by Brigitte Bloemen, Marina Dobler, Stephanie Grosse &Sonja Winterholler, Germany
In the beginning we were deeply shocked about everything that unfolded in front of our eyes and could not believe that Michael would indeed have to endure such accusations, slander and pain for a second time in his life!
Although those accusations were ridiculous and obviously fabricated, accusing him of such a terrible crime like hurting a child and making the whole world believe it, thanks to incompetent journalists, was the most terrible thing they could have done to him. We knew it literary ripped Michael’s heart apart, especially when he had to realize that so many of his so-called “friends” had abandoned him in this time of need and even many fans were not so sure what to believe and preferred to keep low-key until things would clear up.
However we knew that we needed to do something - anything to show him that there are still people out there who do not believe what was said. So as soon as the date for the first arraignment in January 2004 was set, nothing could hold us back from traveling to California to support Michael.
Once in Santa Maria we were shocked to see like an army of police, helicopters flying above the court building supporting the crazy media circus with about a hundred journalists from all over the world and several hundred onlookers that besieged the place. It was a chaotic scenery, to say the least. We were very relieved as we saw familiar faces of fellow fans standing behind crowd barriers with messages of love and faith to morally support Michael on this terrible day.
When Michael arrived and walked into the building, we thought he looked strong, determined and confident and he even amplified our impressions on his way out by greeting fans along the barrier and finally even jumping on top of his SUV for everyone to see him. To be honest, we were elated to see him like that and it indeed eased our worries for him a little bit. Our hearts, however, knew better, they couldn’t be fooled by our eyes’ impressions.
After the court proceedings, the crowd headed for Neverland, because word had spread that Michael would open his ranch for the public that day. Thousands of people took the opportunity to finally satisfy their nosiness and enjoyed a day in his amusement park, his zoo, his arcade, they ate and drank as they wished and just took advantage of the opportunity to snoop around Michael’s home. Obviously most of them simply had a great time.
However we fans felt very different. Michael once said: “Neverland is me! It represents the totality of who I am”, so to us it appeared as if Michael felt that he needed to strip himself naked, to turn his inside out for the public to see and finally understand him. The feeling we had at the ranch that day was a very sad one and to us Neverland had not much to do with the magical place we had experienced before. The fact that the press was besieging the place did not help much either - helicopters were flying over Neverland all the time and outside waited dozens of cameras as well.
A few days later most fans were on their way home. For some reason that had to do with the price, we had booked our flight home a couple of days later than the others and so we suddenly were the only ones left. Although we made little trips to nearby sights, we came back to Neverland’s gate every day, to at least be closer to Michael for the short remaining time of our stay.
From the outside Neverland was back to normal, however inside the place had been defiled and its spirit destroyed. Like all other fans who cared, we so badly wanted to help Michael - to make it easier, to make him feel better - but we had no idea how to achieve that. We wrote letters of support, made some cheer-up presents and tried to forward those items to him through his security guards.
One afternoon we were sitting in the grass nearby the gate when one of Michael’s brothers drove out of Neverland. Since we were eating at that moment, we did not pay too much attention to him, but when he stopped his car and waved to us, we eventually stood up and walked over to him. We said “Hi” to each other and asked him how Michael was doing. He answered that he was “OK” - according to the circumstances, but we did not miss the sad undertone in his voice.
So we asked if he could hand Michael some cheer-up presents from us, but he simply answered that we could do that ourselves. Of course we were confused now, as he quickly continued that Michael would drive out of Neverland the next day, early in the morning, and if we would be there, he would certainly stop for us. We were speechless to say the least and thanked him for his kindness to let us know about it.
Of course we were very excited now and wracked our brains what we could say or do for him to cheer him up. Needless to say we had an almost sleepless night ahead of us. The alarm clock woke us up in the middle of the night and not much later we were on our way to Neverland. When we arrived there and parked nearby the gate, at our usual parking place, we realized that the security guards were in highest alert at first - because of us arriving there in the middle of the night. They later told us that it was very dangerous out there at that time, especially at night because crazy people, often with racist background or drunk, drove by the gate of Neverland at night and threw or shouted nasty things in their direction. They were scared that one day someone might even shoot at them or try to break through the gate with their cars in order to harm Michael. So it is very understandable that they were very relieved once they recognized us as simply fans.
It was dark and really cold that night and we even had to remove a layer of ice from the front shield of our car. We had brought many tea candles with which we formed a heart on the side of the driveway, then we prepared our presents, our letter and repeated what we wanted to say to Michael so we wouldn’t forget in our nervousness.
Time went by and nothing happened except from us getting frozen. We already thought that Michael’s brother had made fun of us, as suddenly headlights of a big vehicle, coming out of Neverland, could be seen coming towards the gate. At first we were unsure what kind of vehicle it was, but soon we recognized a big bus slowly rolling closer. Only very slowly it dawned on us that this bus might have something to do with Michael. Absolutely transfixed we stood next to our candle heart and saw the bus stopping for a moment before the gate opened.
The two guards walked next to it as the bus rolled through the gate towards us. The next thing we saw was the bus door opened and Michael’s assistant walked over to us and asked us if there was anyone from the press here. After we denied, she told us to come with her. Because of our shock and nervousness we hesitated for a moment. Then we saw her going in the bus and as she came back out again, she told us that each one of us could go in - separately.
“Separately!?”, we all spoke out loud. We could not believe all this was real. It was, of course, not at all that we did not want to meet Michael, on the contrary, but we had expected a totally different situation, with him driving by and opening a window something like that. But to walk into a bus, one by one and to have a private moment with him there, was overwhelming for us and each one of us felt unprepared for that.
Our friend Stephanie, who had not heard what Michael’s assistant had just told us, came closer to us to hear what was up, and so without a second thought, we told her that she was the first one to go inside to meet Michael. She had no time to disagree…
Stephanie: So I was the first to enter the bus. I climbed up the stairs and with the last two of them I tumbled to Michael’s feet - feeling embarrassed to my bones. While getting up I did not recognize Michael had come closer. When I lifted my eyes, he stood right in my face - nearly tumbling backwards I looked straight into his “eyes" - being in a state of shock all I could say was: “Hi.” He replied with a “Hi” as well and kissed me on each cheek. I was trying to remember all these smart sentences we had come up with earlier and even brought to paper, but they didn’t come back to my mind. Having this silence around us, Michael frowned his forehead trying to figure out what I might be thinking. Feeling caught, I remembered that a few days ago security guards of Neverland had come out to pick up all the presents that fans had wanted to give to Michael to support him, me and my siblings, who are hard of hearing, had made a big banner with a sentence in sign language that said “We believe in you”. This banner had been among all the presents given to Michael a few days ago. While standing face to face with Michael now, I asked if he had got those presents. He confirmed it and so I asked him if a banner had also caught his attention. He thought about that for a moment and slightly something came to his mind: “Yeees”. I jogged his memory by interposing that the banner contained a sentence written in sign language. This made his memory clearer and he recalled: ”Oohh yeees!” I asked him if he understood the meaning of the signs. He simply said: “No”. Of course I offered him the explanation: “We believe in you!”
He directly fell into my arms and hugged me strongly. I took the opportunity to thank him for being the person he was and being moreover an inspirational influence to so many people, especially to my hard of hearing-siblings. Listening to music is very unusual for them and nothing we can imagine. Everything sounds exotic to them and cannot be compared to noises we can differentiate. We are blessed to be able to enjoy Michael’s music and all noises around us effortless. Being touched by his art and feeling deep love and admiration for him, they trained very hard by listening to his music over and over, focusing on little details and trying to recognize recurrent elements such as single words. Reaching this level of training, it automatically had an influence on their daily life, for example school-life became much easier for them - still today it helps them to orient themselves better in the world of hearing persons. To hear this, Michael felt overwhelmed and we shared another emotional moment by embracing tightly and for a long time. This was the moment when I felt this is no longer a one-sided support from us fans to Michael — he also needed us around him to take heart from stories such as mine. He supported my feeling continuing with the words: “Tell all the fans that I love them very much and appreciate their support all over the world. You are all very special to me and I need you. “Regarding the aggravating circumstances of the time, he added that those responsible for him being in this horrible situation “want to destroy me” and that “it is all a big lie and not true!” He intensively appealed to me to come back and support him. I guess there are no more words required to grasp the deep relationship between Michael and us fans excluding barriers and including an equal status as family to him - having this experience on my back, I left the bus a different person.
As Stephanie climbed down the stairs of the bus again, Sonja was to be the next one of us to meet Michael. Hesitantly she walked up the few stairs…
Sonja: And there I suddenly stood — right in front of Michael stupidly saying “Hi Michael”. I tried so hard to remember the questions we had prepared and I had written down to ask him if possible, but now in this very moment, everything was gone. The only question that came to my mind and that would also make sense in this situation was “How are you?”— and so I asked him that Michael just stood there and didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me, but held my left hand with both of his hands very tightly. He then leaned over and kissed me on each cheek, but still he did not say a word. I was a bit confused and didn’t know what to do. So the next thing I asked him was "Are you fine?” He finally looked directly at me and bursted out, “No!” And he continued while squeezing my hand: “I just pretend to be fine, but I’m not - I’m not.” In the same second, he hugged me very tightly and I realized that he was crying. Oh my God, now I began to understand why he hadn’t said anything before. He had tried not to lose his poise and not to cry, but my questions didn’t help…
We stood there for quite a while just hugging each other. Michael sobbed a few times and I felt that he was shaking, although it was quite warm inside the bus. It took me at least half a minute to really understand that in this moment Michael was hugging me, crying and just showing and telling me his true feelings. Until this moment I had thought he really would be that strong and positive about the upcoming trial, like he had shown the public at the first arraignment a few days before. How naive I was! Of course, he was scared and of course he was hurt as much as one can be, facing these terrible allegations, when all he ever wanted to do was to help this kid, as he had helped so many sick children before and after that. Given these thoughts and feeling him shiver, I also had to fight with the tears. But then Michael kept on telling me that the fans’ presence at the court helped him so much and that we should tell all the fans to come back to the trial and support him. “It means so much to me!” - and he continued: “Go on the internet and tell all the fans that I love them sooo much!” He said that directly into my ear for we were still hugging each other. Although he was still sobbing between the words, his voice sounded so soft and wonderful. I said to him that we will tell his words to the fans and that many of us would love to be there for him all the time, but live in Europe or somewhere else - I also mentioned that we are from Germany - and that it is hard to make it to all court dates. I only wanted to explain, why we or other fans could not be there every day, although we would so much love to and I think he understood what I meant. He just said “I know” and squeezed me very tightly. In this moment I felt that this was the most emotional hug I’ve ever received or given to someone. Now it really didn’t matter who he was or who I was — it was just two people embracing each other. It was amazing. Overwhelmed by emotions I couldn’t contain myself and said, “I love you so much”. After holding this BIG hug for a few more seconds, both of us at the same time finally let go.
I was so confused that I almost went out of the bus without saying or doing anything else, when I remembered that I had a little Bavarian flag on which we had written "Munich loves you” for Michael. So I once again turned towards Michael and said “Oh, and this is for you”.
He took the flag with his big hand so that it almost disappeared in it and answered “thank you’’. Then I finally turned around and tried to walk down the stairs with very shaky knees.
As white as a wall, Sonja came out of the bus and Marina was the next one to climb up those stairs.
Marina: The sight of Sonja had made me feel insecure, not about meeting Michael, but about the emotional toll it might take. I stopped when I saw Michael waiting at the top of the stairs, looking towards me.
Sheepishly I said “Good morning, Michael” to him. At first he just looked at me not moving at all. It seemed he wanted to say something but after a few moments, he suddenly took my hands and pulled me up the two remaining stairs, kissed me on each cheek and embraced me tightly. In that moment all the pent-up tension, all the fear and sorrow for him, all the concern, all the sympathy but mostly all the love for him finally unloaded and tears streamed down my face. “I love you so much, Michael!” were the only words that came out of my mouth. Now Michael could not stay composed either, even though he had tried so hard, and so he broke into tears as well, while saying “I love you so much more”. He embraced me even tighter than before, trying to console me by caressing my head and back.
We both couldn’t stop crying and it seemed to escalate more and more. I felt and experienced in those moments, how totally upset, deeply hurt and broken Michael was by all the terrible things that went on in his life. He was not at all confident, as he had tried to show the world a few days earlier at the court building in Santa Maria. At some point Michael began to tremble from top till toe. It was so obvious that he desperately needed people in his life that he could lean on and trust and who believed in his innocence. For quite a while we simply held each other sobbingly, when he suddenly with a broken voice said ,“…you know they hurt me so much with this, they try to destroy me…” His whole body shivered badly as he said those words and I helplessly tried to console him as best as I could by caressing his back, yet found no words of consolation, because I knew the situation he was in was just terrible and to claim anything else would have been a blatant lie. “I know…, I know…” was all I could stammer and again we both had to cry so much, that we could hardly breathe. It felt like Michael was drowning and desperately tried to grasp at straws when he embraced me even tighter, it almost hurt. Yet in this moment of deepest desperation, he now tried to speak again, almost voiceless from all the crying, he croaky whispered in a desperate and beseeching way, “…but we must heal the world and help the children”. The way he uttered those words worried me more than anything, because they held a feeling of “Goodbye” in them, as if he tried to indicate that he would not be here with us for very much longer and needed us (fans) to fulfill his mission.
Instinctively I answered: “Oh, we will - but we will do it together with you, Michael!”, trying to tell him that we all need him so much. By these words he literally broke down again and sobbed so badly that I needed to hold him up, in a way, and keep the balance for us both. Again we cried so much and it took quite a while until Michael suddenly found the strength to pull himself together. I tried to follow his example and both still shaking and our faces wet from each other’s tears, we finally said Goodbye to one another, before I shakily went down the stairs again, feeling completely worn out, heartbroken and empty.
Brigitte: While Marina had been up there with Michael, I only dared to glance up once briefly to make sure I heard correctly, and indeed Marina and Michael were in each other’s arms and it sounded as if they were both sobbing. It was dark and quiet piano music was playing in the bus. I was still shaking and freezing because of the cold, but also because of being so nervous and not knowing what to expect now. So, I continued trying to distract myself and kept talking to Michael’s assistant, who was standing next to the bus driver’s place. I told the assistant some stories about why we were still here, that we came for the arraignment, but booked our return flight later since it was almost half as expensive.
While still talking, I heard Marina moving in my direction, trying to get past and down the stairs out of the bus. Without saying a word and looking not like herself, Marina pushed past me and almost tripped and fell down the stairs. The state Marina was in and the sound of sobbing I had heard before scared me a little bit, to be honest. So I tried my best to play for time, but after I held Marina a bit and helped her out of the bus, it was my turn.
Shyly and slowly I climbed up the stairs towards Michael, still avoiding to look up at him. I did not want to look him straight in the eyes, not to embarrass him and myself, so I just held out my hand towards Michael to say "Hi”. But before I could say a word, he grabbed my hand and pulled me towards him and immediately hugged me tightly.
I was kind of hanging there, about two stairs lower than where Michael was standing while he was pulling me closer and closer. There was a small barrier in the bus to define a place behind the driver and prevent people from falling down which also had a handle for people going up the last stairs to hold on. And since I could not climb up all the stairs for Michael had grabbed me before, I happened to have this barrier directly in my stomach which was not very comfortable, especially since Michael was pulling me against it real hard and was not letting go.
Anyway, so early in the morning, being tired, frozen, nervous and confused, your senses are working quite selectively sometimes — so I managed to forget having this barrier pushed into my stomach after mere seconds. It was only after a while that I realized how warm Michael felt and that he tried to warm me up by rubbing my back with his hand. He must have felt me shaking like crazy. The sound that the rubbing on the jacket made finally “woke me up” and I could feel Michael was also shaking a bit and he was weeping on my shoulder. We both stayed like this for at least one or two minutes without saying anything. Then, I heard his voice whispering in my ear: “Go on the internet… ”. As I said before, I was not completely myself then and there, and I just heard something about the internet, and was wondering, what he is talking about. However, after finally concentrating and probably telling my ear to listen, I could hear him go on: “Go on the internet and tell them all, tell all the fans I love them so much and they should come next time to the court! It’s SO important to me!” Having said that, Michael pulled me even harder towards himself. I could barely breathe, but I responded: “l promise they will come - it meant a lot to us as well” (meaning it made us feel better, too, to be finally able to help and support him and to give back to him after he gave so much to the world for years). After that Michael started to cry again. I felt kind of helpless and confused, I was shaking and sobbing, but could not really cry. It felt more like being in shock, I instinctively started rubbing his back as he did before. He hugged and embraced me tighter for a few moments, I could feel him breathing and sobbing - then he finally let go. He stepped back a bit, held his hands pressed together in front of his face and quietly whispered “I love you”. I said “I love you more”, turned around in total shock and almost fell down the stairs I was still standing on. Just before going down the stairs further, however, I saw I still had the three postcards from Munich which we had written to Michael last night in one hand. They were a bit bended since they had been stuck somewhere between the barrier, Michael and me, but I turned around once more, said “oh and this is for you” and gave them to him. He said a quiet “oh, thank you” while still wiping away some tears.
I stumbled out of the bus finding the rest of us staring at each other in disbelief, shaking, holding each other… we were simply lost for words.
The bus kept standing there for another few minutes, the door still open. We all were so exhausted and worn out that we don’t remember exactly all that happened then, but what we do remember, is Michael’s assistant talking to the security guards about what to “do” with us now and Michael telling them to let us into Neverland, to have something to eat and drink - obviously to make us feel a bit better and calm down our distraught state.
We all went closer to the bus door again as we heard Michael’s voice and once he saw all of us again, he immediately walked down to touch each one of us and said “Thank you!” We told him in response to stay strong and keep the faith and that we would be there for him and love him so much. While not letting go of our hands, he said in a very loud and deep voice: “I love you more!” Then the bus door closed and the bus drove off, with him still standing at the window waving to us and us waving to him.
That cold January morning changed all of us. It was the most heart-breaking, most hurting experience of our life to feel that someone you love so much is hurting so bad, yet to understand that you are unable to truly help, besides supporting him with all your heart and by simply being there for him. But what impressed us the most and made us truly understand who Michael really is, was that even in those darkest and most hopeless moments of his life, Michael’s heart went out to others, to the ones in need, especially to sick and poor children and to our hurting planet! We understood that this is what Michael really was all about! He was about helping and loving and caring for one another! And no matter how many times people tried to ridicule, belittle and hurt him and even, like in the last years, tried to destroy him, Michael never lost his ability to love and care and his deep desire to help others! He simply loved more!
- from the book ”A Life for L.O.V.E.: Michael Jackson stories you should have heard before“
