Painting of MJ that hung on my bedroom wall at home, till this day.

I don’t remember my first memory of Michael Jackson.

I guess it’s kind of like taking your first breath, your first step, your first word.

There’s no memory of when you couldn’t do it. It just always was.

And so it is with Michael. For me, and many of us, there’s no memory of life without Michael. He just always was.

Around age four, I do remember telling my mom, as did almost every little girl I’d bet, that I was going to marry him.

She laughed at me. So I told her I was going to call him.

She laughed again. Until she came back in the living room several minutes later, and found me on the telephone with the operator requesting a California listing for Michael Jackson.

“Keysha Put Down the Phone!”

I remember laying on the living room floor flipping the big Off The Wall album cover over and over. Flipping the record.
Studying his picture. Listening to him.

I remember Thriller. Opening the album jacket. Wondering if that was HIS tiger that climbed on his leg.

I remember my mother consoling me when his hair caught on fire.
“Keysha he’s going to be okay.”

I remember Jackson 5 cartoons on Saturday mornings.

I remember.

I remember my Uncle Nate coming home with a huge portrait of Michael he bought for me. It was painted on what was some type of felt canvas, with textures, white gold, red glitter. . . It has hung in my room at home to this day.

I remember my Granny walking me to a corner record store to buy Bad on LP.

I remember playing it on the Hi-Fi when we got home.

I remember.

People don’t understand how impactful Michael was, to those of us who were given the pleasure to have known him, before the media knew him as fodder for their top-of-the-hours.

Beyond the musical genius, beyond the dance, beyond the style, beyond the philanthropism, beyond the eccentricities, Michael was a binding tie to people we will never see again, to places we will never go again, to who we were, to whom we became, and who we will become.

His lyrics, his voice, had a supernatural ability to reach you where you were, and bring you to where you needed to be. Whether you needed strength to fight, like I found in Beat It or Bad, or a reason to be a new person, like Man In The Mirror, you found it in Michael.

Today, my uncle’s gone. My grandmother’s gone.

Now, my Michael is gone too.

But I will always remember.