The Whitney I Knew (22 page)

I can't imagine how Cissy and Bobbi Kristina and the rest of the Houston family are dealing with their pain. It's not a process to be hurried through, that much I know.

Even as I write this, Cissy is still processing her daughter's death. She longs to make right some of the outright lies that were spread about Whitney—the types of things that Camille Cosby endured when the public peeks into the private lives of people just because they're celebrities, and then the media provides commentary without personal knowledge of the situation or the very real people involved.

At the time of Ennis Cosby's death, an extortion case surfaced. During this awful time, the Cosbys had to deal with those allegations in the media spotlight at the same time that they were trying to come to terms with their son's shooting death. Their private lives were abused. That's what our culture does to those in the public eye. If you're popular and gifted, prepare yourself to have complete strangers pry into your private life.

It's tough to embrace the pain when you're not left alone to do so. As long as the media continues to stir up stories related to the tragedy, how do we expect family and friends to move on?

There's great wisdom in the advice to embrace the pain rather
than trying to circumvent it. The opposite of embracing is running away from something. If you're not running toward someone or something to embrace, then you're either stagnant—stuck in the same place—or you're fleeing in the opposite direction. Only bad things happen when we run from the harsher realities of life. Running means that you don't or can't deal with the situation. It means the situation has
you
.

As I embrace this pain for myself, I feel like I can bury my face in it; squeeze it hard and let some of my frustration and confusion and disappointment and anger out. When we embrace someone, we usually only do so for a short time—we may linger a bit, but we eventually let go. The embrace fills us with peace and assurance of the other person's love and friendship. We can then sit next to them and just
be
.

Right after the funeral, CeCe and I were scheduled to sing at a college in Brooklyn. The promoter was very kind and gracious to us. When Whitney passed, he contacted us and told us that if we wanted to cancel, they'd understand. But we went ahead with the concert and it went great.

We doubted that we'd be able to make it through emotionally, since it was on the same day as the funeral. But being there and singing for the student body was comforting. It helped us embrace our pain. They were gracious to us as we talked with them, and we felt safe and understood.

On that day of grief and remembrance, CeCe and I put Camille's words to work for us. We sang in Whitney's honor and claimed grace
as a way out of the pain we were feeling. You see, there's always an escape hatch in our private rooms of pain. Usually that hatch is grace in the form of a memory that comes to mind, giving a little joy. Or grace can come in the form of beauty, or the simplicity and innocence of those childlike qualities that endear a person to us even when they are grown.

Like Whitney's laughter. I'm sure it was the same when she was young, but when she'd laugh, total glee came across her face. The world would see that glee when she sang—sometimes she'd almost half laugh while singing. I think because it made her so happy. She felt God's pleasure, and she almost couldn't contain it.

Laughter is one of the saving graces in life, providing an escape from the darkness that so easily entangles our world and our everyday affairs. But laughter coupled with song, well—I think that is one of heaven's highest graces. Though singing and tears can be a powerful remedy, singing with laughter is greater because it leads us into joy.

In this particular loss, it is about the joy of a person's memory. We see Whitney sing and we see the childlike laughter in her eyes and we say, “Yes, Lord. That's the grace I seek!” Whitney possessed that grace—the grace of song and laughter. What better grace to ease the pain?

One of the reasons I could talk so long on the phone with Whitney was because she'd inevitably have me laughing about something even if it was not a laughable situation. I remember after the atrocity of 9/11, a rumor surfaced that Whitney had died. So I called her.

“Hey, Houston.”

“Hey.”

“Well, I guess you didn't die. There's some rumor about you being dead.”

“No,” she said, “I ain't dead. Unless I'm talking to you from heaven above!”

It was much harder to laugh at those memories on the day of her funeral. My thoughts went from,
What will I say in her honor?
to the real world that kept humming by. The real world that we must always climb back into, whether we want to or not. On that day, CeCe and I re-entered that world with a song.
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.

It was singing that made us feel closer to her. It was singing that drew us together in our spirits. It was singing that helped us embrace the pain. It was singing that quelled the cries.

And so, we sang.

Whitney would have done the same. She would have fired up the band and sung a gospel song. She would have looked to the Jesus she wasn't ashamed of, the Lord of her life. She would have laid the sacrifice of her voice on the altar of healing and made amends. And so we sang. It felt good and heavy at the same time.

But eventually the songs end and the music falls quiet, the friends go home and the stage lights go off. Whitney's stage lies bare now, though her recordings continue her memory. It is funeral Saturday, and I'm walking across that stage now, trying to hear her echo. It comes in hushed tones—there it is. I can hear it now. Can you?

It's the sound of a sister, a friend, a fellow human being. It's the echo of her life, that precious life. It sounds like yours, I'm sure. It sounds like mine. It's the beautiful life-song each of us carries with us daily.

“Hello-o, my brother. Do you have some time to-o-day? Can you come on by?”

“Hello-o, my sister. Hello.”

As we sang our hellos in life, now the echo of her voice carries on. On the day of her homegoing service, I returned her hello-song with a song of my own. Now that tribute song is the life I live from here on, after she's gone. It's the beauty and lessons I take with me that came from knowing her.

I believe the children are our future.
Whitney, singing her hope

It's always the same crew. You receive your invitation, you show up, and you hang with a lot of the same people. There are always new faces popping up, but for the most part, the people who attend these parties have been around for a while. It's like a club.

I'm talking about the Grammy parties, before and after.

Each year there's an opportunity to go and see old friends and to network a little and go home. The world reads about these parties in magazines and gossips about what everyone was wearing and
who showed up with whom. It all gets rather inflated, if you ask me, though I'm thankful to have attended many of the parties and have made some amazing friends over the years.

But people need to understand that the Grammys are just an event. They happen once a year. Yes, some celebrities throw expensive parties. Yes, I'm sure some of the parties get a little out of hand. But after it's all said and done, when the awards have been given and everyone says their good-byes, normal life sets in rather quickly. There's laundry to fold and kids to pick up from soccer.

It's crazy to me that our culture makes so much of our accomplishments—with red-carpet shows, fashion shows, the who's-escorting-who watch, and the who's nominated shows. Our culture loves to turn award ceremonies into events that immortalize other human beings. I can see the allure for the public, and I can certainly understand what makes some people pursue the fame that goes along with singing and acting and the arts in general. But there comes a time when we all need to step back and take a reality check.

In light of what happened with Whitney, I would be remiss if I didn't take this opportunity to give a word to the young and the hopeful among us who aspire to be performers. What would I say to them? I would say the same thing that Whitney would almost certainly say.

First, take your time
.

Let me quote Whitney herself here, from an interview she did with
Upscale
magazine: “I started out working in little nightclubs—sometimes getting paid, sometimes not—sometimes performing for 200 people, other times working in front of ten. Today, it's like people just want to jump out there and immediately become stars,
but it takes time and it takes not giving up. It takes believing in one's self in spite of negativity and what people say.”

We live in a society that is instant. If we want ice cream, we go get it. If we want a new dress, we go buy it. A new car? I'll go lease something right now. But there's a price to be paid for the instant economy of our day: it leads to a sense of entitlement. Young kids think they can and should have something just because it's there and seemingly accessible. In the realm of entertainment and the arts, the Internet has helped foster this type of mentality. Who will be the next big YouTube star? Everybody deserves their fifteen minutes of fame, right?

When a young person does make the big splash, the media machine kicks in and there's a relentless push to get their names into the various media outlets. Whitney was seriously performing in her mid-teens, but didn't sign with Clive Davis until she was nineteen, and didn't release a record till she was twenty-one, even though she'd already sung on television and with her mom at Carnegie Hall. Cissy and John and Dionne played a vital role in Whitney's formation, not letting her get exposed to the business too soon, requiring her to graduate from high school first, and bringing her along slowly. Then Clive groomed her for two years before she released her first album.