June 25th is always a difficult time of year for me, along with millions of others, because this marks the day that we lost Michael Jackson, the greatest artist of all time.

I will never forget how vulnerable, how shattered, how wounded I felt when I saw the news that Michael Jackson had passed away: I asked my editor at the paper if I could write a tribute to him for all he’d meant to me, and this was the result. On this difficult day, Godspeed and God bless to the Jacksons and for everyone else who loves and cherishes the man and his music the way I do. (*like any other post, this is previously published and fully copyrighted*)

 

The sentence crawled across the TV screen before my widening, tear-filled eyes, displaying a truth that took my breath away while silencing the author of my life’s musical soundtrack forever: “Michael Jackson has died.”

Oh…my…God. No.

In that moment, I regressed from a thirty-something married mother of three into the star-struck pre-teen that discovered the magic of his music for the very first time. As a child of the 70’s, I’d always been exposed to the Motown sound and enjoyed a few Jackson 5 songs here and there, but it wasn’t until a summer block party at my cousin’s house that I heard the effortless blend of pop, funk and soul that was the newly-released Off The Wall. That angelic tenor, coupled with the picture of the smiling, brown-skinned brother on the album cover, touched my heart and became the soundtrack of my adolescence and adulthood.

With the freakshow elements that have come to define him in recent years, it may seem hard for today’s youngsters to understand how huge the Michael Jackson phenomenon became, but during his 80’s heyday, he was The Man: girls wanted to date him, while guys imitated him. Everything about Michael, from his zippered leather jackets and jheri-curled locks to his lone white glove and sequined socks, became the fashion statement if you wanted to make it clear you were a fan. It seemed like everyone in my sixth grade class returned from Christmas vacation with the Thriller cassette that year, and after that lauded 1983 Motown 25 performance of “Billie Jean”? Trust me, everyone tried “moonwalking” to class.

Children of today, who have unfettered access to YouTube, iTunes and gossip sites, will also never feel the delicious anticipation that my friends and I did when we had to wait for magazines like Right On! and Black Beat to hit the shelves with the latest news and centerfolds. His music videos were more than diversions from cartoons and talk shows, the fact that they even existed made them events. “Beat It,” “Billie Jean” and “Thriller” were great songs on their own, but it was their concepts and quicksilver choreography that burned them into our brains.

As a fan who collected every CD, sneaked into a TV dance show taping to meet his brothers and screamed herself hoarse from the nosebleed seats when he came to Dallas in 1988, the loss is a monumental one. I can’t deny that his bizarre behavior, appearance and molestation allegations troubled me, but every time I tried to erase his presence from my life, I’d remember his thick perfectly round afro, his unabashedly African-American features and hear that one-of-a-kind voice prodding me to give him just a little while longer to redeem himself, and as my son and daughter rediscovered his musical magic all over again, I did. Through my children, I marveled anew at his talents and wished that he could regain the creative spark it took to set the music world afire one last time. And although it wasn’t meant to be, I am so very, very thankful of the masterpieces that he did leave behind.  Just like a member of the family that delights, yet disappoints you time and time again, I love Michael Jackson, now and forever.  And that’s a truth that no tawdry tabloid headline can take away.