourself.
That is a desperate place.
Only someone who feels like there is literally no other option makes that call.
And that’s what’s heartbreaking.
Because the version of him I knew felt safe to be around.
He was kind.
He invited people in.
He built community.
He didn’t feel volatile.
He felt safe.
The kind of guy you wanted to be around.
And that’s why this is so hard to reconcile.
The way his life ended does not reflect the way he lived it.
Tragedy does not erase beauty.
He lived his days in alignment with his passion.
He believed in his music.
And he reached a lot of people doing it. Me included.
I work with clients all the time around grief.
But loss still hurts.
Being familiar with the process doesn’t make you immune.
It just means you know the waves when they hit.
His loss will be felt in so many places.
In the Oakland art scene, yes.
But also around family dinner tables.
He won’t play another song.
He won’t send another text about a show.
Kids won’t walk into his music class and see him there.
The community lost an artist and an advocate.
His family lost their son.
And it’s sad on so many levels to feel like someone was cut down in their prime.
He was 40 years old.
Forty.
That’s still so young.
May you always know you have options.
Every single day you are making choices.
What you feed.
What you grow.
Who you call.
Who you don’t call.
What you focus on.
What you avoid.
If something in your life isn’t working, you can choose differently.
If something feels like it’s coming off the rails, you can intervene before it becomes a five-alarm fire.
It’s okay to change your mind.
It’s okay to pivot.
Just because you started down one path does not mean you have to keep walking it.
Just because you’ve always done something one way does not mean you’re required to keep doing it that way.
You can stop choosing what you’re choosing.
You can choose something else.
I’ve had to reset my life more than once as an adult.
Completely.
New zip code. New direction. New relationships. Letting go of things I once thought were permanent.
Each time it was terrifying.
Each time it felt like everything was collapsing.
But somewhere inside of it, I knew I had a choice.
I could keep going the way I was going.
Or I could turn.
Turning was painful.
Starting over was humbling.
But it was an option.
No matter how dark it gets, you can always turn toward the light.
Always.
It might be a steep climb.
It might require therapy.
Sobriety.
Boundaries.
Community.
Apologies.
Radical honesty.
Starting over.
But it’s there.
And if you ever find yourself in a moment where violence toward yourself or someone else feels like a possibility — that is the moment to widen the frame immediately.
Pause.
Call someone.
Call 988.
Walk into an ER.
Text a friend and say, “I’m not okay.”
Do not let that thought fester into action.
There are options long before crisis becomes irreversible.
We need better ways to respond when someone is in that much pain — people and resources that can step in before it escalates.
We need a safer society where it’s easy to tell someone you’re struggling.
We need community that shows up before desperation sets in.
Because by the time someone believes there is only one move left, we have missed a lot of opportunities.
And I don’t say that with blame.
I say it with sadness.
Anthony’s final moments do not define his entire life.
A life is bigger than its worst hour.
What he built still exists.
The music.
The rooms he filled.
The community he cultivated.
The passion he lived in.
That ripple doesn’t disappear.
I’m still learning from him.
He filled his days with what he loved and made the world a better place by doing it.
We could all take a little something away from that.
-Sunny
