She was 92 years old and had been in the hospital for two weeks now because there was blood and other fluids filling in her lungs. She was also comatose for about a week, with my aunt staying with her and a private nurse all hours of the day to make sure she didn't get bedsores or that the overstretched hospital staff didn't miss a thing. My mom's cousin is a private doctor, and he visited as well to make sure she was all right.
Yesterday her organs started shutting down, and we dropped my mom off today in the morning before coming into work, as we have for the past week. An hour after that she called us to say that she was at her last and we should come if we were up to it. I got there five minutes with my sister before she died and I stood there when the doctor announced her death and left the room. I was there when my three aunts came in a few minutes late, and when my two uncles came in a few minutes later. My mom and her siblings are gonna bury her with my grandfather from what little I heard before going back to work, and we'll be burying her tomorrow and holding the wake over Friday and Saturday. I came back in to take tomorrow off and finish component of a quarterly report.
I discovered Black Panther when I was twelve, messing around in my computer class. I'd watched a bunch of superhero films before, like Rocketeer and Shadow and Phantom, and then a little later on the Batman films of the 90s. I had the superhero bug and was trying to find superhero stuff online, and ran into this website that was copying DC and Marvel issues and posting them online. Started going down reading the titles, and ran into one after Batman called Black Panther, written by Christopher Priest. Read the first issue that day in class, and I'd sneak in afterwards for two weeks during lunch to try and read more issues. Eventually I stopped taking computer class and got my own laptop to work on for classes. It took me a while after I read the Priest run till I found more issues, which were the Hudlin series. I didn't like that so much, didn't seem like the Panther I became such a fan of.
But then I found the old McGregor run, and then the mini-series to do with Azania, and then I got back in with the Klaws of the Panther and kept following along all the way to Coates today. I liked the Panther when I was a kid because I lived in a 3rd world country, and because I saw a lot of things that I could resonate with, like political infighting, respecting monarchs, tribalism and issues of religious disagreement. I thought the mechas, the Dora Milaje and the panther-suit looked really cool, and I even hunted down an old episode of the 90s Fantastic Four show because it had a Panther appearance. I bought tickets to Captain America 3 and I'll buy tickets to the upcoming Panther film because I enjoy the character in most of its incarnations and like seeing more of him and the characters of Wakanda.
I think the same about a lot of stuff I watched or read as a kid, like Power Rangers (enjoyed the film) or Gargoyles or Duck Tales. I find a lot of comfort in them to be honest, and they're nostalgic even when terribly done. So yeah, an extra Black Panther film getting made has been something for me to be happy about at what has just become a bad time for my family. Sorry if you think I was making a dumb joke or something.