Goodbye, Whitney

My husband is at church. My daughter is at a sleepover, having helped throw one of the six a 19th birthday party last night, and I am here alone in my house on this Sunday morning, listening to Whitney Houston as the tears fall down. It is more than that she takes me back to a particular time in my life when I was young and poetically lonely and she was brilliant company on the record player. It is more than the fact that at our wedding party we danced to her songs. It is that she didn't make it after all. She spent her whole life in the grip of her addiction, and she never managed to get on top of it for long. She wasn't victorious in that fight. In the end, she went down for the count. How amazing the work she did in spite of it.

My cousin Helen, a healer, firmly believes that we each come here with a life script, and we make deals before we are born with our supporting cast of characters, usually souls we have loved over many lifetimes, just as they make deals with us to support the life script they have chosen, so we each can learn the spiritual lessons we have set for ourselves. She believes children choose their parents and choose the path they will travel. She believes our addicted cousin Pearl (not her real name) is living the life she chose for herself. She chose to do it the hard way, Helen says, but make no mistake, she is learning, and she is teaching, too.

Here's a strange thing: Whitney in that photo from her debut album cover looks like my cousin Pearl. I am sure some of the sorrow I am feeling this morning is for Pearl's struggle, too.

I have not felt like writing much lately, words feel stuck, and yet this morning, when my heart is aching for the loss of Whitney, aching for her mother Cissy and her daughter Bobbi Kristina, this is where I have come. You are the ones I know I can I tell. Thank you.