As Sinead O’Connor dedicated “I Am Stretched On Your Grave” to Whitney Houston tonight a tear ran down my eye.

The Irish singer, though Josh Wood announced earlier from the stage that she was suffering laryngitis, was full-throated and only scratchy at times. I told my companion, Alireza, I’d surely not last the entire night, as I too am sick. 

I did not last. But I made it through “Three Babies,” a record I repeatedly played in high school. And as this woman I clearly link to my youth belted from the stage I thought about my own father who was, effectively, a junkie. She sang a new song, “Reason With Me,” singing of hypodermic needles and stealing laptops. And I was strangely transported back to my teens where I obssessed over this bald woman and where my father, a junkie, hocked my record collection. I’d find his needles in drawers and under mattresses. 

As shiny and new my life is now (is it really?), I’d really not thought of those things, needles and stealing and such, for a very long time.

My father was a drug addict as was Ms. Houston. O’Connor sang a song for both of them tonight, whether she knew it or not.

And I teared up lamenting the loss of Ms. Houston, my father, my youth, but knowing that these memories and these once-in-a-while points of pain are worth the journey.

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  1. youngbradford posted this
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