Video is both a priceless memory aid, a live moment in time, forever captured, and frustratingly inadequate. You can see that moment, hear it. But you can’t go back. You can’t remake, reorder and retake the steps between that moment and now. You can explain to people younger than you, with different memories and history than you, what it felt like, sounded like, was like to be there.

And so it is this morning that I find myself frustratingly unable to reconcile the Whitney Houston in the video above, when it was 1987, and she was on the way to becoming the biggest, most talented, most gorgeous and absolutely respected singers and actresses imaginable, and the one in now often-imitated reality show and interview clips, talking about crack and yelling at her husband. I don’t know how to explain how it felt to be 14 years old in 1985 and be taken to a fancy concert hall to see this beautiful singer, not much older than you, alone and vulnerable on a great big stage, and filling that space with just her enthusiasm and that voice – my God, that voice – and a promise so palpable you could almost touch it.

Whitney Houston, superstar of records, films, dead at 48 | Photos: Her voice will never be forgotten | Share your condolences: Online guestbook |
Photos: 2012 notable deaths

How can I explain how much we all wanted to be Whitney Houston, to hope that even the thinnest slice of whatever magic gave her that gift would touch us for just a minute? Because to have been able to have sung like that, for just one song … I think I’d have given anything. How do I explain the thrill of watching that clip of her singing “Didn’t We Almost Have It All,” sitting cross-legged on the floor of our basement family room in 1987, just two years after I saw her live? You can see it now. You can hear it now. But you know how the story ended, what she became, what happened to that voice and that face and that promise.

How do I explain what that moment was like, before any of that, when you could experience it without irony or mourning or judgement and just let that pitch-perfect voice wash over you, just hear a young woman with the world still ahead of her in a plaintive cry of regret, starting a capella for a moment until the music joins that voice like the delicious reunion of a long-lost love?

And that’s what the song was about, a sweet requieum for a love and a time that was almost perfect, but wasn’t, because it couldn’t last. We know that now, definitively, and I find myself trying not to cry. Even as a kid, you know that nothing is forever, that people die, friendships end and ties become undone. But there seemed so much more ahead of us than behind, so much more promise than there was pain, and I don’t know how to explain it to you.

There is a moment in the last verse, where she deliciously draws out the final refrain “Didn’t we…almost…have…it…” and her eyes widen, as if suddenly injected in her heart with an extra-strong dose of reality, as if the past perfection and the future without that love commingled and was just too much, making the word “all” is too painful to pronounce. Because the loss of a love that perfect is so mind-blowingly tragic, a reminder of the fragility of everything, that it’s almost too much to bear.

And that is how it has felt, as a fan, who saw her and heard her in the beginning, to know that we didn’t just almost have that voice – that it was there, that it existed in the world like a reminder of something better – and that then we didn’t. That before Whitney Houston died, the things she did to herself killed that voice. You can shake your head and give “tut-tuts” about the ravages of drugs and divahood and weird relationships, and you might be right about how that. Maybe those things are the reason that we got from there, to here….not to her physical death, but the death of that voice, that effortless, powerful, tender, heart-bleed of an instrument that seemed, in its most memorable moments, to be born of ache, regret and Godly benevolence.

Because you don’t make a voice like that, folks. You can train it, practice it and fine-tune it. But no matter what your vocal teacher tells you, a voice like that is a gift from God, or heredity, or dumb luck, or whoever it is that gives out perfect voices. Maybe you don’t get to keep it forever. But you don’t get to take it for granted, and I’m afraid that maybe she did. I am mourning Whitney Houston, who was a mother and an ex-wife, and a daughter and a friend, and a mentor, and a co-star, to other people. I did not know her. But I knew that voice, and I know that it wasn’t just time that took it from us – it was drugs, and abuse, and the ravages of life.

Every time she staged a comeback, I closed my eyes and pressed “play” and crossed my fingers, and hoped for a miracle the way you do when you see someone you love after a long illness. They’re gonna be like they were, right? Don’t they look well? Isn’t it almost like it was?

Well, it’s not. And it wasn’t. And every time she opened her mouth and this nice, perfectly pleasant voice came out, we would look at each other and nod and say “Doesn’t she sound good?” because we were just happy to have avoided a train wreck. How nice that it wasn’t a complete disaster. But that makes it almost worse, because she didn’t use to be good. She used to be miraculous. There’s a line in that song that says “You know we’ll never love that way again” and maybe that’s the way it’s supposed to be. The sad reality of life is that there will always be a moment after which you will never be as young, as beautiful, as on your game. And it’s normal to look back fondly and say “I wish I could go back to that.” But we can’t, not without bringing back the knowledge of what we’ve become, of how the choices we’ve made brought us from that miracle back down to earth.

But I remember Whitney Houston, before she became, to some, a joke, a cautionary tale, an empty diva without self-awareness or a filter. I remember her when she was a miracle. And just for a moment, I want you to remember her that way, too.