RIP Chadwick Boseman: You Were A Class Act

I was shocked in ways I could not describe when I'd heard about Chadwick Boseman's passing on August 28 at just 43 years old. This was different than someone you sort of expect is going to die soon from significant health issues or even old age. There were no outward signs that the man was ill. In fact, it was just the opposite: as King T'Challa in the #Marvel Cinematic Universe, #ChadwickBoseman was the absolute picture of health. He looked fit and he was young. He more than held his own onscreen in a series of films that could only be described as rigorous for those performing in them.

Then the news broke that he'd been living with Stage III, and then Stage IV, colon cancer since 2016. He was filming movies in between cancer surgeries and treatments and there was no sign that he was even ill. I respect the fact that he chose not to disclose his illness to the public at large. He may have been a star, but this was something that he and his family was dealing with, and not something he needed to be endlessly fielding questions from the press about.

I can't speak with any great accuracy to how much he undoubtedly meant to his public, particularly after Black Panther hit the big screen. As a white woman, I understand without question that I have been privileged enough to see countless white men and women in positions of power on screen, and so I can only imagine what it was like for countless people of color to see a character like King T'Challa come to life onscreen. I perhaps got a glimpse of it on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, when people were given the opportunity to thank Boseman for #BlackPanther.

The sheer pride and joy on Boseman's face as each person came up and spoke of their experience and feelings in watching Black Panther is so heartwarming and so real that it brings tears to my eyes. I can't speak to the depth of what these people felt - that was their story to tell - but for a man to understand just how much his role as a black superhero meant to so many and just be so appreciative of their respect and admiration speaks volumes about the kind of man Boseman might have been.

To quietly go through cancer treatment while filming movies like Black Panther, #AvengersInfinityWar and #AvengersEndgame, as well as films like #Marshall - a biopic about the early days of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall - and then the aftermath of these movies had to have been gruelling, and yet he bore it all. In an interview with Huffington Post's Matthew Jacobs in 2017, Jacobs asked Boseman, who was doing press for Marshall at the time, if he bulked up for his role in Captain America: Civil War, then slimmed down for Marshall, then bulked up again for Black Panther. Boseman indicated, more or less, that he'd done exactly that, to which Jacobs said, "You've been through the wringer."

Boseman replied then, "Oh, you don’t even know [laughs]. You have no idea. One day I’ll live to tell the story."

At that point, given Boseman had been diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016 and the interview occurred in 2017, he would have already dealt with quite a few treatments and possibly surgery for the disease, which Jacobs would have had no idea about.

Jacobs reflected on that interview on the evening of August 28, tweeting, "I interviewed Chadwick Boseman in 2017, and to think he was going through cancer while satisfying the physical demands of a Marvel movie..."

While his family and colleagues mourn the loss of a spirit gone too soon, we can only think that Boseman's belief that he will live to tell the story is more poignant now. However, thanks to incredible films like 42, Marshall, Get On Up, and of course Black Panther, part of Boseman's story will certainly live on.