Grief, anger and the hope for a better future marked President Joe Biden’s speech at the Delavan Grider Community Center, three days after a shooting at a Jefferson Avenue supermarket left 10 people dead and three wounded.
Those same emotions continue to be felt by those who lost family members that day.
Wayne Jones is the son of Celestine Chaney and met with the president and First Lady Jill Biden Tuesday.
“It helped, but I’d rather have my mom back,” he said of the meeting. “His words of encouragement were beautiful, but nothing is going to take the place of my mom. I’m an only child. I have no siblings. All I have is her.”
With pain written on his face, Jones continued.
“We're hurting. You never imagined that this will happen to you,” he said. “I see shootings on the news all the time and ‘aw, that’s sad’ and then it really happened to me. After all of what bells and whistles are gone, we still have to deal with this.”
Still in shock over the loss of his mother and the global news coverage, Jones said the grieving process really hasn’t started yet.
“That’s when the process happens — after,” he said. “That’s when the hurt happens. When everybody’s gone and you’re sitting in your room by yourself and I’m looking at my phone and she don’t call me to take her shopping. She don’t just call, she don’t even call me by my middle name. When she call me, ‘Hey Darnell, what are you doing?’ I’m gonna miss those calls.”
Chaney’s granddaughter Kayla Jones met the president and felt encouraged by his words.
“I felt like it was real and genuine,” she said. “So I definitely appreciate that and just for shedding light on the situation.”
But can Biden’s speech help bring the country together and moving towards a more racially harmonious society?
Chaney’s other granddaughter Charon Reed does not want her grandmother’s death to be in vain.
“I hate that we had to lose our grandmother to get this message across,” she said of the response to the racist attack. “But to see how she's impacting along with the other nine victims that did not deserve — to see their impact in the world, I know she's okay.”
Kayla Jones wanted to see stronger gun laws put into place moving forward.
“We're tired of burying loved ones to gun violence, whether they’re older or younger, because we’ve buried our friends as well,” she said. “It's just getting out of control. We can't — I can't take it. It's too much and it's super draining. It's super draining and it's scary.”
Chaney’s sister-in-law, Dee Davis, said through the pain of losing a loved one, there is hope that change is coming, sooner or later.
“They done messed with Buffalo, New York,” she said. “We Buffalo strong and we the city of good neighbors. I guarantee you something's gonna change. Something's got to change.”
