It is painful to remember. We have to remember.

Of course, the nation recognizing the anniversary of Floyd’s murder isn’t the same as his family’s loss. Ours is not so intimate. We didn’t know him as “Perry,” to his family, or “Floyd,” to his girlfriend. Instead, Floyd has become a symbol of sorts — a vestibule for the ghosts of those who have unjustly died at the hands of the police to enter our imaginations. To remember them, we have to remember those 9 minutes and 29 seconds. We have to recall Floyd’s cries for his mother. His pleas for mercy. We have to confront the utter disregard on Chauvin’s face and the complicity of those police officers around him. If we don’t, we will certainly forget — and this forgetting, too, would be a sin.