This has been running through my mind since August, September with increasing volume in October, November … to now, using the same intonation as the Jews used in Warsaw, in Austria, in Paris, in Denmark, etc., “this can’t be happening; God wouldn’t let this happen to us; it will be over soon, something/one will end this madness.” 

I can’t move, I’m frozen, I’m sick at heart. 

I can’t leave because I have my family here, mostly in New England, my daughter in the Midwest, my folks are in their eighties – and I find that I’m using the same excuses that were used before, praying that the horror will pass. And I think that if I swab my doorsill with blood I will be passed over, my family will be passed over. 

I am sick at heart for my country.

It’s not fear – its dread.

As school kids we were warned not to let the Holocaust happen again, it was drilled into our heads from 3rd through 6th and 12th grade. We were told it could never happen again. We were taught civics, we read and reread the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Amendments, we were quizzed and tested until we got it right. We pledged to our flag and waved to our friends as they went off to Vietnam, to Grenada,  to Panama, to Iraq, to Afghanistan. We welcomed our soldiers home in caskets and what was left of them in wheelchairs. We were told that our sons and daughters were fighting to keep us free but we knew they were fighting to control oil and to contain the resistance from exacting vengeance. 

All the while our focus was on our personal safety and God given freedoms. We weren’t watching an angry segment of citizens that wanted wealth and power beyond the wealth they had already amassed. These people wanted to use religion to control the populace, not because they were especially religious but because they were greedy and religion was an easy tool to prod gullible citizens into believing they would earn their earthly reward before they were taken up. We couldnt watch as our freedoms were diminished because laws were passed in the dark. 

I’m not ready to stand in lines.

I’m not ready. 

Though I’m sick at heart.