something about the death of Takeoff, a member of Migos, has weighed heavily on my spirit this week. really, so many things about it. i hate how he died. i hate that he died at all. i hate the loss suffered by his village and by the culture.
i always feel a way when these high profile losses occur. i was in elementary school when Selena died, and i felt it. i felt it when Whitney Houston passed. in both of these cases, I considered myself a fan. i loved Whitney. still do. even though i’ve never been a “hip-hop head,” i also felt it when 2Pac and Biggie were shot. most recently, i felt it when Nipsey Hussle died. and today, i feel it for Takeoff. this strange grief for someone that i didn’t personally know, whose art i’m only vaguely familiar, and whose life is completely different from mine.
for me, a lingering sense of grief has been a consequence of living through a global pandemic. i did not have this deep acquaintance with grief before 2020, particularly April 2020 when my grandmother made her transition. i’ve become sensitive to how easily it can be triggered by anything, including the death of a stranger. i believe that this is because death, particularly a highly visible death, is not just about the individual. it’s also about the sad realities that are underscored with each death, and the stories that endure despite our prayer, our labor, and our hope. this sudden, shocking, and nonsensical loss of Black life never stops. how can one “stop” grieving under the constant anxiety that it’s sure to happen again?
this is not a think-piece. this is a lament.
i’m sad for the life that was lost this week. how brilliant and talented he was. how he didn’t have a chance to live out his own hopes of longevity and legacy. clips of various fan encounters and interviews reveal a hilarious, lighthearted, fun twenty-something who was dedicated to his craft, and who hadn’t even scratched the surface of his gift. lest this be interpreted as a form of celebrity exceptionalism, young Black men die each and every day. we hardly ever know their names or get to experience their brilliance. sadly, their humanity is almost always erased and reduced to numbers and statistics.
i’m sad for the adjacency between Black joy and Black grief. that a bowling alley was the site of his death. of all places. it reminded me of my Homecoming three weekends ago. past a certain time, i began to intuit that the crowd and the energy could go left at any point. so, i decided to cut my fellowship short and go home. sure enough, a lethal shooting occurred right in front of the library later that evening, and a statement from my alma mater was released the following morning. i grieve the detrimentally slippery slope that exists between our most joyful and our most tragic moments. can we just gather? just be?
i’m sad for the mother who got that phone call. i grieve for her heart and the extraordinary love and labor that go into saying goodbye to a child of her womb. i grieve that there exists an ever-lengthening lineage of Black mothers who’ve had to lay their young children to rest rather than watching them grow into adulthood.
i grieve that Black bloodlines do not have the same opportunities for elongation and longevity. what to say of MawMaws and PawPaws? of cousins, real and “play?” of family trees with but a few limbs? of progeny who will have to tell of their ancestors who died of violent, unnatural causes?
much life grief, i don’t have a clear ending for this lament. i understand that the nature of lament is that theologically, however, i know that within each lament lie an admission of grief, anger, and even rage, a grappling with the circumstances, and a hope for how the Divine might intervene. even in grief, hope can be the disruption that holds us and sway us back into our peace, and maybe even into our joy. Black people know this dance well, and our ability to dance in the middle of the night will never cease to amaze me.
i’m holding up every grieving heart. i give thanks that through it all, we have maintained hearts of flesh despite systemic and cultural efforts to transform them into hearts of stone. Black grief, just like Black joy, is a form of resistance, and it reminds us that we, too, are human. we come from the stars and we come from dust. i pray that each of us will grieve as long as it is necessary, for to grieve is far superior to becoming suppressed and unmoved.
even in grief, my final word will always be love.
without love, there would be no grief.