Rest in Peace, my beloved Etta James...

Ohhhhh I am so sad about her passing.

She was like my alter-ego, ya know??  I have a mild, meek and demure side...introverted, quiet, studious and very serious.  But when I hear Etta James, my whole demeanor becomes a wild, passionate, loud, and soul-filled DIVA GODDESS.

She brought that Diva Goddess out in everybody who loved her music, I think.

I loved her music more than Aretha Franklin, because she had a "badass EDGE" to it, moreso than Aretha did, in my opinion.  She also lived a lot harder than Aretha did, and had REASON for the badass edge.

She'll truly be missed.  I listen to her CDs all the time in the car when I'm driving, and singin' my head off. (When nobody else can hear me, of course).

One of my favorites is "Roll With Me Henry," and I really love "I just wanna make love to you..." a lot.

Of course, "At Last" is always the most awesome tune ever, no matter where you are or what's going on when you hear it. That song just sticks with ya, in your guts.  It truly is timeless.

I believe nearly EVERY song she ever sang fits the timeless description, actually.  I never get tired of hearing her voice, I never get tired of hearing the songs over and over again, she is just so awesome.

Well, I just wanted to jot that down.  Kinda bummer-ish to have such an awesome singer die right before your birthday.  My birthday has the deaths of Sam Kinison and Stevie Ray Vaughn included.  I'm sure there are many others, but those two I remember very vividly.

Etta James was only 73 you know...complications from leukemia, and dementia. That is so awfully sad.  She just put out a brand new album recently too, entitled "DREAMS."  I think I wrote to you about it in a previous post a few months ago.

Well.....do I have to say it???!!!!

You're turning 63 years old on Sunday.............NOW will you PLEASE you speed up this new album of yours???  Cripes, I don't want you to CROAK before the damn thing is done!!  (You hadda know that was comin', right)?!  And I only say that because I LOVE YA.

Ya know, I gotta tell ya, Stephen.....I have always felt a horrible sadness whenever I would think about your death....I mean, I cried for EIGHT MONTHS STRAIGHT, when Elvis Presley died.  I am the same age as his daughter, Lisa Marie.  I listened to his music every night before going to bed, and I would just sob and sob and sob....my mom was really getting worried about me.  But his was the very first death of somebody I knew, and felt close to, in my whole life.  It devastated me.  My heart STILL breaks a little bit every time I see a movie of his, or hear him in a song...I'll always miss him.

Stephen, I don't think I have to tell you how devastated I will be when it's your time.  I promised myself many years ago, that when you die, I will try to visit your grave at some point, at least once, to bring you flowers, and a card, and to talk to you in the wind, as though you were still standing there in person.  I may not be as romantic or obsessed as Joe DiMaggio by delivering a red rose every year at Marilyn Monroe's grave, but I do promise YOU that I will travel to wherever you decide to rest, and I will pour my heart and soul out to your spirit, and sob for many years afterwards. THAT you can count on.

Unless you decide to be cremated, which is what Pete wants....but me....I don't know....studying the Holocaust all my life actually kinda turns me off of that idea, for obvious reasons.

I have sometimes thought, "I wonder which one of you Journey guys will go first?"  Do you ever wonder about that too?  I guess like everybody else on the planet, sometimes I am obsessed with death, and yeah, I do tend to think about it a lot....now that I am older.

I mean, it's not that I am a morbid person or anything, but I actually love going to cemeteries, because they are so peaceful, and quiet, and I can think about so many things while I'm there.  Things that matter.   It was the best place I could think of, to go and sit and be alone with my thoughts, and write in my journal.

When I'm at a cemetery, I'm not distracted by other stuff, I am not bombarded by too much stimuli....it's just the most peaceful place on earth, in my opinion.  I used to ride my bike to the cemetery in Grand Rapids where I lived years ago, and I would just sit under a tree, listening to you sing to me in my headphones, while I wrote in my journal.  I walked around the cemetery and read the grave stones too.

I wondered, at some of the gravestones I saw there, who once stood in this very spot, crying over the loss of their loved one, and were they wearing 1800s clothing, or 1700s clothing, was there a horse and carriage nearby, were there just horses in the field around them, munching on grass while the funeral took place, how many people showed up for that person's funeral, what was their favorite color, how did they die, were there only a few graves surrounding them back then, or were there many more than were now visible in present day?  My imagination would just go on and on, as I walked through the place, looking at all the graves.

There was one special grave stone there, with a 5 year old little girl's picture on it.  She was wearing a very pretty lacey white dress, with dainty white gloves and she held a parasol....just the most beautiful child I had ever seen in my life...I don't remember the name of the little girl, but I used to go sit by her grave, and wonder what God could have been thinking when he took her from her parents at such a young age...she didn't even have a chance to live.  I didn't know her.  But I felt sad for her.  Sometimes there would be a teddy bear, or a card, or a balloon around her gravestone, probably from her parents.

It made me contemplate my own existence.

I once wrote in my journal that we are all like a needle and thread...we are plucked out of the pin cushion and threaded through the eye of God, to spend many hours weaving our way through all sorts of different fabrics of people, and lives, trying to make the quilt of life turn out the best we can, and when we are done and death comes, we are put back into the pin-cushion of earth, for someone to take up and start with again, to add to that quilt we all make up together as the human race....we are all connected.

I like allegories like that.

Well, anyway....yeah, I am weird, I know.....I think about stuff like that a lot.  Kinda came with the territory of studying the Holocaust, ya know?  That one little 5 year old girl, multiplied into 1.5 million children.....and multiplied even more into 6 million people, all gone like dust, before their life-quilts could ever be finished.

It just makes you think.

I know that I will have to live through the deaths of you, Neal, Jonathan, Ross and Smitty....not to mention my husband, my dog, my mother, my father....etc.  This does NOT sit well with me, obviously, but when you hit your 40's, you start thinking about this stuff more often.  I look at Pete's mom, Florence, at the age of 90....she often talks about her mom and dad, and sister, and her husband, as though they were still alive.  Then she realizes, and often says out loud, "I am all alone."

Honestly, I don't think I would want to live to be 90.  Everybody I know now would be gone...(unless I go first, of course).  I also wonder sometimes what I will eventually die of....most likely it'll be the stress, and/or the diabetes.  Another thought is, I've gone through a lot of heartache in my life, so maybe I'll die of heart disease.  Who knows.

I just know that I'm hoping you live much longer than Etta James did.  She had some hard livin', drug usage, and alcoholism...I'm sure that contributed to the complications she had before she died.  It's a shame, too, because even in her 70's, she was still singing, and sounding GREAT.  She still had that badass edge Diva Goddess within.

I just learned yesterday that one of my school friends and neighbor of many years, my sister's best friend's brother, Jerry, just had a STROKE while driving his car last week---he didn't hit anything, thankfully, but he's now having to learn how to walk again, and cannot see very well out of one eye anymore....he is only 43 years old.

My age.  If THAT doesn't make a person think about their own mortality, I don't know what will.

So, after you are done celebrating your birthday, please get busy with that new album, and please take VERY GOOD care of yourself....I would like you to stick around a lot longer.  Yeah, maybe I'm selfish to say it, but I know for sure I'm not the only person on this planet who feels that way about you.

Don't let this put a damper on your birthday weekend, though, you deserve to be happy, to have fun, to enjoy and relax and be at peace within.  You've worked hard to achieve those things, and you have earned every moment of happiness that you experience.  I just hope and pray that God will let you keep experiencing all that love, success, happiness and peace for 40 more years....keep weaving through that fabric, and through all the lives you have touched, and all the people you have given happiness, just by singing to them. You are far from finished with your quilt, Stephen.

You, my friend, are also truly blessed to have such a wonderful, colorful, and amazing life-quilt.  I am very blessed to have been wrapped up in it, and you, for most of my life.  Thank you for that.

Love, Rebecca