3 minute read
Life After
Listen Up
BY CHERIE BUCKNER-WEBB
Over the last two years, I have been communicating with my elders almost daily. I’m speaking of those who have passed on. I say communicating “with” because their stories, their legacies, strength, and faith sustain me in these times of crisis. When I feel uncertain or fearful, I hear my grandmother, Pearl Johnson, humming as she tended her garden, stoked three wood stoves, canned lush fruits and vegetables, washed linens (with soap, bluing, starch, and bleach), and ironed them to pristine for the boarders she took in. Grandmother Pearl worked, but never complained. She insisted on making things special for the “colored soldiers” stationed at Gowen Field. She was proud of them for serving and deeply aware of what they had gone through to do so.
I learned powerful lessons from my grandparents. The Johnsons and the Buckners intentionally moved to Boise from Arkansas and Oklahoma. As a teen, I just didn’t get it–there were next to no Black folks in Idaho. I was confused. Leaving family, friends, and culture–for Idaho? Years later, I learned that one of America’s forgotten mass lynchings occurred in Arkansas, not far from the family homes. The Johnsons joined many in making preparations. They prayed and invoked scripture: “We must work, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.” (King James Version) And work they did.
As an adult, I understood the yearning to escape the persecution of the Jim Crow South. The hunger for self-determination and opportunity to exercise free will is powerful. A lifetime of living as “less than,” under the control of another, being denied personhood– this experience robs you of your humanity. Today, when I hear of the oppression and violence against the Ukrainians, I think back to my family’s stories. I envision mothers and fathers, children–human beings–stifled and killed by those who value money, power, and status. It’s personal for me. And whether you’ve noticed or not–war, COVID, political nastiness, climate change, discriminatory laws–are personal for all of us.
And so, I’ve been talking to my elders and feeling their responses. “Get up, girl, and get busy! Lift your voice! Take action!” In other words, there is much to be done for when this crisis passes–there will assuredly be another and another and life after goes on.
