{This article is written by a fellow journalist MDaley reporting for The Daily News.}
LOS ANGELES - The accolade that would have meant more than anything to Michael Jackson, the moment everyone will best remember, came at the end when his 11-year-old daughter, Paris, spoke the first public words of her life before the whole world.
"I just wanted to say ..." she began.
"Speak up, sweetheart, speak up," her aunt Janet Jackson softly said.
Paris continued, her left hand trembling on the microphone, her right clutching the stand.
" ... ever since I was born ..."
Her left hand went to the back of her neck and her face constricted in pain, but she continued.
" ... Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine."
She paused and her head bowed.
She breathed in twice, fighting back sobs.
She kept on with this spectacularly brave act of total devotion for the father who lay in the rose-covered coffin before the stage where she stood. She was steadied in his love for her and propelled by all she felt for him.
"And I just wanted to say I love him so much," she said.
She turned into her aunt's embrace. Her older brother, 12-year-old Prince Michael, stepped over, joining in, his face full of that same love, for his father, for his sister, for their family.
The youngest, 7-year-old Prince Michael II, also known as Blanket, also was on stage and he showed some courage of his own as he lowered the memorial program he had been peering over.
He gazed out at the crowd and the cameras as if he felt almost safe in this moment where the world saw his daddy as he and his siblings had always seen him.
After a week of spectacle, this courageous little girl had presented us with a moment of immaculate truth. Other tears streaked the faces of fans who had trooped into the Staples Center as if it were as much a pop concert as a memorial.
They had cheered earlier in the service when Michael Jackson was called the greatest entertainer of all time, but they went absolutely still when they heard his daughter call him "Daddy."
Paris had made unmistakably clear that however eccentric the world may have viewed him, Michael Jackson was at his very core a daddy who loved his kids and whose kids loved him.
The King of Pop turned out to be the opposite of so many would-be kings of political life who present a veneer of absolute normalcy and turn out to have sordid private lives.
Jackson had proven to be the real family man at heart. And you have to wonder if that is part of his power as an artist all along.
From his earliest years, Jackson composed and sang and danced with all his being, tapping the part of himself that was the source of all true feeling and touching that same part in others.
The world's response surprised many of us who thought his glory days had largely passed. The whole Internet nearly crashed with a global burst of cyber-grief.
Thousands of fans visited the place where he died and his sidewalk star in Hollywood and his family compound in Encino and the Neverland Ranch, where he had no longer resided. More than 1.6 million people applied for tickets to his memorial.
Yesterday morning, the chosen few poured into the dimly lit arena. The most restrained applause Jackson had received in the nearly half-century since that first talent show at the Apollo Theater came when his brothers escorted his coffin, each wearing a single sequined glove.
After a hush so profound you could hear the hum of the air conditioning, a pastor said a few words. Then Mariah Carey appeared and sang "I'll Be There," the words and music touching that place of pure feeling.
There followed speakers and songs and grief and laughter that combined to give measure to how much life had left the man who now lay forever silent and still.
Near the end, performers, friends and family took the stage. Among them were the three children Jackson had taken such pains to keep from the public eye.
Paris was poignantly attentive to her younger brother, Blanket. She gave a first public measure of her strength as she joined in singing "We Are the World."
She sang with her head up, her eyes not on the spotlit coffin below, but out at all the people who were watching in the arena and on television. She seemed to know her father lived on in this music, in these words, in the millions who loved him, in the "We" that included everyone of every color.
That was followed by another song and words from Jackson's brother Marlon. Then came the moment when Janet Jackson lowered the microphone.
And brave young Paris spoke those first public words that would have meant more to her father than anything.
Words whose very truth gave her the courage to speak them. Words that told us who her father really was and maybe why he still touched so many everywhere.
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