It was singing that made us feel closer to her. . . .
It was singing that helped us embrace the pain. . . . And so, we sang.
BeBe, speaking of his and CeCe’s tribute at the funeral
In 1997, Bill and Camille Cosby lost their son, Ennis, in an act of senseless violence. Some time later, Oprah Winfrey sat with Camille for an interview. In their candid exchange, Camille told Oprah what one of her dear friends, a psychiatrist, had said to her. It might sound a bit harsh coming from a friend, but it was what she needed to hear: “Camille, you are going to have to go through the pain. It’s the only way you are going to heal. Go through the pain.”
Going through or embracing the pain helped Camille cope and stay focused on life amid such a time of deep sadness. I’m following the same advice by writing this book.
In a very real way, this book helps me embrace the pain of losing such a close friend. Embracing the pain helps me work through my feelings—hopefully to emerge on the other side of it all, better equipped to say good-bye even though I’d rather not. This book has served as my therapy.
I can’t imagine how Cissy and Bobbi Kristina and the rest of the Houston family are dealing with their pain. It’s not a process to be hurried through, that much I know.
Even as I write this, Cissy is still processing her daughter’s death. She longs to make right some of the outright lies that were spread about Whitney—the types of things that Camille Cosby endured when the public peeks into the private lives of people just because they’re celebrities, and then the media provides commentary without personal knowledge of the situation or the very real people involved.
At the time of Ennis Cosby’s death, an extortion case surfaced. During this awful time, the Cosbys had to deal with those allegations in the media spotlight at the same time that they were trying to come to terms with their son’s shooting death. Their private lives were abused. That’s what our culture does to those in the public eye. If you’re popular and gifted, prepare yourself to have complete strangers pry into your private life.
It’s tough to embrace the pain when you’re not left alone to do so. As long as the media continues to stir up stories related to the tragedy, how do we expect family and friends to move on?
There’s great wisdom in the advice to embrace the pain rather than trying to circumvent it. The opposite of embracing is running away from something. If you’re not running toward someone or something to embrace, then you’re either stagnant—stuck in the same place—or you’re fleeing in the opposite direction. Only bad things happen when we run from the harsher realities of life. Running means that you don’t or can’t deal with the situation. It means the situation has you.
As I embrace this pain for myself, I feel like I can bury my face in it; squeeze it hard and let some of my frustration and confusion and disappointment and anger out. When we embrace someone, we usually only do so for a short time—we may linger a bit, but we eventually let go. The embrace fills us with peace and assurance of the other person’s love and friendship. We can then sit next to them and just be.
Right after the funeral, CeCe and I were scheduled to sing at a college in Brooklyn. The promoter was very kind and gracious to us. When Whitney passed, he contacted us and told us that if we wanted to cancel, they’d understand. But we went ahead with the concert and it went great.
We doubted that we’d be able to make it through emotionally, since it was on the same day as the funeral. But being there and singing for the student body was comforting. It helped us embrace our pain. They were gracious to us as we talked with them, and we felt safe and understood.
On that day of grief and remembrance, CeCe and I put Camille’s words to work for us. We sang in Whitney’s honor and claimed grace as a way out of the pain we were feeling. You see, there’s always an escape hatch in our private rooms of pain. Usually that hatch is grace in the form of a memory that comes to mind, giving a little joy. Or grace can come in the form of beauty, or the simplicity and innocence of those childlike qualities that endear a person to us even when they are grown.
Like Whitney’s laughter. I’m sure it was the same when she was young, but when she’d laugh, total glee came across her face. The world would see that glee when she sang—sometimes she’d almost half laugh while singing. I think because it made her so happy. She felt God’s pleasure, and she almost couldn’t contain it.
Laughter is one of the saving graces in life, providing an escape from the darkness that so easily entangles our world and our everyday affairs. But laughter coupled with song, well—I think that is one of heaven’s highest graces. Though singing and tears can be a powerful remedy, singing with laughter is greater because it leads us into joy.
In this particular loss, it is about the joy of a person’s memory. We see Whitney sing and we see the childlike laughter in her eyes and we say, “Yes, Lord. That’s the grace I seek!” Whitney possessed that grace—the grace of song and laughter. What better grace to ease the pain?
One of the reasons I could talk so long on the phone with Whitney was because she’d inevitably have me laughing about something even if it was not a laughable situation. I remember after the atrocity of 9/11, a rumor surfaced that Whitney had died. So I called her.
“Hey, Houston.”
“Hey.”
“Well, I guess you didn’t die. There’s some rumor about you being dead.”
“No,” she said, “I ain’t dead. Unless I’m talking to you from heaven above!”
It was much harder to laugh at those memories on the day of her funeral. My thoughts went from, What will I say in her honor? to the real world that kept humming by. The real world that we must always climb back into, whether we want to or not. On that day, CeCe and I re-entered that world with a song. 
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It was singing that made us feel closer to her. It was singing that drew us together in our spirits. It was singing that helped us embrace the pain. It was singing that quelled the cries.
And so, we sang.
Whitney would have done the same. She would have fired up the band and sung a gospel song. She would have looked to the Jesus she wasn’t ashamed of, the Lord of her life. She would have laid the sacrifice of her voice on the altar of healing and made amends. And so we sang. It felt good and heavy at the same time.
But eventually the songs end and the music falls quiet, the friends go home and the stage lights go off. Whitney’s stage lies bare now, though her recordings continue her memory. It is funeral Saturday, and I’m walking across that stage now, trying to hear her echo. It comes in hushed tones—there it is. I can hear it now. Can you?
It’s the sound of a sister, a friend, a fellow human being. It’s the echo of her life, that precious life. It sounds like yours, I’m sure. It sounds like mine. It’s the beautiful life-song each of us carries with us daily.
“Hello-o, my brother. Do you have some time to-o-day? Can you come on by?”
“Hello-o, my sister. Hello.”
As we sang our hellos in life, now the echo of her voice carries on. On the day of her homegoing service, I returned her hello-song with a song of my own. Now that tribute song is the life I live from here on, after she’s gone. It’s the beauty and lessons I take with me that came from knowing her.