THE FRIEND I NEVER MET

Yesterday morning, when my bestie-sister Leslie called me to tell me about Prince's death, I was in the worst position: sitting in the waiting room of the effing ER, with a large, mysterious, level-eight-pain lump in my abdomen, already in my feelings because almost a year ago, my family lost a cherished one to stomach cancer, and this thing in my stomach, which has been there for six months but not properly diagnosed, had been at level-eight pain for almost 24 hours, which had never happened ... so yeah, I was scared, to say the least. But I hadn't cried yet. Even at level eight, it wasn't the worst pain I had felt. That pain was level 5000, in 2007, when I ruptured a disk in my back and was almost paralyzed. So although I wanted to start bawling, I couldn't justify the tears just yet. But trust: my feelings were increasing by the second.

When I saw her name pop up on my phone, I knew something was wrong. I knew it. I answered with caution. She was sobbing. My heart started leaping all over my chest. Reluctantly, I asked her what was wrong, because I thought it was her that something was wrong with. I was partly right. Through her sobs, she said, "Charleeeene ....... PRINCE ........" and my whole being deflated. I felt a little lightheaded. Right that second, all I could manage was, "No, no, no, no .... no, no..." and then I looked up at the three TV screens in the ER and there it was, with no volume for me to hear a thing, and all three TVs were confirming what she was telling me. Our guy was gone. And it didn't help one bit that we couldn't be together to go through it.

Our guy. Mine and hers. He was ours. When I met Leslie, we were in sixth grade, but our friendship didn't blossom until seventh grade, and it was shortly thereafter that we discovered we had a mutual love: PRINCE. My gawd, the things we did. The obsession we had. Writing Prince lyrics on the damn chalkboard in the library when we were supposed to be working. Buying every, and I do mean every magazine Prince was in, even if it was only a teeny picture the size of one of our fingernails, so we could cut them out and scrapbook them. The posters and pics plastered all over our bedroom walls, no room for anyone or anything else. The concert my mother took us to in 1982, because she knew of our obsession with him, where we peered at him from near-nosebleed seats through a pair of binoculars and nearly wet our pants the whole time, while my gracious mother marveled at us two, our friendship, and how we loved this man together. He bonded us, helped secure our lifelong friendship, continued to be a force that kept us sane when we were separated in high school when she moved away. We still had Prince.

But in 1984, Prince's significance in my life upleveled when, in August, I watched my grandmother have a heart attack, and my grandfather and I were the only ones with her. He was busy trying to care for her, so he hollered for me to "Call the ambulance! Your grandma's sick!" I'm 15. It's midnight. My mother is on her way home from Hawaii. And my grandmother is clearly dying in front of my eyes. I call. They come take her. And then ... she is taken. In August of 1984, Purple Rain the album was out, and it was all I listened to. I had the song "Purple Rain" on repeat at that time, and after all the chaos surrounding my grandmother's death, that song is the one that I cried myself to sleep to for months and months afterward, while I kept running the midnight scenario at my grandparents' house in my head. While I thought about how I had to tell my mother, at 15, that her mother had died while she was on her way to her. While I thought about how the greatest woman next to my mother was now gone. I cried big, hard tears every damn night, and Prince was there with me. Even decades later, I wasn't able to listen to "Purple Rain" without bursting into tears.

So when Leslie delivered the news, and I was where I was, feeling all the fear and uncertainty I was feeling, and I couldn't effing hear why our guy was gone, then..... then, I cried. I bawled. I wailed like an abused child, right there in the ER, for over an hour. I was literally (TMI) slinging snot. The man sitting next to me, who was injured himself, asked me three times if I was okay, and if I needed some help. I could barely assure him that I was okay, because I wasn't, really. A man I never met but that had huuuuuge influence in my life was dead. I was sitting in the ER afraid for my life. And I was watching my whole childhood with my bestie-sister and my grandmother flash before my tear-blurred eyes. And then my mother called to tell me, and I answered her call in tears with, "I already know. Leslie just called me." She felt soooooo bad for me! I am so far from being over this, because I was in the ER for 17 hours and I haven't had time to process it in my own space, without dealing with my own medical trauma (it turns out I have a ventral hernia, which will require surgery). I need time to deal with this loss. I'm devastated on many levels.

Prince was a friend to me without having been there physically. He was as much a part of my childhood and adult life as any of my actual friends. And at this moment, I'm still in every bit of my feelings and don't know when I won't be. Because my guy is GONE.