Last year, March brought madness and pain, but I will use love to move forward.
On my 25th birthday, I held my first official birthday party. There were invitations, streamers, balloons, music and dancing. There were appetizers, candles and cake. My shared apartment was filled with laughter that overflowed into the backyard. Folks came from out of town to celebrate. I fell in love with my birthday, with March. Each year following that celebration, I tried to recapture and carry similar energy forward. The entire month of March became a clarion call to celebrate life with vigor, intention, and love. I expected to carry that flow into last March. But as it approached, there were signs it would be no ordinary birth month.
By March 6, 2020 COVID-19 was confirmed to be inside the United States. On March 7, under Governor Beshear’s first round of restrictions in Kentucky, a small number of friends and I hesitantly gathered inside a restaurant. It was the last time I was in a group publicly without a mask. The next day I went for a hike, but I couldn’t shake the confusion, anxiety, and terror over the threat that a deadly virus could find its way into my personal sphere at any moment. I had no idea it was just the beginning nor that Black people, Indigenous people, and other People of Color would be prime targets.
I had no idea that COVID-19 was going to find its lifeline inside the chasm of racial inequities in this nation. I didn’t know a pandemic would be politicized and that suggested protections and mandates to fight it would lead to calls for lynching and attempted overthrows of government. I just didn’t suspect that would be the case. I denied the reality of my own experience. I forgot I knew how institutions bolster and strengthen themselves upon foundations of racial and class disparities. A part of me feels like I should have trusted what I knew, like there shouldn’t have been any surprises. Yet, I was shocked. I was dismayed. I was scared. I felt all of it not knowing it was only the beginning of greater terrors to come.
On February 23, 2020, a 25-year-old Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, had been chased down and shot to death by two white men in a pick-up truck while he was jogging in Brunswick, Ga. It was 13 days before my March birthday and I didn’t know anything about Ahmaud. I didn’t know because his killing was not reported. News and arrests only came in early May, after a horrifying video surfaced.
My heart still races whenever I think about the horror of what March 13, 2020 brought upon 26-year-old, Breonna Taylor and her family. Killing stormed through her door masqueraded as law and order. Her Black woman body was riddled as bullets rained into her apartment. Her life was stolen without even a whisper of how or why such a deadly attack occurred. I didn’t know I would only hear about Breonna, a sister Kentuckian, in the aftermath of seeing video footage of 46-year-old George Floyd’s Black body pinned face down on the pavement with a policeman’s knee in his neck. I only learned about Breonna after I heard George plead for air, cry out for his mother, and watched the light in his eyes disappear. Perhaps, strangely, I take solace having never seen a video of Breonna Taylor’s last moments. I am heartened that her city of Louisville activated without the re-traumatizing images. They knew and understood what I pray we will all come to know and understand; that whether or not there are excruciating images to replay, Breonna’s life mattered. They knew and still know that the only way to value human life is to value a human life that has been devalued.
My birthday has now come and gone. I am a year older and while I have tried to infuse all that comes with my love of March, it has been difficult. COVID-19 is still here and still political. And while it is good that vaccinations are taking place, people who look like me are not a priority in fighting this disease. Admittedly, I was able to access my first round of the vaccine a few days ago. But let me also say as grateful as I am, I was 1 of only 2 other Black people in a space that vaccinates 270 people per hour.
Let me also clearly say Breonna Taylor and George Floyd have not been the last unarmed Black people to be killed by law enforcement since March and May of 2020. Others’ lives have been taken. Many more of us will continue to move through 2021 knowing it could still just as easily be one of us or worse, someone we love, who is next.
I have been blessed to usher in the month of March 49 times. I am not assured a 50th time, but what I rely on to get me through is that I can still be shocked in the face of horror and still find the capacity to love as the only solution forward.
Western Kentucky native, LeTonia Jones is a social justice entrepreneur and writer in search of deeper truths about love and what is required to live fully human and be at peace.