An Ode to Breonna Taylor

June 5, 2022

I never met Breonna Taylor, but I cried over her multiple times after hearing about her death, including on her birthday the first two years.

Breonna was killed on March 13, 2020, when she was only 26 years old. She would have celebrated her birthday a few months later on June 5. Today, as I write this, another one of her birthdays passes; this year she would be 29.

As the years pass, it seems that I feel less inclined to cry. I am hoping that this is just the way grief works, and not because I'm beginning to forget about her. I never want to forget about her, either personally or as a society. Her death, as well as the way she was treated after her death, is one of our country's biggest failures and should always be held up as an example of why something needs to be done about our rampant police brutality issue.

But more than that, her life, and who she was as a person, should also be remembered; not just her death and the calls for justice.

For me personally, the reason I feel so connected to Breonna despite having never met her is because of our shared career. She was an EMT and a emergency room technician, like myself. Although we were certainly very different people in other aspects of our personalities and interests, merely having that one thing in common makes me feel a kinship to her.

Although her murder had nothing to do with her profession, it still makes me think "This could have just as easily happened to me or any of my coworkers." Of course, if it had happened to me, a white girl, it's unlikely there would have been so much gross injustice surrounding the whole situation.

Her career doesn't necessarily make her less deserving of this terrible end than somebody else -- nobody would have deserved it -- but it does make you wonder why her entire city didn't rally around other first responders in outrage, why the entire EMS community wasn't up in arms about it, why she wasn't called a hero, etc. To me, it's proof that you can do everything "right" and still, because of the color of your skin or some other superficial reason, not be respected. Imagine if it had been a cop, especially a white cop, and the people who broke in and shot them had been Black civilians. Regardless of if their death had been in the line of duty or not, the outpouring of support for cops in general would have been monumental, and the perpetrators would have been painted very differently.

But when the murderers are cops and the victim a Black woman who'd made a career out of helping those in her community...

Anyway.

Two years ago I wrote a short paragraph to Breonna on her birthday. I wrote that, despite not knowing each other, we were sisters by our profession and our humanity. I talked about the fact that I was a little bit older than her, and how I was reflecting on my own 27th birthday. It broke my heart to know that she would never get to see the age I was then, or am now. As the years go by, I continue to get older, but Breonna was robbed of that opportunity. She'll never even get to experience turning 30, as I've been afforded the privilege of doing. Breonna deserved that just as much as I do.

Maybe there's a bit of survivors' guilt on my part. I compare the two of us and wonder why it was her and not me. And because she was failed so pathetically by her country, by extension -- even though I was thousands of miles away and completely uninvolved in the situation -- I feel like I failed her as well.

Now imagine being Black and seeing this happen repeatedly to people who look like you. If I feel this deep connection to Breonna based solely on the fact that we were both EMT's and held the same job, people who share her skin color -- and have been repeatedly traumatized by watching people be murdered for that skin color -- must experience this feeling every single time.

Breonna is more personal to me, but of course I hate seeing and hearing about any of these murders or shootings. George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Jacob Black, and the list keeps growing and growing, and every time I hear about it I feel sick to my stomach. But to Black people, and possibly other racial minorities who've experienced a similar level of trauma, every single one of them is personal. While I've begun to feel a posthumous connection to one of the victims more than the others, they must feel that level of connection to all of the victims -- plus the constant fear that they could be next -- and I can't imagine how traumatizing that must be.

I will never get to meet or get to know Breonna now. Although her name is now known around the world, it's for all the wrong reasons. If not for her tragic death, I wouldn't know who she was, unless we happened to meet at random, online or during a vacation or maybe at some kind of first responder class or event. Although I now wish that I'd had a chance to get to know her, I understand that it isn't my place to even have such a desire. I have no right to feel entitled to her personal life in any way. But I feel it's important that people remember her as a human being, and not just a murder victim.

As for her family, her boyfriend and other loved ones -- to them, she was so much more than the rest of us will ever know. She was a living, breathing person, full of life and love, so beautiful and radiant, and with a future ahead of her that she'll never get to experience now. To those who had the opportunity to know her on a personal level, justice and accountability are still important; but at the same time, I imagine it's just as important to them that her life be celebrated. As someone whose brother recently passed away, I now understand better than ever the importance of remembering a life rather than simply mourning a death.

Someday I hope to learn more about Breonna, either through an exhibit like this one happening in Louisville (link opens an MSN article in a new window), or perhaps a book written about her life by someone who was close to her. She deserves to be known, to have her personality shine through the clouds of injustice that surround her untimely death. I hope June 5 is made into a national holiday in her honor, and that even as we go about our daily lives for the majority of the year, we still take this one day every June to remember and honor her.

tags: breonna taylor, black lives matter, blm, police brutality