On December 10, 2005, I was three thousand miles from home, in Baltimore, visiting friends, and I woke up very early. For some reason, I had an urge to listen to the Oleda Adams song, “Get Here,” and I riffled through my friends’ CD collection and found it.
You can reach me by airplane
You can reach me with your mind—
My cell phone rang and I lowered the volume and answered it. It was Flynn, one of the exes.
“How you doin’, Rain? It’s me.”
“Hey,” I said. “What’s up?” But I already knew.
“I’ve got something to tell you, Rain, and I need you to be sitting down.”
I sat down. I could hear my heart roaring in my ears.
“Your father had a heart attack this morning, baby. He’s gone.”
I don’t know how I made it back to L.A. I vaguely remember some friends helping me dress, helping me pack, helping me through security at the airport, and helping me get on the plane.
The flight took five hours, and for five hours Mamma and I talked about Daddy, and about how much we both loved him, and about all the crazy things he’d done—Daddy, the whores need to be paid!—and how empty the world was going to seem without him.
Jesus. I missed him already. How could I go on?
I can’t go on. I’ll go on. I can’t go on.
We laid him to rest at Forest Lawn.
The casket was closed, covered with sunflowers. A picture of Daddy stood on a small table next to the casket. He was smiling in the picture. I was sobbing.
The funeral had been planned by Jennifer. Few people attended. The service was void of meaning, but Entertainment Tonight showed up. (That’s something, right?)
At one point, a tiny white woman went up to the podium and began to talk about Richard’s life and legacy. The woman was a complete stranger to me, and her words rang false and hollow.
It was so unfair.
I broke down and wept, and my grandparents came over to comfort me, and Herb was so upset that he also burst into tears. “I’m sorry,” he said, wiping his eyes. “I hate to see you in so much pain. I want to take your pain away.”
In the day ahead, I went back and looked at all the stories in the newspapers, and that helped a little.
“Richard Pryor, the iconoclastic standup comedian who transcended barriers of race and brought a biting, irreverent humor into America’s living rooms, movie houses, clubs and concert halls, died Saturday. He was 65.”
—NEW YORK TIMES
“Richard Pryor, the outrageously raunchy and uproariously funny comedian and actor who defied the boundaries of taste, decency and race to become the comic voice of a generation, died yesterday at a Los Angeles hospital, where he had been taken after a heart attack. Pryor, who was 65, had been in deteriorating health for years because of multiple sclerosis.”
—WASHINGTON POST
“Richard Pryor, the groundbreaking comedian who turned confessional profanity into poetry and brought the humor of black America to generations of fans, died Saturday at age 65.”
—DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Neil Simon, the playwright, called him “the most brilliant comic in America.” Eddie Murphy said “he was better than anyone who ever picked up a microphone.” And Keenan Ivory Wayans told it straight: “Pryor started it all.”
It didn’t end there.
From Roseanne Barr: “Richard Pryor is the greatest stand-up who ever lived. He opened the biggest door and turned the light on in the room.”
From Jim Carrey: “Some people are born wearing an iron shoe. They’re the ones who kick doors down and enter the places that before them have been untouched even by light. Theirs is always a mission filled with loneliness and broken bones. Richard Pryor is one of the bravest of them.”
From Morgan Freeman: “There are some people who impact your life forever. Richard Pryor is such a person. It is un-defining to call him a comedian, for he seemed to transcend comedy when he spoke to us.”
From Whoopi Goldberg: “There will never be another Richard Pryor. He is, and always has been, the funniest man alive.”
From Martin Lawrence: “It sounds clichéd to say that he opened the doors for all of us, but it’s true…. He did for comedy what politicians do for movements. He passed a law that said it was okay to tell it like it is.”
From Lily Tomlin: “A gifted, raging, soaring, plummeting, deeply human man with a tender boy inside—the greatest pioneering comic artist of the last three generations.”
Well, it’s true—Richard Pryor was all those things and more.
But first and foremost he was my father.
I think of him and I miss him every single day, but I know he’s up there, flirting with angels.