Dear Michael

I have never really said goodbye. There was a meme going round on your birthday last year where people wrote their “message to Michael Jackson” on Twitter, and I tried then to write an entry, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if I can now but I just read this blog entry which brought up all sorts of feelings so I’m going to try.

I’ve written you various letters over the years and I wish I’d kept copies now. But mostly I think they said things like “thank you so much for everything, you have no idea what you mean to me”. This one of course you’ll never receive, but at least I know that I was able to tell you, and show you, that I loved you while you were still around, and I know you did feel loved by your fans. So even if you were often reviled by the world at large, there was that.

It was odd when you died and suddenly everyone was in mourning and writing all these glowing eulogies. I felt comforted, but also incredibly sad. It was, of course, too little, far too late. And we had lost OUR Michael, to them you were “nothing but” a great musician, a megastar of course, but they could never understand what you had been to us. It felt strange because you were SO huge, and MILLIONS of people had been MJ fans at some point or other, and then there was that that “crazy core” to whom you meant so much more.

We had lost a huge part of our lives. And we were certainly laughed at, yet there were also really moving outpourings of sympathy. Some people expressed their condolences as if I’d lost a family member (which in a way I had). My mum even sent a card. It touched me that she respected what a tragedy this was for me. It made me cry of course, but then those first few weeks after you died I cried pretty much the whole time anyway.

I still miss you, terribly. Hardly a day goes by where something random doesn’t remind me of you and make me well up. And you are everywhere, constantly. My Facebook feed is full of people posting the latest news about Conrad Murray’s hearing, or photos of some past events they went to, or links to the latest video. And sometimes it becomes too much and I want to make it all go away, delete them all and shut myself off from it all. But I know I need those people, I am one of them and I don’t want to lose the only thing that’s left. They often piss me off, the whole lot of them, with their bickering, their elitism, their know-it-all attitudes and their conspiracy theories. But they understand how I feel. We all grieve in our own private way, but we’re not alone in our pain.

I wonder if you had any idea of the grandeur and the beauty of what you have created. Not just the music, but all the people you have brought together. The experiences you have granted us all, they will enrich our lives forever. There will never in a thousand years be enough words to express my gratitude, and my humility, and my eternal awe in the face of all that you have given us. I know this sounds like hyperbole, but it isn’t. My life would be immeasurably poorer without you, and I am just one of thousands of people you have touched in a similar way (millions if you count everyone who enjoyed your music and concerts and videos, but I am mainly now talking about those “crazy fans” who followed you around and made friends in likeminded people).

You know, I think you have helped me understand that stupid saying “it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Because I usually hate that sentiment, you see. Spare me the pain at all costs, I don’t want the good times. But the thought of having missed out on all those things – the music, the concerts, the insanity, the countless friends, the excitement and the hysteria, and above all, the deep love you shared with us – I’ll take the pain for the privilege of having experienced all of that. Even knowing that, when I die at 70 or whatever, I will have had 21 years of love and joy in my life, and 38 years of missing you.

I could keep rambling forever. I would tell you anything you wanted to hear! I’d rewrite history for you if I could, and there would still be too many things left unsaid. And anything I say will always be inadequate. And though I don’t believe in God, or karma, or even some cosmic balance, I hope that somehow, in some weird way, the love we all have for you compensates you at least partly for everything you have given us, and the pain you suffered.

And I miss you.