Waiting for eternity

(Michael Jackson)

 

Friday, June 26, 2009

 

Michael Jackson is dead.

I don’t feel the same immense sadness I felt at losing John or George, but I feel sad.

He was part of the sound track of my life, his voice filling up spaces of time that come back each time the record plays on the radio, eras thick with memories good and bad.

I kept hoping I would run into Michael since his father lives somewhere near where I live and both men once proposed to build a theme park near here.

I guess I’ll have to wait to meet up with him in that place where all people meet in eternity.

I didn’t cry over the loss of Elvis either, but felt the same empty space inside myself as if someone important in my life has passed, and I know I can never replace him.

I care no more about Michael’s troubled life than I do about Elvis’. They are the cost many superstars pay for realizing their dreams, and the dreadful loss of something they struggle to get back but can’t.

This is one of those terrible weeks for the entertainment industry with the loss of Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and now Michael Jackson.

Each owned a piece of the public consciousness, and leaves a gap in many lives.

Each ends an era of innocence and youth that none of us can get back, symbols of a time when we still had dreams and believed we would become giants ourselves.

Of the three, Jackson had the biggest impact on me since his music followed me through my life, and his records – especially in the early and mid-1980s – marked the height of greatness few achieve except Elvis and The Beatles.

But the other two had an indirect impact since my friends – especially Hank – followed shows such as The Johnny Carson Show and Charlie’s Angels.

Ed and Farrah dying now makes me remember Hank’s early death, and in that way makes me sad. They were part of our life when Hank and I hung out most often, and his love of them translated in a weird way onto me.

I was in the eye doctor’s office looking up at some news special on Farrah when a news flash said Michael had been rushed to the hospital. EMTs said he wasn’t breathing when they found him. Other reports said he had slipped into a coma. Now the reports suggest that he may have suffered a heart attack as a result of conflicting prescription drugs, and the authorities are searching for the doctor who gave him his last shot.

All this becomes the stuff of legend later. The initial reaction is grief, and then the non-stop playing of his records, each one calling up images of my own past, from working in the warehouse during “Ben” to working as an overnight baker during “Thriller.”

I keep thinking of the movie series “Back to the Future,” and how Marty, the main character was obsessed with getting back to 1985. Here in 2009, I wish for the same thing, to live again with new Michael Jackson songs on the radio, and the belief that life isn’t as short as it really is.

Michael, Farrah, and Ed join all those other souls from my past who I will have to wait until eternity to meet or meet again.