A belated epitaph for Michael Jackson

A man whose poor father drove him to breaking points because of the innate prospects he saw in his children which, he believed would make them escape the harsh reality of poverty in racist America. But that Jackson would turn round at the height of his fame to blame that father beats my rustic imagination. […]

A man whose poor father drove him to breaking points because of the innate prospects he saw in his children which, he believed would make them escape the harsh reality of poverty in racist America. But that Jackson would turn round at the height of his fame to blame that father beats my rustic imagination. My own dad drove me like that, and if I am ever anything, I’ll owe it to him and my God.

But Michael did not seem to like the fact that he missed football and perhaps the prison destined for black boys his age if not for his father’s iron hand. Jackson became my own modern day Lot’s wife who became a pillar of salt by looking back. I found out in life that looking back is unnecessary except it helps to firm up my present and gives a better view of tomorrow. For Jackson, he just refused to grow up and that became his fatal tragedy.

And so, when news of his death broke while I was on planet Facebook, I did not know what to make of it. It is hard to say that the death of an individual does not affect us. Or that the death of a star of Jackson’s status did not evoke emotions. He was a phenom in the entertainment industry.

No matter how much you love to hate his transmogrification over the years, if you only allowed yourself the indulgence of a few minutes with his eye-popping performance, you must feel the verve, the energy, the glitz and the panache that he brings to his business. The songs may be as controversial as the personality, and the lyrics may get weirder with age, but Jackson was a performer like none before him and now that he is gone, heaven only heaven can create one like him.

And this is what promoted him beyond the status of stardom to deity among his fans. And I tell you, that not many people know much about handling stardom like they know about handling their dollars and Jackson was simply human.

Jackson was just a year older than I, yet he had cashed it all – the fame, the fortune and a plethora of controversies. But that only increased his unravelled and unrivalled personality. And as the news of his passing sunk in, I was caught between apathy and sympathy, between admiration and admonition. The question was what finally killed him? Was it his ever increasing drive to improve, drugs or what? While I will not want my 10-year old boy to grow up like him, there was something about his success that attracts. And so, when Femi Adeshina, wrote what I thought was a beautiful expose on the jeremiad of his deprived life, I concurred.

Then, as a human being, I moved on, totally unfaxed about where he would eventually be laid to rest or the fact that the golden casket upon which several millions of fans dotted was an empty coffin. I have this ina lillahi attitude to death. They may be beautiful and all things noble while they had life, but when breath is gone, what is left is an empty carcase that must be committed to mother earth with the same similitude in which the seed of their existence was planted – without much ado so that the people could move on. So, when I left on an assignment to Niger and Chad, I relegated the ubiquitous caravan of news.

When I returned home three weeks later, I asked my young daughter what happened to the Jackson saga and she was shocked that I had asked. Well, she said, it would appear that Jackson had actually been serially poisoned by his own physician for reasons that time would tell. For minutes, I did not know what to say.

The first thing that came to mind is the fact that the scriptures cannot be broken when it said that “the heart of man is evil and desperately wicked” with the question “who can know it?” For who would have believed that the water would cook the fish? It beggars belief except that a personal physician would rather kill than save? Jackson spent his entire adult life running away from his own shadow not knowing that the shadow of his own doctor, supposed to be his closest friend will be the end of his life.

I write this belated epitaph to the memory of the jinxed King of Pop; to wish him sweeter rest in yonder shores and hope that the American justice system would endorse the gradual descent of his murderer into the worst part of hell.