BALTIMORE — Baltimore Ceasefire 365 is partnering with the Baltimore Tree Trust to plant trees in honor of people shot and killed in the city.
The organizations will start off by planting trees for seven people.
Free Palmese, whose son was shot and killed four years ago, said memorials like this can help her heal.
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Palmese is continuing her son Aaron’s legacy by making sure his dream stays alive.
She took over his clothing line “Worse than the Wire” in his honor.
“I’ve just been on a mission to make sure I leave a legacy in his name,” she said.
Aaron Palmese was shot and killed in May of 2018 in Baltimore's Pigtown neighborhood.
“My days are consumed with nothing but thoughts of my murdered son and I have to show up everyday for three children that are still alive so I’ve mourned my son so much and worked so hard to make sure the world knows him,” Palmese said.
Palmese will now be one of seven people to get an opportunity to remember him in a unique way by planting a tree in his honor.
“It’s symbolic but it’s so much more because we are going to care for it nurture it, these seeds and watch it grow and now my granddaughter, she can’t see her father but she can sit under that tree and talk to him,” Palmese said.
The trees will be planted at Druid Hill Park on Saturday
Baltimore Ceasefire is partnering with the Baltimore Tree Trust to help give people who lost someone to gun violence a space to heal.
“We’re going to be able to put our loved ones ashes in the ground of the tree if we want to,” said Erricka Bridgeford, founder of Baltimore Ceasefire 365.
Bridgeford also lost her brother David “Cornbread” Thomas to gun violence.
She will have a tree planted for him too.
“This is a manifestation we didn’t lose our people in vain because it is literally going to bring forth life in this and out more oxygen in the air,” she said.
For Palmese, she hopes the tree will help ease the pain she’s been dealing for the past four years.
“This is bigger because now when I’m lost and I sit in front of that house he, I don’t have to do that, I can go to the park and I can sit under that tree,” she said. And I can have the same conversations that I had with him everyday."
The tree ceremony will be held at Druid Hill Park from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information on Ceasefire 365 visit its website here.
