Written by Rachele Louis, LifeWeb 360 Founder and Chief Operating Officer
As a Black woman and founder of a company that deals with death everyday, I’ve come to see just how grief hits different when it’s a life that has been taken prematurely. And in the particular cases of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, and too many others, it hits even harder for a life robbed in a pervasively disgraceful standard affair.
When the wound of grief is opened it pulls in every instance of loss. The loss of life, liberty, and happiness due to systemic racism. The staggering loss due to Covid-19 within the black community is just another marker. The grief runneth over.
But within grief, we make meaning. And just like far too many Black Americans before him, George is a symbol of a movement. He was a man, whose death now overshadows his life. From my work I’ve learned to make meaning, we highlight the subject of our grief. We make murals, we run in their honor, we say their name.
For those who personally knew George, he will always be much more than a movement. He will always be a man who laughed, who cried, who went to the gym to work out, who rapped over mixtapes, who believed in his friends sometimes more than he believed in himself, who wanted more in life, who moved to try to attain that, who simply for being deserves to have the fullness of his life recognized.
At my company LifeWeb we help families keep memories alive, and we decided to create a place to celebrate the man named George Floyd, for the life that he lived, because that alone is worth celebrating and fighting for.
The more we remember all the ways George was a human, the stronger we keep his memory alive towards change. When we remember that there were little eyes that looked up to him in his daughters, that there were lovers of hip-hop mixtapes who bumped to his lyrics chopped and screwed over a DJ Screw beat, that there were high school teammates who threw footballs his way back in the day, we highlight his humanity.
For the many lives behind hashtags and names we never got to know because they weren’t recorded, we need justice. We need an end to systemic racism which dictates the conditions that reflect Black lives don’t matter. We need change for the many broken-hearted parents, confused kids, and angry friends. For everyone who knew George personally, or now feel like they do because they are like him. For everyone who knows someone who loved music the way he did. For everyone who is looking for a better life like he did. For everyone who simply wants to wake up in the morning, and be able to go to sleep at night.
The outrage isn’t that he died, it is that he lived life in so many ways but for no reason other than being Black it was decided for him that he wouldn’t get to finish his story. It’s on us to remember, reflect, and act on the memories of his humanity so his life and his story won’t be just another #.