Receiving the call (June 30,1995) about Phyllis Hyman’s passing was one of the last things I ever wanted to hear. Just one week shy of her 46th Birthday (July 6, 1949) She was the person who helped me confront and begin to cope with suicide, a subject that had long shaped my grief and understanding of life. For years, I resented my father for taking his own life. I saw him as a quitter, someone who left my mother and me to carry on alone. Phyllis, however, held a different view. She believed life was a choice, and that what one made of it was ultimately one’s own responsibility.
We had long, and at times difficult, conversations. She and my father were both burdened by mental illness, something too often dismissed or frowned upon in the Black community. When we spoke, she shared pain that ran deep — pain rooted in the record industry, in broken promises, in the exhaustion of fighting for recognition that her gifts so clearly deserved. Over time, that toll became impossible to ignore.
Phyllis once described pain as being like having a high-rise standing on your big toe — something so heavy, so persistent, that it could not simply be lifted away. She died at 45. My father was only 22. Though their lives ended differently, both stories speak to lives interrupted, to struggle, to silence, and to the invisible battles so many endure.
Yet memory remains. Legacy remains. And Phyllis Hyman’s voice, her artistry, and her discography continue to live on — forever resonant in the quiet storm of music, where her presence still lingers in infinity. #PhyllisHyman #mentalHealth #Depression #PrestonCallins #survival #legacy #Detrrnination #RIP
