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.
