Georgia — On My Mind and in my Heart
As I watch the wave of pardons flooding out of Washington D.C., I wish I could forgive myself for putting off this personal recount of experiences in the recent U.S. election and current Georgia Senate runoffs.
Eight weeks ago, I’m making calls to get out the vote in North Carolina. To my surprise, I reach a medical trauma specialist on assignment at a hospital in Georgia. She tells me, “you don’t know what’s happening here. People dying, not enough beds. All these people with “Covid lungs.” As this call ends, my cell phone plays a celestial ringtone with an incoming call. It’s a family member, now in his 80’s who emigrated from Russia a few decades ago. His adult children and grandchildren live down south in Georgia. What a coincidence.
So, as I’ve been asking others in the family, I inquire about who he’s voting for in Pennsylvania and where the votes are going to in Georgia. “Trump,” he says in heavily Russian-accented English. “America needs strong man.” My heart sinks. I realize I’ve got to work harder to defeat the man who tried to play down the pandemic. And unseat his enablers.
On to the Georgia runoffs. I tell the “Trail of Tears” story of death in my own family linked to Georgia’s painful past. I pen postcards to young people in Georgia, to remind them: “When we vote, we win.” And in between fruitful conversations as a volunteer with NextGen America, I listen to lots of hang-ups on my computer-assisted dialer.
Meanwhile, as a family therapist, I’m hearing stories of my clients dealing with Covid in the second wave. Some are careful and safe. Some are giving it to family members. Listening to all this, I feel like I will go crazy. So many make emotional decisions that could place their lives at risk.
Someone in my community of healing practitioners goes into the hospital and the updates begin streaming in daily. I pray for him. And check Facebook daily. He’s on a ventilator. I don’t have a good feeling about this.
Meanwhile my wife and I haven’t seen one of our adult kids in months. What to do? Should we let her come home for the holidays? We’re seniors. We’re scared. We do a tele-health visit with our doctor to discuss our options. The bill arrives in the mail. No coverage by Medicare unless there’s a diagnosis. I call my Congressman and a staff person tells it straight. “Those tele-health visits aren’t covered by Medicare. Not included in the Covid relief bill passed by Congress.” I think of the people who couldn’t pay that medical bill, who would forego medical advice because they just couldn’t afford to get it. People will die because of this.
And then, my wife looks at me from across the room. She’s on Facebook. Our colleague. He’s Dead. She says, “he wasn’t really going anywhere before he caught it. Only for groceries.”
Another reminder from the graveyards of 2020.
So, I ask you now. What kind of people do we need to elect to save American lives? We need new faces in Georgia and the U.S. Senate. We can begin a new chapter, donating and volunteering so that we elect Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock on January 5th. I can see it. As clear as the new year coming.
The trail of tears can yet yield tears of joy.
