A Year Later....

I can still remember where I was at the exact moment I found out that Michael Jackson had died unexpectedly. We were having a staff meeting and my phone was going crazy even on silence. I couldn't fathom what might be going on but being a mother, my first thought was something with the kids. Then a text finally came through and it said Michael Jackson is dead. I know time literally stood still for me, I was in shock. I thought it was probably one of those hoax messages because it had come from a source on Twitter. It wasn't. As more and more of the messages began coming through, I knew it was true. I blurted out in the middle of the meeting, "Michael Jackson is dead!". I think they initially thought I was crazy but a couple of people displayed a shocked, you have to be kidding look on their faces as well.

I remember finally leaving the meeting and checking my voicemail messages and getting the confirmation from just about everyone I knew that knew how crazy I was about Michael as a child growing up. I couldn't, wouldn't believe it. There was NO way that MJ could be dead, he was the King of Pop for goodness sake, had everything he needed at his disposal, surely a doctor could be summoned to help him get well, to keep him from dying too young. I cried and cried driving home that day. I've cried many times since then when I think about how he was terrorized on earth by those that wanted what he had and they didn't, his fortune, about how he had to grow up way too fast and never really was able to be a real child at any point in his growing up, about how even his own family essentially used him to a degree to further their own agendas. But I mainly cried because he was Michael Joseph Jackson, a person who changed the face of the music industry single-handedly, a person whose music spoke to my soul, along with countless other fans, a man so misunderstood that he felt he had to turn to drugs to be able to cope, a man who was so used that he didn't trust, a man so sad, he never could have been happy no matter how hard he really tried. I cried for his children, biological or not, because they had just lost the single most important person in their young lives and I knew the media would be like buzzards after them.

You are still missed terribly Michael, but I'm glad that you won't have to endure the things you did while alive any longer, you are where you are better off, you can finally rest and not worry, not hurt, not be used anymore. Continue to sleep well, you deserve it. I'll always be one of your biggest fans.