Whitney Houston. Don't you dare stop reading what I know in my gut to be true. Her life gave us musical time references like no other, and her death better matter to your core if you live within hitch hiking distance of the Cumberland Gap Tunnel.
This is one of many times that hellofuzzy will become a bull horn.
If you have ever watched Dorothy click her red heels, then you know this addiction problem has been around Hollywood longer than the famed sign on the mountain. My feeble mind can recall Judy Garland, Ray Charles, John Belushi, Richard Pryor, Michael Jackson, and now Whitney Houston all making the news for their talents and their demons. There are countless infamous names one could add to such a list. Its title? “Dead Addicts.” Harsh? Yes.
Now, if you live in Middlesboro, look at the cross on the mountain behind Dairy Queen and know that everyone who can see it knows someone affected by the same addiction, and you are extremely far from Hollywood.
If you live in Tazewell, we don’t have a cross on the mountain, but we have enough loss to addiction to warrant building one as a lasting memorial to those who are dead and those who are slowly dying one hit at a time.
If you are frustrated by those of us locals who are mourning Whitney Houston, then let me clarify something to you. Our grief has nothing to do with her or her voice or her sense of celebrity. I, as one of many, could care less. Many of us are mourning Whitney because we are relieved she is the “person from our life” who has died from addiction within the week instead of our neighbor, our colleague, our friend, or even worse: our family member. Those of us who wake up every day and hope that the addict we care about is still alive are most thankful that it’s Whitney who is gone instead of the addict we will get one more chance to hug, encourage, beg, and nurse.
Of course “we” have enough sense to know better than to actually mourn a celebrity. I’m not mourning the woman who housed and released the greatest voice of my generation. I’m grieving because out of all the characteristics that connect us in this human experience, it’s darn addiction that has made those of us in this neck of the woods understand what her daughter, her mother, and her other relatives are going through. We can’t relate to the Grammy’s. We can’t relate to the stardom. We can’t relate to the millions she has supposedly squandered. However, we can, without question, relate to the torture of addiction. Whether it is her legal cause of death or not is irrelevant. Addiction robbed this country of one of our greatest works of art because "it" stole her talent.
If I were to play the odds and gamble on which would be cured first, I’d select cancer over addiction by ten fold. Some may have no sympathy because addiction is often perceived as a disease of choice. That’s fine. Ignorance is a disease of choice, too, and you’re welcome to suffer from it to your heart’s content. At some point, someone gave Whitney a pill to prevent pain. In time, she discovered that such a pill would also prevent emotional existence, and she chose to live in that fog instead of coping with the emotions it masked. The “fog” is supposed to be reserved for those who are dying, but those who seem to be living the largest covet that fog more than they covet an Academy Award.
Nothing about Whitney Houston’s death is about her career. Her voice will live infinitely through iTunes and other digital media. Your grandchildren will know “The Greatest Love of All” just like we know “At Last” by Etta James.
Don’t use the upcoming weekend’s memorial service as an opportunity to gawk at celebrities as they enter the church in New Jersey where Whitney’s life will be honored. Use the time as a chance to reach out to someone you know who is surviving addiction as the addict or as the one who loves an addict. Give them a trustworthy ear if nothing else. Those who love addicts are desperate for someone to listen to them speak just as much as Whitney was desperate for a new generation to listen to her sing.
