In Memoriam: James Ingram
The funny thing about getting older and birthdays is, the more of them we have, the more aware we become of our own mortality and of death's nagging presence - or something like that. I’m only paraphrasing my mom. She said it more eloquently though, and in that half-foreboding, half-quixotic way only mothers can.
Today, I was reminded of this pithy truth, and of the thinness of time with the news of James Ingram’s passing. “Oh no, not James!”, I thought.
American celebrity fangirl-dom was never a part of my Jamaican experience growing up - a fact I’m quick to boast to my French and American friends. Yet, for some, we Jamaicans are quick to make an exception: Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton and Steven Seagal, for example. There’s also James Ingram, the quiet, genteel, can-do-no-wrong, R&B crooner of ‘80s and ‘90s fame with the voice as clear as glass. He was the ‘R&B king’ who never once had to remind anyone of his king-ness. He just was.
I don’t remember when James came into our (mine and my sister’s) lives, or who introduced him to us, but he never quite left. Even if time (and the charts) tried to make us forget. My sister and I, while we rarely agreed on music, we 100% agreed on James. My favourite song of his was the one he did with Dolly, ‘The Day I Fall in Love’. Hers was, ‘One Hundred Ways’. ‘Just Once’ was the one we liked together.
Approaching my mid-thirties, listening to James takes me back to boyhood territory: My sister and I are in the kitchen, singing. I’m doing my weird version of the Charleston and she’s clutching her chest, doing her famous ‘Terri head bop’. That’s our ‘kitchen dance’.
With tears streaming down my face I send her a silly text about our childhood icons leaving us. It’s, in part, an acknowledgement of the fact that we’re getting older. Our youth and days of childlike insouciance seem long behind us. Behind me…
‘Life is short’. My mother’s warnings return me to the present. The lesson that adulthood is as much about ageing as it is accepting that we lose friends and loved ones is a hard one to accept. Still, and perhaps naively, I hope life will be kind to me. That I’ll have the appropriate strength and grace to deal with these ‘growing pains’ as they come my way.
Today, though, I want no part of grace - or composure. I wish to mourn James, and my youth. I want to cry, and dance. And pray. So I do.
I pray for the soul of the man who gave my family so much, without even knowing. I pray for his family; that they be comforted. Finally, I pray that the Lord accept his majestic voice into His choir of heavenly angels.
And as the tears fall, I do one more kitchen dance for James.
With love,
Ryo
Like what you see? Drop me a comment so we can get to know each other! Also, don't forget to like, subscribe and share :)