I cannot seem to shake this thing.  It actually took me about three days to really, really "get" that MJ was really and truly dead.  And I was sad, but...once the tributes and the videos and the radio stations (with Will i am calling in, SOBBING with grief) and all began, the pain started to grow instead of abating.  Someone talked about dancing her "wig off" the first day when all the radio stations and MTV started to play his music incessantly--happened to me, too.  Every song was wonderful.  Every move he makes...miraculous.  You can't help but smile.  And then you remember...it's all gone.  All over.  DAMN.

Oh, but the worst was yet to come for me.  About three days in, IT HAPPENED.  MTV got around to the long video of "Thriller," and...I totally fell apart.  He looks so happy, so...brown, still...and at the peak of his power.  The walk down the street with "his girl" is classic and touching and full of spirit and playfulness.  I marveled, I laughed...and then I cried.

He was more than the sum of his sins, and more than a musician, and I have spent four decades with him as have millions.  I took his genius for granted because it was so deeply woven into the fabric of our lives--I didn't need to see him, he was just...in there, all mixed up with the rest of my memories and dreams and the realities of the world he changed.

There's no making sense of it.  But I know how he died--he asked that doctor to give him what he wanted...and he did it, even though he wasn't qualified to handle that kind of drug.  Celebrities can have anything they want.  And it's not the first time that's led to death, obviously.  And I've known a lot of addicts. sp I understand Lisa Marie's little letter about feeling as if she failed him.  But I know, and have written to tell her, that she couldn't have stopped him even for BIG love.  Which they apparently really did have.

None of it matters.  What matters is that somewhere over the rainbow, he's watching as we all wake up feeling a little bit hollow at the center.  We can't buy him back via the CDs, commemorative mags or memorabilia.  But it's kinda cool that it's all flying off shelves.  It just...won't bring the magic back.

As ET would say--and Michael loved HIM, too--OUCH...