On Your Knees, America.

By Susan Bergeron

You're hyperventillating. Happens when you're scared. Take it easy. Slow your breathing down." "Maybe I'm so afraid of...you know. I've dreaded the moment...when it might come for us...I can't breathe!" I was panting like a dog and began to break out in a cold sweat. Ron reassured me, sitting on the edge of the bed, that I was not having a heart attack. Visions of Coronavirus swirled in my head. 

Just before Memorial Day a mysterious illness that literally took my breath away had gripped me. I lay in my bed, hoping it would pass. I knew there might be risk in waiting to go to the hospital but I was trying to avoid a nightmare trip to the ER on a holiday weekend. Then, yet another wave of nausea came on so great that I slid onto my knees and arrived at the porcelain God like Mooky Betts stealing second. Once again I prayed. I returned to my bed and flopped down. At last I could breathe! Blessed relief washed over me. Ron kept reassuring me it must have been some kind of food poisoning. 

Trying to figure out the culprit, I sat and thought about everything I'd taken in the night before. Disgust was big on the list. Disgust had been brewing in my gut four long years. My mind and my body are bone weary from the sheer exhaustion of living through the Trump era. Soon, no one will be able to breathe if this one man wrecking ball remains in power. 

The next day Ron got sick but he had no breathing difficulty. Our doctor was away on vacation, so left to our own devices, we pawed through Mercke's Manual. Our best guess is that we got a bad case of listeria poisoning from contaminated dairy products. For ten days we lived on soup and crackers, fought over the bathroom and napped like a couple of old cats. 

Recuperating on my sofa I watched with horror as Officer Derek Chauvin choked the life out of George Floyd before my very eyes on TV. What was he saying---I can't breathe? I'd become recently aquainted with that horrible feeling. The fear of not being able to get air into my lungs was still all too fresh in my mind. I saw Mr. Floyd's terrified eyes turned toward the camera of the seventeen year old who was filming the murder. He seemed to be looking right at us. He was calling out for his mother now. I gasped. People often do that when they're dying.

The following week of unspeakable violence that raged across our American cities caused a new sadness to grow inside me. I wanted so badly to join the protesters but I knew my time for crushing my body against the fence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue had passed. At my age I would not be nimble enough to dodge the tear gas cannisters and brickbats. As I watch the throngs on TV every night I sit and await the inevitable: An explosion of new cases of Covid-19 may come back to all of our major cities, undoing the hard work of the spring lock-downs and safe distancing that mitigated the virus thus far. Despite all of that, I still feel pride in the bravery of the peaceful protesters who some call fearless in risking their very lives in what they see as their duty to call for an end to this dark evil.

I think Big George Floyd's death touched all of our hearts very deeply for many reasons. I had utterred his very words myself just days before three Minneapolis police officers squeezed the life out of him. But I was lucky. My breath was cut off by a temporary condition. I recovered. I can breathe now. I'm sucking in hope and have caught my proverbial second wind for the final battle. We're at the gates, America. Now is not the time to back away. Unfortunately, George did not get to recover. His breath was cut off by a long and pervasive sickness born of a seed planted in the soil and the very heart of this land 400 years ago. A sickness that was sown by greedy men, and the indifference to the suffering and the inhumanity towards a people who were stolen and dragged here against their will and made to toil upon this land for the entitlement and profit of others. 

The beautiful mural of George Floyd that faces the street where he died in Minneapolis says, "I Can Breathe Now" under his image. George's spirit breathes free when the cries of the people are finally heard and the killings and injustice end. It's time we purge this roiling sickness from our collective gut and get down to the hard work of healing this land which we are all meant to share and love, but a land which is broken and stained by the sins of our fathers. There is no longer a choice; if we don't do it now America will suffocate and perish.