Part IV: The Dreamer

No one has fully grasped what the dreaming mind is doing.

It doesn’t turn off during sleep: brain cells fire, the mind spins; current or past circumstances play out like a movie. Gerri never dreamed, usually knocked out by drugs and vodka; however, since the funeral, images, motifs, and drama haunted his sleeping hours.

Surely these apparitions inform Gerri in some way about his grief. He hoped to understand this condition, then healing could begin and balance restored to his waking life. But his latest dream, unlike any other, drove him deeper into depression.

In the dream Shelby walked up to Gerri in a crowded place, as if they happened upon each other by chance, along the boardwalk in Venice Beach. Stunning, alluring, and radiant in her youth; she seemed just as he remembered her twenty years ago when they fell in love.

As she stood there, the morning light beaming from behind, Gerri could almost see through her; but the colors weren’t faded, on the contrary, everything about this dream popped.

Gerri believed God allowed him to interact with Shelby to lighten the immense guilt burdening his daily life since her death. The relationship between the significant and the fortuitous existed in God’s realm; he did not question the dreams, they were in a reality over which he had no control, indeed he was grateful for the Shelby’s appearance.

“Baby, do you realize how much I miss you?” Gerri asked her. “If I could go back to 1992 and marry you again, I’d do it, but I’d act differently this time!” Unlike Gerri who was plaintive and serious in these conversations, Shelby acted ethereal and joyous.

“Stop, that G.” Shelby said with a wry smile. “We can’t be going back there anyway.” “Let’s talk about right now,” she insisted. Shelby looked around, with her head on a swivel, making sure no one bumped into her on the busy boulevard.

“My love, I can’t stay long!” Shelby urged Gerri when he got distracted. Shelby held a Bible in her hand which looked like the old one from her childhood that sat on their home bookshelf, untouched. No white robes or halos over Shelby Austin, just comfortable jeans and flats with a colorful top, her hair pulled back in a girlish ponytail. Desultory, he was self-conscious for being heavier and much older than Shelby in this dream.

“What do you see of us down here?” Gerri questioned. She grinned, knowing his curiosity, adding seriously, “I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you very much at all.”

As the conversation wound down, a strong breeze blew across the boardwalk and on the horizon a storm gathered with dark, foreboding clouds. The crowd thinned out, flags swirled and snapped in the breeze, and big fat raindrops smacked the pavement, reminding Gerri of tears he shed during the day. [Never did a drop hit Shelby, which appeared very strange to the dreamer].

“My expectations were wrong when we got married, sugar.”

“Marriage was on my checklist. I did not take it seriously; I should have tried to understand what you were going through, instead of helping you with your self-image issues, we medicated our pain away,” Gerri continued, “once we got on that stuff, you never really came back to reality.” So filled with regret, the tears literally oozed from his eyes as he spoke, spilling down his cheeks in streams.

Shelby reached out to him, just beyond their touch. She searched his eyes and lovingly assured him through her tone and pitch, once again using her angelic voice, “Gerri, listen to me baby; none of us do what’s right, most of the time we only think of ourselves, even in marriage.”

“God showed me mercy, taking me from this world,” she looked around the scene, “I was a bad influence on Bobbi Kristina!” Now Shelby seemed remorseful, “Can you believe that I exposed my only daughter to the things that took me down?” “What role model is that?”

“I behaved badly; there were natural consequences for that down here, although it was all forgiven when I got home,” Shelby looked off toward the roiling surf. “It was like the prodigal’s feast.”

“And I can sing clearly again where I am Gerri,” she beamed, looking him directly in the eyes, unashamed; “Heaven is a good place. Your job is to take care of her now, your second chance is with your daughter; I will know how grown-up you are by what you do with her, Gerri.” That was all for now, then she turned and walked north back up the avenue.

 Stunned, Gerri just stood there fixed to the concrete. In just a moment looking down, Shelby blended in with the crowds and disappeared. He jogged toward where she had walked but she vanished as if a ghost.

Would Gerri say this correctly describes the dream: A ghost story? Or a love story?

©Mark H. Pillsbury

[fiction composed Feb. 19, 2012]

Part III: The Funeral of Shelby Austin

(Photo: AP Photo/Jason DeCrow)

“What the f*<k you mean I ain’t invited?!” Gerri shouted at the large man outfitted entirely in black, holding a walkie-talkie. “She was my wife, for Chr^st sake!”

Just inside the narthex of the huge New Hope Baptist church in Atlanta, Georgia, the scene played out with crowds surging inside the sanctuary.

The dark clouds over a noontime Atlanta sky heightened the somber mood of the congregants, even though Gerri Green’s passion was crackling like lightening inside the foyer of the church.

He leaned into the security guard but pointed toward the front of the building, where displayed upon a raised bier was a platinum casket with silver handles, adorned with hundreds of red roses, and covered by black velvet; appropriate for the saddest pop icon the world knew, Shelby Austin, otherwise known as the “Voice.”

Pleading and arguing at the same time, Gerri said, “This is not right, my man; Shelby was my life. I have to sit up front, I was her husband?!” The guard, unmoved, retorted dryly, “You were her husband, Gerri,” “You’re not family anymore, and only family are sitting upfront. Period.”

The big security guard was doing the pointing now, “no one gets up there without me escorting them.” 

But Gerri was gone...

He moved like a cat, avoiding the nine-lives bestowed upon a feline, swiftly pushing open the two swinging oak doors and walking right up to the center aisle of the church under the watchful eyes of mourners. Just like Gerri to demand the attention of the moment, he stopped right in front of the pewter colored box and dropped to one knee, doffing his black fedora. You could have heard a pin drop to the old slate floor.

All week Shelby struggled with her addictions and the impending 4^th trip to a very private rehab clinic near Sedona, Arizona. Jittery at rehearsals for the Grammys® and avoiding accountability from her handlers, Shelby was going to have one last “good” weekend in L.A. before trying to kick pills and booze once again, helped by professionals. Her mentor Clive Davis’ party at the Beverly Hills Hilton was the warm-up for Sunday’s awards ceremony at which she was scheduled to sing. The practice sessions were dreadful, but she kept assuring Clive that she was quitting cigarettes, getting healthy.

Gerri Green did not force the Voice to lace her marijuana cigarettes with base cocaine, but by the end of their tumultuous 15-year marriage they were buying kilos of the drug to blow together. The weight of his guilt and the reality of her passing drew him here today, even though he was not welcomed.

“I am so sorry for what I have done, God.” Gerri prayed at her coffin. “Keep her and protect her,” he was tearful yet defiant, he could feel the daggers in his back as thousands stared, seeing him as to blame somehow for her death. “She was your angel, Lord, take her back now; thank you for my time, for her love.” Gerri got up slowly, kissed the index and middle fingers of his right hand, and touched the sealed coffin, dropping his head and turning just as the security team reached him. “Good-bye, sugar,” he said, looking back toward Shelby.

He could barely walk down the aisle, the retinue almost carried him by the elbows. All agility and power were gone, seemingly left at the foot of the coffin with his prayers. Gerri Green was a broken, forlorn man retreating toward the rear of the chapel. The squawking walkie-talkies chirped over the silent stares of each row as he was escorted out ignominiously, like a criminal on a perp-walk, destination: an Atlanta police car.

She could not beat this devil, nor the others that haunted her; Gerri Green was the personification of the wrong turns her life took in the 1990s, from which Shelby Austin never recovered. Now she was free. Even though her body was tightly enclosed in front of the throngs of friends and admirers assembled here today, later to be laid to rest; her soul was in heaven. Shelby was singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among the angels, and making music to the Lord with a joyful heart.

Life is lived either moving toward God or away from Him. Shelby’s commitment to her Lord wavered over the journey through fame, which turned out to be a cortege. All our most lovely moments perhaps are timeless, and so it was as Gerri made his way out of the church and into a waiting cab; he heard the song playing on the Atlanta FM station, surely commemorating the somber ceremony about to start behind him. It was the song that always reminded him of her love, and he hated to share the damn thing with millions of fans. The warmth he felt of the “good old days” of which the song reminded him, was surely the illusion of timelessness, and yet he was sure Shelby would have wanted to say good-bye before he left.

As the song played on the car radio, he spoke to her again, ripping apart inside, but with a proud exterior, “dear Shelby, I will miss you so much, you were the best thing that ever happened to me and I screwed it all up!” “Please forgive me and watch over Bobbi Kristina. I will always love you.”

“Now drive!” he screamed to the cab-driver, and it was over; he could look toward the church no longer.

©Mark H. Pillsbury
[this is a fictional account partly based on real life characters, not meant to be factual; it is a dramatization of Whitney Houston's funeral, any other similarities are coincidental]