The Morning After: Grieving & George Floyd
It is the morning after and I still feel the weight of it all. The weight I hoped would pass in the night as I slept, leaving my mind and freeing me to move about my day in freedom.
But I awoke with grief still lingering, not ready to leave but instead asking for more. More of my presence, my time, my mind. More of my energy, my tears and patience.
How do you process a murder you should have never seen? A murder that keeps occurring. This time it was a different man but the same old weapon. His knee was in his neck. The death wasn’t quick, it was slow, deliberate. Even defiant, as onlookers, with their camera phones turned on, recorded what was happening. But still he stayed steady, knee in the handcuffed man’s neck, hands in his pant pockets, face stoic. I watched a man die. And so did countless others. We witnessed a man we should have never known, die.
And now it’s morning. My tears from yesterday still visible in my swollen eyes. My children need me, I’m a mother of three ages four and under. They don’t know what happened. They can’t. Not yet. They wouldn’t understand. Their innocence still strong, I won’t ruin it. Even that is a luxury, though. The man, George is his name. He has a daughter. Her innocence was taken.
The kids are asking for things. And I am grieving. The kids are sharing their needs, as toddlers and babies do. And I am grieving. They are asking again over and over, “Mama. Mommy. Mommy!” their voices rising trying to capture my attention I so desperately want to give them but,
I’m grieving.
I snap back into reality as I snap in my response, tone harsher than I meant it to be, but merely my sadness making itself known. Finding its way out. It refuses to be caged, I cannot contain it.
I’m grieving.
It isn’t their fault. But I am only human. I watched a man die yesterday. For the same reason so many others, black people, have been dying for years. I watched the killer be protected by the four men around him. Assisting him with murder. The onlookers wanted him to stop, they tried to get him to stop, but they didn’t listen. They didn’t have to. They held the power. They wore the blue.
I value police officers. I am also afraid of them. Not all police officers have the same hatred. Not all police officers bleed racism. But some do. And I can’t tell you who does and who doesn’t. There’s no identifier, not until it’s too late, anyway. So, I’m afraid of the police. But I love the police.
My children needed me. And I snapped at their needs. Because the truth is, I can’t fulfill them. Not today. Mama can’t make breakfast the same today. Mama can’t smile the pain away. Mama can’t pull herself out of this, try as she might, because today, mama is grieving.
I’m grieving.
And I can’t help but think of the black mama’s before me. The brown mama’s too. The mama’s of so many different ethnicities who have known the deep pain of racism and terror. The mamas who are tired. What about the Japanese mamas who lived during the internment camps in the U.S.? Or the Indigenous mamas during massacres? Or the mamas enslaved, forced to birth their children in a world they knew would kill them? What about the mamas during Jim Crow? Or the civil rights movements? Did she just forget the daily troubles of war and life and kids going through puberty and work and food and humanity that demanded her attention? How did she carry that load?
I can barely hold mine.
Because I’m grieving.
