His father died thesame day Michael Jackson died

Yesterday's morning, I was listening to a favorite radio program that is being aired from 6:30am to 9:00am. At a particular section of the program, the birthdays of popular faces would be announced .

I must confess, it's quite cool knowing that you share thesame birthday with important and great personalities around the world. As a July 19th born, It was from this radio channel that I got to know that I share same birthday with Tom Hanks, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Hemsworth, Vin Diesel, Sandra Bullock , Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney and Selena Gomez. 😁

Yesterday, it was announced that the great Michael Jackson was one of the celebrants of the 29th August . At the mention of the legend, my mind quickly took me back to memory lane some 13years ago when he died.

I was in my first year in high school at the time. My aunty had called my mom at around 6:ooam and broke the news his death. I was already awake at the time since my family were already out our bed and we had offered our morning prayers some 30mins ago.

Since there was light at the time,me and my elder sister rushed to the sitting room and switched on the TV and every channel both local and international was talking about the death of the king of POP. Even though I was very young at the time, i instinctively knew that there wouldn't be anyone like him ever again. Before his death, I have heard countless stories about him from my father and others. His music alone was... Infact he was created for music... Hell ! I could watch MJ's music videos all day without even thinking of food. Well, he looked much better before the surgery, although I was told by my dad that he had a skin disorder at a particular time in his life.

Me and my sister were so engrossed in the news and documentaries about Michael's life and death that our mom had to scream at us to start getting ready for school.

The whole school was already agog with the news of MJ's death to the extent that the early morning assembly was delayed. And by the time we gathered, the first news that was announced by the student journalist was MJ's demise and once again all the students broke into a momentary uproar before the principal screamed at us to maintain order.

However there had been a student in our class who was absent. He was not just any student but the class rep himself. It was not until midday that information got to us that our class rep's dad had died too in the early hours of the morning.

But nobody seemed bothered . We were still talking about MJ and some of the boys had already started mimicking his famous "moon walking" albiet in a awkward and silly way . Other students were so engrossed in an old magazine that covered MJ's life's history. This was definitely unlike before when the class students would express deep shock whenever we hear of the death o f a parent.

Even our class teacher forgot to select a group of students that would be sent on a condolence call to the house of the class rep. No need to mention that this was the usual practice whenever a parent dies but the teachers were also talking about MJ at the office.

On our way back home from school, we still forgot to stop by the house of our class rep and commiserate with him over his loss. We all kept chattering about MJ's life and music till we got to the junction were we usually disperse to our various home.

It was on the next day that we only started thinking and talking about the other man's death. ...................

Life's isn't fair. And sometimes it would seem that death is also discriminatory. A rich or famous person is still given more priority even in death. People would always take extra time and energy to analyze and probe into the life of an influential person and could keep talking about them decades after their demise. Even the celebrities that are still breathing, alot of people online and offline wouldn't care investigating and talk about insignificant stuffs that they do everyday and how they live their lives.

But the life and death of an average man is like any other . Nothing more between the time he was born and the time he left the world, inscribed on a slab above his grave.

He'd be lucky if even his own family continue to tell others about his life in the next ten to fifteen years after his death. Even his memory might not even linger in his own extended family.

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Thank you for reading ♥️😁