Heaven said, “Amen.”
Eleven days after the passing of actor Chadwick Boseman, and like some, I am still reeling from his passing. Because I am still trying to grasp all that comes with being an empath, I know that some of my feelings aren’t my own. On the evening of Friday, August 28, I had grown quiet. My husband kept asking me if I was okay. Eventually, I had to tell him that I felt like something was wrong, but that I was certain that what I was feeling wasn’t anything I could say that directly impacted me. And, there wasn’t. I had done a mental checklist: nothing on my body ached, I couldn’t think of anything apart from the regular, irregular news cycle that I had found more deplorable than a few hours earlier, no one in my family had sent any texts asking for prayers or help. I just felt bad. Within a span of 30 minutes of my husband asking after me, he walked up to me and showed me his phone with the announcement of Boseman’s passing. I remember saying, “Oh!” and then I said, “Okay…” and he left me to my thoughts.
Y’all, I cried as if I had known this man since preschool! I mean, I cried like I knew him my days of attending Little People’s College & Nursery in Port Royal, SC, all the way through graduating from Beaufort High School. It hurt…still does! I remember first seeing Boseman in 42, and how impressed I was with how he brought Jackie Robinson to life. I had done a report on the legend when I was in elementary school, and I have always been a sports lover, so I was invested in 42 from the beginning. Boseman rocked my world with his portrayal my other home state brother James Brown. His performance was electric! When he came on the Marvel scene as Prince turned King T’Challa, though, I was ready for every new movie. I brought opening weekend, advance tickets to Black Panther for my family and college classmates so that we could all go together. When we went in with all those other families, it was like some very large and extended family reunion. I’d never experienced anything like it before, and sadly, probably never will. I get teared up thinking about it now…
Because my faith grounds me, it is with joy that I affirm the Word of God when the Apostle Paul wrote in Second Corinthians that to be absent in body is to be present with the Lord. I hurt, though, because I remember the night of August 28, and the feeling of reduction, like something good had gone out of the universe. Already weary from having witnessed earlier that week the shooting of Jacob Blake, and having seen all this spring and summer, the broadcasts of other Black men being hunted and killed, the guardian in me wants to protect my husband and children more than I ever have before. I stay in constant prayer asking for my strength and that of my people. It may sound crazy, but seeing strength in a fictional character like T’Challa, who looks like the many men in my life, gave me hope. See how representation matters? The loss of Chadwick Boseman just felt like a beacon of hope, that my people had just got hold of a few short years earlier, had suddenly been extinguished. I know deep in my heart, when Boseman was called home, to quote the pastor of my youth, Reverend Dan R. Bodison, “Heaven said, ‘Amen’”. But, those of us who were left behind, we cried.
