Since I was 12, I’ve charted my life by his albums. I stuck true a fan for him through the highest heights and lowest lows; through the change from Prince to 
; during the SLAVE years to his Emancipation from Warner Bros. From his conversion to Jehovah’s Witness to his last days touring his HitNRun albums.
I bought–never bootlegged–everything I could afford whenever I got my hands on it. [My parents are artists, and I know the toil that goes into making beauty that others take for granted.] What I couldn’t afford, I forwent. I’ve trolled the Internet for two decades for whatever I could find about Prince, for images of him in concert, for video clips of interviews and of performances on late night television. I fed my participation in his fandom on a budget.
In the early days of the Internet, I joined 1-800-New-Funk, then the NPG Music Club, then LotusFlow3r.com, and finally purchasing from ArtOfficialAge.com
Somehow, I was always a few steps behind each change, rarely able to catch the newest release when it was a surprise, instead getting hold of it as it became day-old news. And then Prince would drop something new and unexpected yet again.
My boyfriend even bought me the Prince Opus: 21 Nights photobook and purple iPod (that I never got–what a disaster–long story) for my 40th birthday. At least the relationship survived. With my boyfriend that is. And with Prince, too.
I kept missing or putting off seeing Prince perform in person. His final concert only 30 miles from me in Atlanta, and I couldn’t manage to get tickets.
Perhaps because my grandpa’s birthday is this weekend, or rather what would have been had we not lost him last summer, I am especially sensitive to Prince’s death. Too keenly, I am aware the cost of putting off opportunities to spend time with people you appreciate and love. This new loss is very much like when you haven’t seen a close family member in years–physically estranged but always intimate in verbal contact–and then before you get your shit together and actually go visit, they’re gone. I never saw Prince perform live or even have a celebrity sighting. I didn’t see my grandpa for at least two years before he died. The only barrier was me.
It’s not something I seem to be able to shake.
So about a week after Prince’s death, I am sleepless after midnight. I’m listening to 3121 while I write this short entry, muddling my relationship with Prince with that of my extended family. I pray for my grandmother, realizing the pain she must feel as the calendar leaves fewer days before the birthday of her beloved husband. Very likely she couldn’t care less about Prince.
Recently, I reread the obituary that I wrote for Grandpa in July of 2015, and it’s still meaningful–not for any special quality of the words, but in how many roles he filled for so many people. A stained glass window now memorializes Al Stepman at Community Lutheran in Las Vegas. The window features a lamb bearing a cross because Grandpa was not so prideful to think that others should look upon his memorial and think of anyone other than God.
Prince seems to have left no will. Perhaps that was intentional, that his estate never really mattered. The fortune that remains, including the sudden surge in its value from posthumous record sales, is just dust in the wind from a man, who despite his provocative past, had become not so prideful to think that his wealth deserved preservation.
Rest in peace, Prince. And you too, Al Stepman. We were all blessed in very different ways to have had each of you on this earth.
May all of us live 2 see the Dawn.
art, life & poetry 