With love, there is no death.
And then the credits roll, taking us up into heaven where Prince and The Revolution jam in living color, dancing in the clouds.
Gia has slumped over sound asleep on my lap. I kiss her soft cheek and stroke her bangs from her forehead. Her hair smells like summertime. It’s an enormous truth I’ve had to wrap my heart around: If I hadn’t lost my precious son, if the pain of that loss hadn’t torn me away from the husband I loved, I wouldn’t have my daughter now. And I can’t bear to imagine life without her. I don’t know what to make of that, other than to say that I’ve learned to trust God to sort it out. Someday when I’m in heaven with Boogie and Mia and Amiir at my side, I’ll ask a passing angel to explain it to me.
I’m glad I took Gia to see Paisley Park that first week, because it’s already changing. I feel a moment of sorrow every time I see some news item about another small piece of my memories slipping away. But when I start to get sad about it, I have to remind myself that Paisley Park was always changing. During the decade that I was with Prince, I watched Paisley evolve—inside and out—just as his music evolved, and the bands evolved, the colors, shapes, and faces always changing. We all saw our seasons come and go, and it’s okay, because that’s what life is: seasons turning, one after another, a spiral of birth and rebirth.
His fans have evolved too, from big-eyed kids hitting Record just in time to catch “Let’s Go Crazy” on the boom box to grown-ups addicted to our iPhones. Those of us who love his music will never allow it to die. As the years go by, his music will take on new dimension for us, because we’ll grow wiser. We’ll get closer to the sun.
Those of us who loved the man will never forget him. I couldn’t begin to scratch the surface of his story in this space—much of it will always be a mystery, even to me—but I’ve tried to speak to what was most important to me personally: He was my family. His love lives on in me, and in a strange way, our love lives on in Gia. Maybe someday she’ll tell her grandchildren, “He fathered me, in a way.” And they’ll hear his music, and his love will live on in them.
“Never say gone, never say gone,” my husband told me over and over during those terrible days after our son died. Alone in the studio, he sang:
when you lose someone dear to you never say the words “they’re gone”
they’ll come back
With Gia in my arms, I hear his voice in my heart, and I know as surely as I know my name that I will see my love again.