That Night in August

 

That Night in August

 

 

 

 

First published in “Michael Jackson Justice” on https://michaelsguardian.blogspot.com  which Google removed in December of 2021.

 

God revealed himself to me, in Shiloh, by the Word of the Lord in much of the same way it is told in 1 Samuel 3.  I am sharing this with you, for those who either forgot, or requested I put this back up.

 

Because this was shared in two different blog posts, I am going to include the first part of it with this original text to save space.  I have a lot to get on here.

 

“Addendum”:

 

I had spent the weeks after Michael Jackson’s death trying to understand what it was that actually happened.  I wasn’t a fan, but I wasn’t a hostile either.  I liked his music when I heard it, but I didn’t seek it.

 

The day he died I was riding around Hunt Valley and Towson Maryland running my errands.  I was pulling out of our bank parking lot when it came over the radio that Michael Jackson had been rushed to UCLA hospital with a possible heart attack.  I remember my first thought being “I didn’t even know he was back in the country”.  He had escaped to some country in the Middle East after his 2005 trial.

 

I had never believed he was guilty of the things he was accused of.  I didn’t follow the trial: I was going through a divorce at the time, and what I did accidently see one day during a news segment was a pajama pants wearing Michael, with strait hair and a white, white face being led by his handlers, body guards and surrounded by some of his family.  It was beyond my capacity to take in and I turned the TV off.  To me at the time it was like watching the televised abuse of a child turned into a spectator sport.  If it was traumatizing for someone like me, I can’t imagine what he was going through at the time.  It was something you just mentally blocked off, not wanting to address that it was even happening.

 

So as I drove back toward my home, I came to “Hess Road”, which is a very narrow road dug into hill with absolutely no shoulder, and tree roots trespassing into the border of the road.  It was like a horse-country Sleepy Hollow.  This is when the announcement came on the radio that Michael Jackson had died:

 

“I just got word now, and it’s official.  Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, is dead at 50 years old”.

 

What happened at the last five or six words of that announcement began the change of my life.  As I described on the previous blog back in January of 2010, I felt as if there were gears inside me that had suddenly disengaged, and were slipping.  My equilibrium was gone and I felt as of something was taken out of me that needed to be put back.  I remember shaking my head and thinking “Something’s wrong . . . something is not right.  I don’t feel right”.

 

I was driving, kind of shaking my head and even my vision was not really clear.  I didn’t immediately associate this with the announcement of his death: I thought I was having a mild stroke (I was 45 years old at the time), I mean, I didn’t know him, I didn’t follow him and other than memories of “The Jackson5” and some 80’s stuff he did, I just remembered him as this really sweet kid on Soul Train who turned into this really nice and polite guy.

 

As the radio personalities droned on about how Farrah Fawcett died earlier that day, and Ed McMahon had died the previous week, I remember feeling like death was starting to hit my generation.

 

Through the weeks that followed that, my brother and his daughter came down for the Fourth of July week and my sons came to visit from their dad’s house.  We filled the week with a tour of D.C., the Baltimore Inner Harbor, the Aquarium, Rocks State Park and King and Queen’s Seat.  Yes, we did all talk about Michael Jackson, and pretty much everyone in company were in agreement that something happened to him that shouldn’t have.

 

One day after they went home, one of our political officials decided to go on a Facebook rant concerning a news segment he saw.  What got to me was that not only was this man a state Delegate, he was also an ordained minister.  The things he said about Michael Jackson were foul.  When I read his post on Facebook, it seemed that those very same gears that were slipping suddenly re-engaged.  Before I knew what I was doing or saying, the words came out of me as if it were a dam that was opened up:

 

“What are you doing?  What do you think you are doing?  You are supposed to be a man representing Christ, representing the LOVE of Christ?  Is this how Jesus would behave?  You don’t KNOW this man, and you have NO IDEA what he’s been through, what his family’s been through!  You are acting like the very Pharisees that persecuted Christ!”

 

I hit “send” before I could stop myself and when I did, I was in shock re-reading it.  I then began talking to God:

 

“God, what did I just do?  Do you know why I just yelled at a minister?  I YELLED at a minister, God!  Why did I do that?”

 

I closed down my Facebook page and I was numb for a few minutes.  I just sat there in our basement office.  Then after a few minutes I asked God “Why do I feel the need to defend this man?  I don’t know him either!  I never met him.”  I sat for another few minutes and an answer came to me.  What happened was completely spontaneous and that feeling came from somewhere because before that, Michael Jackson was really nobody to me, other than another over-promoted and sensationalized entertainer.

 

I sat there.  Then I looked up and I said to God, “If this is something you want me to do, I will defend him, but God, I need to know who he is.  I need to know him because I can’t defend him without knowing who he is.  How does one get to know someone that is dead?”

 

He Is an Artist.

 

Michael Jackson was an artist.  He was a singer, he was a musician, a story teller and a performer.  Artists put their inspiration into their work.  So I set about searching through his songs.  Well, It was pretty discouraging.  “Billie Jean”?  “Thriller”?  “Bad”?  Nothing was resonating with me.  So I thought to myself, “all am seeing is what people SAY Michael was all about.  I want to hear it from Michael himself.  I want to hear Michael talking about Michael”.

 

It took me weeks to pull up interviews, pieces of interviews, catalog him, synchronize what was going on in the press about him with the music he was putting out and the lyrics.  Michael had a lot of overlapping vocals and sounds in some of his work and it was hard to even hear the lyrics in many of them, so I bookmarked lyrics sites to follow along.

 

The very first interview I saw when I started my search was actually a deposition that took place in 1996 – AFTER Michael Jackson had already been sued by the parents of Evan Chandler.  Some lawyer named “King” was asking Michael about Brett Barnes and Macauley Culkin.  Michael looked horrible.  He was wearing a black fedora hat, his makeup was garish and the lighting in the conference room made his features look harsh, but you could see the black man underneath all that.  He was a times bored, sometimes angry and sometimes smirking, but he was enduring this questioning.

 

At one point during the deposition (I thought at the time, what is a legal proceeding doing being aired online?  Has this man NO privacy at all?) Michael was asked about a piece of paper with some writing on it.  Michael admitted “It’s mine”.  King then asked him what it was and Michael responded that it was notes he took of things he wanted to talk about during one of the interviews.  Diane Sawyer was mentioned.

 

King asked Michael to read it and Michael read down through his bullet point list, “I’m not gay”, “I’m not ashamed of my color, I’m proud to be a black man” and “children should be . . . CHILDREN, to be innocent like that” and from that point on in the interview, I noticed Michael’s whole demeanor change.  He leaned into his interrogator and looked him directly in the eye as he explained:

 

“That we should be as children and to be loving and innocent like that . . . Jesus’ apostles were arguing amongst themselves, who is the greatest among them . . . and Jesus said “whoever shall humble himself as a little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven . . .”

 

I watched this in awe . . . Michael wasn’t just reciting scripture, he was talking about Jesus like he KNEW him.  He was authoritive and gentle at the same time, trying to express to this . . . this LAWYER what the difference was between what the world saw as “weird” and what was Christ-like.

 

Michael then sat back and turned back into the ‘defendant’ and tossed the paper at the lawyer saying “so . . . I don’t know what you’re trying to make out of this”.

 

I was like “Good for you!” and at the same time in my soul I knew that THIS is what they were after him for.  Whatever it was about him, it had to do with is faith and his unabashed expression of it.

 

For the next four to six weeks, I cataloged interviews, watched them; rewatched them.  Toward the end of this “getting to know him”
education, I ran into another interview that took place in Australia.  In the background I could hear a song playing that was not like what I was used to hearing on the radio.  I don’t think it played on the air often because I had never heard it.  It was soft, it was kind of melancholy and his vibrato was caressing.

 

The song was “Stranger in Moscow”.  I stopped the video, opened another window and searched for it. 

 

Stranger in Moscow youtube

 

The first words I heard that made the tears run was “here abandoned in my fame . . . Armageddon of the Brain” – who abandoned him?  Who did he FEEL abandoned him?  God?

 

The last interview I saw that day was a 60 minutes segment with Ed Bradley (I’m beginning to hate the name Ed).  Ed Bradley was interviewing Michael only a few days after his arrest in 2004 for another trumped up charge . . . different kid.

 

As many times as Michael tried to express WHY they were only seeing what they wanted to see, Ed Bradley kept asking the same question over and over again, making sure the public heard it as many times as possible to brand it into their brains – “Why would a forty five year old man want to share his bed with children?”

 

At one point Michael told him “see, you’re thinking sex, and that’s wrong.  My mind doesn’t even run that way . . .”  Another attack and Michael also explained how many people work on his ranch at any given time and that nothing untoward could even happen.  He also explained “it wasn’t just boys, it was their parents, my cousins, it was like a big slumber party with popcorn and movies . . .”

 

Toward the end of the interview, just one more dig had to be made.  Ed Bradley said “now that this has happened again, are you going to stop having children at your home”?

 

Michael’s reply:

 

“I am always more cautious, but I will never stop loving and helping people the way Jesus said to . . .”

 

I didn’t even hear the rest of the interview until later in the week.  I was done.  I put my head down on that desk in my office and I cried.  I felt EVERYTHING and before I could register what it meant I prayed:

 

“God, please give me this man’s pain . . . I don’t care if you have to reach back in time to take some of that burden off of him, just give me his pain and let him feel it.  Let him feel that relief because, I can take it, I was picked on in school, I know what it feels like . . .” And there it happened.

 

I stopped for a second, tears falling down my cheeks and in shock that I asked God to give me a dead man’s pain.  I thought I had sinned in some way, but another thought completely rolled over that one.

 

“God . . . Is this anyway close to what Jesus felt when he wanted to take our pain and our burden?”

 

Do you know what it’s like to give birth to an emotion you’ve never had before?  That’s what this felt like. 

 

I cried for the rest of the day and I mean hard crying.  I didn’t even know where it was coming from.  It was coming from deeper than me and it just would not stop.  It was as though I was being purged.

 

By the time my husband was coming home from work, I was a mess.  Swollen eyes, red nose, stuffy and next to no space left in any of my sinuses.

 

So what did I do when he got home?  I had to explain to him that I was coming down with something or some allergy because I could tell him “Oh, I was crying over a dead musician that I never even so much as bought an album from before” . . . I mean, we attended church every week.  We were on the missions committee . . .  This was not “normal” behavior (whatever that even is).

 

I turned to the sink and was peeling potatoes, and crying.    I would fake sneeze to evade scrutiny.  I ran to the bathroom numerous times to splash my face with cold water.  I . . . was . . . a . . . mess!

 

 

 

Originally posted on Part 2:

 

That night in August – 01-24-2010

The night all that happened watching the 60 minutes interview didn’t get any better. 

 

Preparing dinner while my husband was downstairs on his computer, I was crying. 

 

Doing dishes while my husband went through the mail at the kitchen table after dinner, I had to turn away because I was crying.

 

In bed that night, I turned from my husband and with my back to him, I cried.  I cried so hard I couldn’t breathe through my nose.  I carefully wiped my eyes over and over again.  I couldn’t stop.

 

“God” I said mentally, “Why am I crying?  I didn’t know this man, I never met him.  I don’t understand why I’m feeling so much pain over someone I never met.” 

 

I was starting back with the racking sobs.  And what started out as a prayer about how I felt and my trying to understand it, turned into a prayer FOR him again instead of ABOUT him.

 

“I don’t understand why you let the bad people win all the time!  When are you ever going to stop them?  I don’t understand why you let them take him down!  I mean he spoke about you in interviews, he talked about the importance of reading YOUR BOOK!  He witnessed for you, he sang songs about you, he sang songs TO you . . . HE LOVED YOU!!!  Why didn’t you protect him?”  After that I could not pray anymore.

 

I lay there and cried.  I did not understand, it was like hope had died with him.  Is this what we have to look forward to?

 

Just then, I felt this concentrated yet very soft puff of air on my right cheek, right below my eye.  It was the size and shape of lips kissing softly, but it felt like air.  It didn’t spread out like a puff of air would, but was just pressure that felt like cool air.

 

My eyes opened wide.  I was afraid to touch my face, not because it scared me, but because I didn’t want to disrupt the feeling.  It was very comforting and loving.  I thought to myself, “You DID protect him.” 

 

Before I fell asleep I realized something:  Not only was I calm and comforted, but I did not have to get up and blow my nose.  My sinuses were as clear as if I had never cried at all.  I was asleep within about fifteen minutes, and I had a dream that night:

 

I was in a lady’s house.  A lady from church.  My sister and my brother were also in there but we were kids . . . smaller.  About grade school age.  It was Christmas time and the house was beautiful. The Christmas tree was beautiful and big.  It was next to a large window dressed with lace and some gauzy material.  We were all taking pictures of each other and this lady gave my sister and brother a present.  Both were some type of mechanical animal that did things.  One was a cat that arches it’s back and meowed on a platform.  The other gift was a dog that flipped and did tricks and barked.

 

Then the lady pointed to a present and looked at me.  I shook my head no, with a smile on my face, because I didn’t think I deserved a present.  I wasn’t expecting one and I didn’t want her to THINK I was expecting one.   She took one out of this clear, see-through plastic bag and handed it to me.

 

The present was a round box much like one of those old fashioned hat boxes . . . only smaller.  It was also deeper.  It was beautiful red with gold, glittery piping on it and silver.  A ribbon joined the stripes at the top of the same color.  The lid of the box came off easily and I reached in.  I pulled out a small, stuffed dog with a red collar and a gold chain that was attached to . . . . I pulled out a slightly larger dog, this one a different color, with a silver collar and gold chain attached to yet a third, larger dog still.  He was a black and silver German Sheppard with his tongue hanging out, almost smiling.

 

I held the dogs up stretched out on their chains, so they were all level, and I inspected them.  They were beautiful.  Three dogs, for the Son, Father and Holy Spirit.  I hugged them tightly to me. 

 

Then I heard a voice tell me “Now that your gifts are out of the box, you need to take the chains off of them so I can put them to work.

 

When I awoke, the words in my head were “Child in the Wings”.  I wrote them down.  Maverick in the spotlight, child in the wings, doors of souls are opened, every time he sings, tears are for the lonely . . .

I ran downstairs to type it into my computer.  My first of now currently five poems about Michael was born.  The words just came to me so smoothly.  I didn’t think about where it was coming from, I just let them out on my keyboard:

 

Child in the Wings

 

As your book of life was opened

Destined was your name

Songs laid bare before you

Childhood yields to fame

Early start at reaching back

For time lost to the lights

Sacrificing playtime smiles

To dancing in the night

 

Maverick in the Spotlight

A child in the wings

Doors of souls are opened

Every time he sings

Tears are for the lonely

Staging every dream

Maverick in the spotlight

A child in the wings

 

The message God had given

Spoken through your songs

From the heart of innocence

Tell me what went wrong

A second childhood splintered

Press denial of truth

Our maverick forced in exile

Another wounded youth

 

Maverick in the spotlight

A child’s folded wings

No longer his soul mourning

No longer hear him sing

Those who judged the lonely

Silencing the dream

Maverick in the lovelight

A child earned his wings

Poem © Bonnie L. Cox, 2009

I also began working on the web site that day, MichaelJacksonJustice.com.

I didn’t know what I was going to be using it for, but I just went with what something was telling my heart.