Diane Keaton, Miss Major, D'Angelo...

Who gets to live a "long" life in America?

I will keep this brief.

When I found out the actor Diane Keaton died at the age of 79 on October 11, 2025, my tongue turned into an elongated NO. A swift rejection of the reality staring up at me from my phone. I clicked a link. I blinked. I read, then I texted friends. Their tongues and fingers and eyes did what mine had done. And then it came, the thought that “79??” It seemed so young. In part because aren’t famous rich white women supposed to live if not forever, a much longer than 79?

But then, on October 13, 2025, the activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy died at the age of 78 and I thought how incredible it was for a black transgender woman to live to see her 78th year. Miss Major, as the children of her movement often called her, was one of the revolutionaries present at the first night of Stonewall Riots in 1969. Time is not kind to most revolutionaries; it’s absolutely cruel to most black transgender women in this country. But Miss Major lived long enough to mother several generations of queer activists, artists and communities.

And then it came, the realization that—at least in my mind—79 years old was so young for a famous rich white woman in America and that 78 years old was practically a miracle for someone like Miss Major.

And honestly, that’s as far as my thinking had been able to go when, the R&B singer D’Angelo died on October 14, 2025 at the age of 51. Now, 51, I decided was objectively too young for anyone to die. White or not. Famous or not. D’Angelo or not. But then, as I read that the singer had died after a private battle with pancreatic cancer, it got me thinking about Andre Braugher dying at 61 and Chadwick Boseman dying at 41. And how, when black men—famous and everyday guys alike—die at any age, “he was so young” is actually an acknowledgement of theft. It’s the same reason Miss Major living to 78 was miracle because it was a miracle she endured as long as she did in a country built on theft of black and queer life. As D’Angelo himself said “As Black folk, we gotta always be three, four, five steps ahead of everybody else in order to just break even.” The question of who gets to live as long as they should isn’t moral but systemic.

We often say that death is the great unifier as it’s the one thing that we all have in common. But sometimes, I look around and wonder if even the after-life is segregated.

Anyway, I said I’d keep this brief. America is keeping me brief.