It’s not in dispute that Whitney Houston was born to dazzle, what with her unmatched physical beauty and musical prowess, but she ended up dead young, perhaps a victim of her own success.

 She is in the good company of others like Michael Jackson, Amy Winehouse and other household names.
Nothing new there one might say, but watching her funeral service beamed live across the world on Saturday night, one could not help but notice the elephant in the room was being skirted around — and I had thought this was typically an African phenomenon of creating saints out of the dead!

Granted, it is only fair to the family to spare them any anguish by speaking ill of their dead at their time of grief, but come on, this was a very public figure.

Her fall from grace to near-grass was hardly private, what with her drug addiction and alcoholism.
She had tried to make a comeback, we have to grant her that, and it probably took a Herculean task.
But for all speakers to obliterate this piece of her life was to take niceties too far.

I was alarmed that some had the audacity to speak her name and that of the revered Mother Teresa in one breath.
Someone should have had the courage to tactfully let us learn of the dangers of drugs, drawing parallels with her life.

Her service was more about the Whitney we would have loved to see than the real one.

G. Gachiengo,
Via email.

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