Whitney...

I (Donna) saw Whitney Houston when her first album was just out. I don't think I had even bought it yet. She was opening for Jeffrey Osborne. That's who my friend and I had really gone to see. The concert was at Westbury Music Fair, a small theater in the round in Long Island, NY. I can still feel the way her voice washed over me and took my breath away from the first notes, the tingle of her elegant, powerful music. Although they were a big part of her show, you didn't go to watch her dance, or gawk at the costume changes. You came for that sound. Her sound.

Yesterday, she took my breath away again. I had reached to turn off the radio in my car, when I heard the bulletin that Whitney had died. I had to sit there and collect myself. Whitney's life seems to have had some devastating lows. I hope they were not because of the soaring highs that her singing brought to her millions of fans. Why does great talent so often seem coupled with great pain? Is it the gift that is hard to bear, or the grind of having so many people to please...or disappoint? I have no answer. I can only hope that somehow, somewhere, she found some peace.