Jackson's Kids Say Sad Goodbye

July 2, 2009

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Jermaine Jackson said that Prince, 12, Paris, 8, and Blanket, 7, — accompanied by a therapist — were taken in to view their father's dead body so that they could understand he really was gone and begin to grieve.

"I know it's tough, but I think it was the best thing to do," Michael's brother, also of Jackson 5 fame, said during an interview on Thursday's Today show. "At first I was against it, but what do you say if you don't show them?"

He also recalled saying goodbye himself -- as well as getting the dreaded news from their mother, Katherine.

"She was crying, saying he was dead," remembered Jermaine. "To hear my mother say, 'Michael is dead,' to feel and hear the tone in her voice to say her child is dead, is nothing that anyone can ever imagine. I tried to console her, but I wanted to see Michael... To see him there lifeless and breathless was very emotional for me. But I held myself together because I knew he's very much alive in his spirit, and that was just a shell. But I kissed him on his forehead, and I hugged him, and I touched him and I said Michael, 'I'll never leave you. You'll never leave me.'"

Jermaine was also asked how he will react if the allegations of Michael's prescription drug abuse turn out to be true.

“I would be hurt,” Jermaine said, “because Michael has always been a person who was against anything like that. I’m not saying it’s right, because it’s not right. But in this business, the pressure, and things that you go through — you never know what people might turn to.”

Meanwhile, after the memorial at Neverland was nixed , it's now been relocated to the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The public service will take place Tuesday at 10 a.m. If the venue reaches capacity, the overflow crowd will be accommodated at Nokia Plaza, where wide-screen TVs will broadcast the proceedings inside.

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