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This weekend, many of us watched the clips that surfaced from DMX’s funeral and celebration of life. There were quite a few memorable moments: most were touching, some were strange and there was a particularly beautiful moment between DMX’s ex-wife Tashera Simmons and his current fiancée Desiree Lindstrom.
For those of you who know anything about Tashera, you know that her relationship with DMX was fraught with abuse and infidelity. To her credit, Tashera has managed to walk the thin line of telling her truth without unnecessarily disrespecting her ex-husband and the father of her children for years.
And things were no different as she honored DMX during his funeral.
She reflected on the positive impact he had on her life saying that DMX was integral in expanding her faith in God.
According to Revolt Tv, Tashera said from the podium:
“…I had never in my life, met a young 18-year-old man that had been through what he had been through, and loved the Lord like he did. It was so powerful, that at 18, I wanted to transition to know who was Jesus Christ. I learned about faith with Earl, I learned about forgiveness, I learned about what unconditional love looked like…He helped me believe in things that I never thought was possible. I knew Earl was a prophet, because of my background, because of the prophets I learned about … and I said to Earl, I said, ‘Earl, I don’t know, man, you ain’t of this world. The stuff you be talkin’ about? You not of this world.’”
But the moment that caught the attention of the internet was when she recognized and introduced Lindstrom.
As she brought her onto the stage, she said:
“As I close, I am going to recognize Desiree because from day one, real women do real things. I’m a real woman and I’m a woman of God. That woman is a woman of God. She’s in training, she’s in the works, she ain’t perfect but she love that man. And that’s why I love you. You hear me? So as she comes up, right now, she’s new to this. She [has] stage fright. But you got this… like the woman that he taught you to be. Represent him. Thank you guys and I love y’all.”
If there were any questions about Tashera having hard feelings or not being able to get along with the new woman in DMX’s life, this moment squashed all of it.
And we were happy to see it.
Funerals have a tendency to bring out the worst in people, especially people who were well known and much beloved. I’ve seen it first hand with people who were far from celebrities. Folks compete, trying to prove who may have been closer to that person while they were here on this earth. People, unsure of how they should behave in the midst of their grief, lash out at family members and those left behind for no reason. And when the deceased has money, folks have been known to spend more time arguing over the division of assets than celebrating their loved one.
But given the way these two behaved at the funeral, signs point to this not being the case for the people closest to DMX, the people who knew him as Earl.
We all know, a man doesn’t have to die for women to harbor resentment toward the next woman. As I mentioned before and as many of us may have seen—if we watched DMX and Tashera on “Couple’s Therapy,” it would be very easy for Tashera to resent the fact that Desiree got a more evolved, kinder, gentler, wiser DMX than the man she knew and loved since she was a child. Whether it’s an internet meme or real world conversations, women have often expressed that they want the next woman to suffer with the man she’s decided to release or they don’t want to put in all that work for another woman to reap the benefits.
Being that Tashera was with DMX during those early, hard years, it might have been easy for her to adopt this posture. And there’s no telling the work she might have already done to speak the way she did about Desiree. But it was a picture of maturity and grace.
When people love one another in the context of a romantic relationship, it can be hard for folks not to believe that they own their partners. And I like to believe that mature love recognizes that you don’t have to be bound to someone in a romantic relationship to love them, to honor them and to celebrate the people who will love them after you.
Someone said the fact that these two women were able to behave so lovingly to one another speaks to DMX’s character and the maturity of the love he shared for both Tashera and Desiree as well. It’s a sweet sentiment.
You can watch a clip of this moment between the two women in the video below.
