The George Michael Story - Jalpa Amin

When no one understood what it was to feel my idol’s loss, I wrote... because that’s the only way I could get through the pain. I never took to writing because I had a clear story I wanted to tell. I wrote, because I needed to fathom the story going on within me.

The mayhem inside my head needed sorting. Penning down words helped me understand myself and live at peripheral lunacy instead of damning myself to an asylum. This was the hardest time of my life. Many wonder, why should his death affect me so very deeply? The answer is rather simple.

Well, because he was my family.

He was my family because he did everything a family would do to make sure your are held, loved, understood, and most importantly for me, assured me that I wasn’t alone in what I went through with each passing phase of my being.

He assured me that my internal turmoil was “OK”. He made me believe this since he went through the turbulence as well. He emphasized that to break was NEVER an option. I took solace and inspiration from his experiences and marched forward with questionable self-confidence however, never exhibiting self-doubt.

Every step I took was laced with his faith in me. He never faltered when I needed him. He never forsake me! Through failure and through my tears, he loved me unconditionally. True to his promise, he carried me when I was too weak to comprehend all that was happening around me.

All he asked in return was faith and patience. He encouraged me to find my own voice amidst the cacophony of a cruel and cold world. He made me see the light in not taking myself too seriously and to laugh the loudest when I made a jack-ass of myself. I found peace in his soulful voice and myself in his lyrics.

This magician was George Michael.

On the 25th Dec 2016, I heard my phone beep and it was a message from a friend. It conveys the news of my sweethearts passing. I froze. Was this a freaking joke? What kind of a jerk would play such a sinister prank? It took a while for me to register what I had just read on my phone.

Hung over from a party the previous night and unable to fathom how this could happen, I shook with uncontrollable bouts of fright and disbelief as I checked its authenticity on George’s website. The words I read paralyzed me and yet, surprisingly, I felt a pain so sharp, it needled deep into my bones.

My mind went blank and my eyes overflowed with grief. Nightmare! Is the only way to describe what my heart bled. He was gone? How could he be gone? He was just fine. He was so young! How did this happen? The next 3 months held no answers to the numerous questions either.

The fine line between life and annihilation is so blurred that it spins and wrings me off balance even 14 months after his passing. I think it always will. George’s, sudden and final exit from the stage of my life, was a permanent ending to a vital life process that went on in my body involuntarily.

He breathed and I kept alive. He sang, and I blossomed. He wrote, and I believed. For years this was a given. This world I shared with him was exclusively ours. It was complete without anyone else’s contamination.

Normally, I would be considered as the most expressive person in any room. However, this little escape world was just ours. It was the least expressed part of my life, even to those closest to me. It was a well-guarded, secret life of a woman deeply awed and devoted. No one could fathom either. Just like the truest of loves, this love with George was not to be said out aloud.

It was to be felt and it was to be experienced. Not all mortal souls can be brave enough to fall in love like that. I was. For which I’m incredibly grateful.

I was convinced that I had found my soul mate. I couldn’t stop gravitating more and more towards him in every way that is possible to be attracted to someone. He was my intellectual masturbation and my moral police.

He freed me to make my own rules and kick the banal and bogus prejudices embedded within me by the hands of society. He led me to have a mind of my own without feeling the fear of living differently than what was permitted.

He taught me to give a damn for those who see this world with boundaries, with hate, without compassion and with religious segregation. He founded a faith in me, which positions itself very dearly to being a good human being above anything else. Such that ”God”, should be the “good” you do. Charity should be a way of life. It should be omnipresent in every fiber of your deeds as well as your emotions.

He rocked my world with these new age interpretations of what the age old Gita (the Hindu religious text) has always stood for. He transformed an extremely complex and reluctant child into a lioness with definitive and assured will power. In his own colours he painted me all that I am today. He shaded hues into my spirit I never thought were possible. He penetrated feelings in me that compelled me to emote, question, think, and debate amongst many other things, these voices although new to me, sprinted life in me. A life which could have gone down as ordinary had he not touched and turned me.

George assembled my life uplifting it to nothing short of extraordinary. A life, that meant something. A life, that finally goaded into action a caring, loving and compassionate human being.

For years I had pinned hope that someday, I will undoubtedly find myself in his company. Emphatically convinced that our paths would “HAVE” to cross at some point in our life’s journey. Continually, my mind would envisage his beautiful face in front of my eyes! That moment when I could look into the pool of his amber eyes, it would peel away years of hunger to be able to see him.

His gentle gaze would look right through me revealing my soul’s search for him.

His embrace would heal every wound.

I’d often wondered to myself about his aura, would it be angelic? Are angelic saviors flawlessly handsome? Will he appear as towering as he came across in photos and videos? Will I still dictate my actions or will I be helplessly tongue-tied by his proximity? Will the butterflies in my stomach give me away as a giddy fan or will he see me for what I really am?

Someone, he had breathed life into. Someone he cradled and cared for, when she cried.

Someone he kept safe, from her own spiraling universe. My imagination would run faster than wild horses when I’d imagine the reality of meeting him. I also knew that I’d have to pray on a four leaf clover, desperately hoping that anxiety doesn’t cheat my body and turn it to jelly.

My mind boggles at all the things I would have and could have said to him, had I been bestowed upon the honor of that chance. It Breaks my heart and soul that unfortunately, this possibility will never be!

The appending tragedy of my heart, is it encountered upon zero opportunity to meet George. None. Not even to say, ”Thank you my darling, I am the master piece you created.” His death was also the death of a very big part of my youth. After all, for 32 formidable years this incredible soul had held me, loved me, and strode me to a glory place within myself. And yet, no fine moments of togetherness were meant for us.

No plausibility to feel his warmth, was destined to me.

Not a single fragment of his life would ever be connected to mine.

Instead, he will continue to shine in another life or place without the knowledge that I love him, that I adore him. He will have no presumptions, what so ever, about me, a girl that lived on a prayer, that was GEORGE MICHAEL. This eats me up everyday.

How can you want something so bad, pray relentlessly for it to come true, and yet never have a fleeting opportunity to mark your love to them? The Universe doesn’t listen I reckon its deaf.

Once again after years of having a place to go to in his music where I was infallibly understood, I was alone. It was yesterday once again! In his passing, I unearthed myself to be as alone, as bewildered, as inconspicuous as I had found myself to be, as the 1st time I heard him croon. It was petrifying to acknowledge that no one was going to rescue me from my own darkness anymore!

The one who saved my soul 32 years ago, is dead! He’s gone! I felt abandoned.

I felt betrayed.

In the days that followed, I cried for all the things that would never be. For all the possibilities death snatched away so brutally. I Could barely keep it together in front of my son. Tears would well up invariably for one memory or another.

I couldn’t arrest the constant meltdowns that happened each day. I felt cure-less. It was impossible to keep breathing. My own respiration hurt every single cell in my body. The 10 year old girl, George had found and repeatedly rescued was reduced to a train wreck. I had no idea how to collect the pieces he had reduced me to and join them together.

I had never learnt how to pick up the pieces of my broken heart. He did it for me. He had done it for so long and now, he was gone. My shattered pieces glared sharply at me.

The black hole of his passing loomed a mighty and heavy gloom.

At my most vulnerable moment, to top insult over injury, people around me, threw ridicule and judgments at me for being in love with someone celluloid! How can anyone call George celluloid? He has been more real to me than half a dozen friends and relatives could ever hope to be in my time of need.

“Celluloid” they dared to call him!! who are they to judge me? Bloody hypocrites of a patriarchal society! Absolute sods!

Such is the terrorism of our society!

Where love is judged and spite thrives!

These people are exactly what drove George to the end of his wits! He had no respect or any time for the haters. I followed my idol and removed the haters from my life. I withdrew largely from my surroundings and my social life. What was the point when no one cared to pick up the phone? No one cared to show courtesy of concern. Somehow people felt and still feel that if they avoided talking about George and his loss, I will magically recover and it would cause less inconvenience to them.

But again, why was I surprised with their behavior? Wasn’t this the exact reason why I was lured to his music in the first place? Did I not look for a place to be understood in his world of music and lyrics because the world I lived in was unavailable to me? I was quick to understand that just like they never understood my devotion, they would never understand my pain.

I had to self-heal.

It was the hardest I’ve ever worked on myself. Disallowing any thoughts that crumbled my sanity, I set out on a mission to be a woman who was true to her word. Many years ago, I promised George to always be resilient towards the set backs life puts me through.

Now was the time to make good on it. Without a doubt, bouncing back from his loss would be the most fitting tribute for a man who tirelessly kept singing about moving on... “Life’s too short Jalpa, just move on!!!” he would chant over and over again.

Once again, the only place where my pain would find a place to resonate, was in his words and in the music he had left behind. The healing and getting better, was behaving like a mirage in the desert. Regardless of trying with every inch of determination that was packed in my body, his expiration from this life was far more daunting than I would have ever imagined. Days rolled into nights and the nights would be harder than anything I have suffered.

My life had become a constant struggle for finding anything to be able to connect with.

Nothing was a good enough distraction. My own people were sick of my constant grieving. This added severe pressure on my already over stressed mind, body and soul. My life felt as tough it was drowning without a lifeboat in sight. I wanted to scream for help but the lack of strength in my voice must have made me inaudible. My tired body was sinking. I desperately needed a miracle.

As I cried myself blind into the wee hours of the morning and fell asleep exhausted, I’m convinced he saw my torment and decided to do something about it. In death as well, he made sure he looked after me. That night was my lowest of lows. I’m sure he watched me as I had a mammoth fight with god. I questioned the almighty’s motives for taking away George from me. I demanded explanation for the ones who still had life when they made no difference in anyone else’s.

Why keep them breathing through their suffering when they are begging him and death to release them from their misery? Why take away a man who influenced so many generations? Someone who lived by every rule of philanthropy? Where was the sense in events that happened that took his life? How can the same rules apply to a man who lived his life being the change he wanted to see in the world? How can the almighty think that his death was an answer to anything worthwhile?

In which of God’s universe, would it be worth taking George Michael away from life? With each passing sob, I fell deeper into an abyss of loathe towards this world n it’s creator. Just when I thought nothing is going to keep me sane, my super star, my savior, my George Michael, waltz’s into my dreams and tells me in his ethereal voice, "My darling, You're too young to be cynical of the world just because I left it so early." I can vividly remember us being in his study, which was made of dark ebony wood. It looked like we were in Mill Cottage since the ceiling was low as they had in the 16th century.

He was not wearing any glasses. I could see his eyes clearly. He looked happy but worried for me. He wore a black sweater and blue denims, looking every bit like a Greek god. Abby was sitting quietly at his feet. While he bent down to pat her, he smiled at me and gave me a look that I cannot describe. It was a moment that could only pass between two old souls. I was certain in that glance that he was happy where he was.

What I couldn't believe is how much hope he had had for me despite the tortured existence he had experienced for himself. It took my breath away that my life mattered to him. That he is looking down at me from heaven. He saw that he had broken me and he knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with it myself. He came for me. He hadn’t abandoned me. He will always be here, with me and for me. It was in that moment of half sleep, half awake, I realized, how deeply I, have been loved by this beautiful man.

That morning when I woke up, I smiled after ages. His bright light had calmed my burning disappointments. It felt like home. It felt beautiful.

After his demise, a part of me followed right behind him. That part of me resides in him at his side, in heaven, a place he now calls home. I reckon that he took a little of me for himself to love and nourish. I don’t think he wants to return that part of me to myself.

May be, he needs it to search for me when my time on Earth is up.

Maybe, my bruises are yet very raw because our souls are engaging each other, ensuring they recognize each other upon meeting.

May be, when souls communicate with one another from different worlds, they refresh wounds making sure, we keep our connections avid and hungry. For no more mistakes of an “almost forever” could he stand and nor could I.

As much as I look forward to and love the people in my life, I also look forward to meeting the man who walked with me in intersecting lines. A man, who has left me signs to help cope with my life. A man, whose wonder awaits me too. I will grieve him deeply until I breathe my last.

After he featured in my dream, a strange and surreal epiphany came over me.

It dawned upon me that every part of George was made of love. That’s what made me gravitate towards him. Love is a great force and all of us have it. How we use that love, will define who we are and what we shall be remembered as. Everyone loves differently and all that truly matters is to respect that fact. I loved him for 32 years of his life. True love and devotion never go unfelt.

My love he did receive. So what if he’s in another world? His signals still bring me up alive. What I have realized is quite simple and yet truly stunning. Love is love and grief is grief. No one’s love is higher than another’s grief and vise versa. Neither grief nor love can be rationalized only by the presence of a bloodline or just by physical interactions. The rules are quite simple. The extent of your love will define the magnitude of your grief.

In the end, love will always demand grief. My yearning for him will continue but my love for him remains unconditional. His benevolence is a benchmark to live up to. Having understood the above, I believe, that the most unbecoming one can ever become is to stand in judgment of grief or love.

Today, after more than a year of his demise, I have promised to involve myself in things that make me happy. I’m taking good care of myself because no one has the power to make me happy. I see this through his eyes and I finally understand what he meant.

I will try not to hurt, as though a knife has pierced through my body, each time his name comes up. I will remember him as the most profound thing that happened to me. I will say his name in gratitude and smile. I’m happy that he knows that I am the masterpiece he created. I know he’s always going to be there.

I will remind myself that the heaviness of loosing him will never really go away but I will work towards making it manageable. After years of being on the receiving end, I’m crossing over to where he used to stand for me.

I am now trying to live my life following the things George lived by.

I will honor him everyday in my deeds. I’m aware that It’s a very tall order to follow. However, it leads to the peace my mind seeks. This is how I shall remember my idol.

A phenomenal man who made an ordinary girl feel, extra ordinary in her own eyes. George Michael, there will be no one like you. The happiness you brought into my life was incomparable. It was as though for 32 shining years, there was a Camelot! Rest now.

Rest in eternal peace my darling George.

You have been loved.

“BETWEEN THE RIGHT AND THE WRONG;

BLACK AND THE WHITE;

THERE IS A FIELD, I WILL MEET YOU THERE”

-Rumi.

I LOVE YOU FOREVER,

- JALPA.

Contact link:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/jalpa.amin  

Email -  jalpa.amin@gmail.com