It’s hard to believe that it was a year ago today that Lady Teena Marie transitioned from labor to reward.

I was sitting in my room when one of my roommates, David, knocked on my door.  ”Boo, I don’t want to alarm you…but there’s something floating around the internet saying that Teena died…”

No, I didn’t know Lady.  But anyone who knows me, referred to her on a one name, first name basis, because she was just that much a part of my daily life.  I had lived and breathed her music since I was a teenager.

I immediately dismissed it as an internet rumor.  ”She was just tweeting last night”, I retorted., grabbing my computer to prove it.  Just as I was doing that, my cell phone rang.   When I saw my dear friend, Sunshine Brown, on the caller ID, my insides knew that it was true.

“Are you sitting down?”, she asked, her own voice shaking.  She and her husband, Tony, a legendary Philly DJ, knew and loved Teena.  They gave her my debut album back in 2004 and got my “Naked To The World” flat autographed.

“It’s true”, I said.  Flatly.  Numb.  The room was spinning.

“It is”, she whispered.  ”We just got word at the station from Patty Jackson who spoke with the family.”

The minute we disconnected, I immediately dialed a sister-friend who also had known Teena.  Even though Sunshine had confirmed it, I think I wanted Patsy to somehow tell me that it wasn’t true.  When Patsy answered, she immediately said “Tim, are you okay?”

I just remember my insides bursting.  I was sobbing.  David and Kare tried to console me, but there really was no comfort.  I don’t know if I actually was, but I felt like I was shaking.

It just didn’t seem right.  Or fair.

“I didn’t even know her…I feel so stupid…”, I remember rambling.

David replied almost immediately…”Boo…you knew her….You knew her in the spirit.”

I laid in my bed and I cried for a few hours.  I poured myself a healthy glass of wine and turned on my special mix of her jazzy, romantic songs.  I heard her ask “Will I grow old gracefully?” in “Romantica”, I heard her say “I thank God I ain’t comin’ back no more” in “De Ja Vu”, and I knew somehow that she was ready.  That’s why she was gone.

I mourned for weeks, pretty incessantly.  I left the city and moved to the country in January.  I remember sitting in my empty house just after moving in and playing a live version of “De Ja Vu” that she had done with Wonderlove and I cried like I did the day she passed.

People say “We should celebrate her life” and, in a sense, they are right.  But I still mourn.

You see, Lady’s life and music changed mine.

I was a teenager when I first heard her, after a godbrother told me that we were kind of the same person in many ways.    I had pretty much grown up on a healthy diet of gospel music.  I started exploring secular music later than most.  Teena’s music spoke to me like gospel did .  As Laura Nyro once sang “Love is surely gospel”, and that’s what Teena was to me.

Lady revealed all that was sacred and holy about love–the agony and the glory.

I had spent most of my life hiding from that aspect of myself.  I knew who I was…but if I didn’t open the box, then I’d never have to feel it.  But Teena made me want to tear that box open and never look back.  I wanted to feel everything she felt.  I wanted to love unabashedly….”If I were a bell…then baby I would ring each day for you.”

She wrote the poetry of my soul.  She created a language….A language I did my best to learn and speak fluently: the language of love.

The last time I saw Lady in concert was in 2009, just after “Congo Square” had been released, at the Stoned Soul Picnic in San Francisco with my sister, Andrea Castro-Sutherland.  We both commented on how free she was, even moreso than when we had seen her in the past.    I had seen her previously in 2004, during the final tour with Rick James.  In just five years, she had fully stepped into her eldership.

She was in another dimension.  She was doing her kickdance, seemingly channeling.  Twirling, crossing the worlds.  She had integrated her old school favorites into the show, honoring the past & the present, as well as her friend-brother-mentor, Rick James.

It was high church.  The house of funk.   She was a high priestess.

That’s how I remember her.  And that’s why I mourn.

I’ll never hear a new song she wrote.  Never hear her make an old song new.  I won’t get to hear about her life through the next album.  And that is hard to accept.

Since December 26, 2010, I have continued to remember her.  I still cry when I play her–which is daily.  I felt myself getting heavy as December approached and I felt compelled to do something on December 26 this year to honor her life.

So I am.

I’m holding ritual at my house all day today.  I am playing her entire catalog.  I am preparing gumbo, one of her favorite meals. I’ll be serving her a plate under her shrine in my house.  Friends will be coming through and we will read her poetry together and say prayers in her honor.

There will never be another Lady Teena Marie, Mary Christine Brockert, Our Lady of Venice Harlem.  ”Honey you’re not mine…we’ve just touched through time.”  I’m so grateful that her life touched mine, so distantly and so intimately, all at the same time.