Grieving For Whitney Houston Takes Toll During Bobby Brown Concert

(WARNING: Though it reports facts as accurately as previously reported by credited outlets, the following piece also contains opinion. The views expressed are those strictly of the author and not necessarly those of Yidio.com staff, management and/or ownership.)

Many who have lost loved ones will attest that following the moment one learns that a cherished friend or family member lives no more, it feels suddenly like the hardest things one could possibly do are the ones we do ordinarily without a second thought - the ones that come as natural as breathing.

Whatever we may think, whatever we ourselves would have done, Bobby Brown made a choice Saturday night.

With a concert that evening in Mississippi, Brown received a call no human being with a conscience would wish upon another: Whitney Houston, his wife from 1992 until their 2007 divorce and mother to the former couple's 18-year-old daughter Bobbi Kristina, had been found dead in the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel at age 48 by her bodyguard.

Brown reportedly broke down. Distraught, he sobbed and did what he had to do: call family and friends to tell them, before the media could break the news to the six-time Grammy winner's loved ones.

The pair met backstage at the 1992 Soul Train Music Awards and in the 15-year union that followed, their tabloid-fodder domestic abuse accounts and reports that two drank and abused particularly cocaine heavily together made them as infamous as their music made them famous. The marriage, right up to Houston's death Saturday, has long been considered by many observers the tipping point in the battle between Houston and her drug and alcohol addictions that her addictions ultimately won Saturday night.

As recently as last year, Houston was reportedly bankrupt and confirmed to have entered a third rehabilitation stint as recently as May 2011. The night before her death, she was photographed leaving a nightclub cut-up and bloody. Her very last performance was a raspy, hoarse, minute-long duet of "Yes, Jesus Loves Me" with friend Kelly Price at a Friday night pre-Grammy party. It showed undeniably how the hard-living years both by Brown's side and since the pair's split five years ago had stolen the Earth-shattering voice that made iconic moments of singing the National Anthem clad in red, white and blue at Super Bowl XXV in 1991 or taking ownership of Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You" with her double-Grammy-winning 1992 cover for the soundtrack to "The Bodyguard."

That wasn't the Houston that haunted Brown Saturday night. It wasn't Whitney Houston, the Grammy-winner. It wasn't Whitney Houston, the struggling addict recently rumored to be in line to become a judge for the second season of FOX's "The X Factor."

It was his ex-wife. Bobbi Kristina's mother.

Yahoo! Music reports that Brown didn't take the stage alongside his fellow New Edition members at Landers Center until the R&B group's second song, "Hit Me Off." When he did, he professed his love one more time to a woman with whom he fought - and loved - hard.

"First of all, I want to tell you that I love you," Brown said, according to the Associated Press. "Second, I would like to say, 'I love you Whitney.' The hardest thing for me to do is to come on this stage tonight."

One concert-goer claimed Brown finally broke and started crying during his solo "Tenderoni," asking that the audience help him finish the song. What Brown has been doing since he was a teen as naturally as drawing a breath or blinking an eye - performing before an adoring crowd, an experience that would terrify most - suddenly became the hardest thing he could have done that night.

There's no way Brown could've thought he'd evade scrutiny last night. There's simply no way. No single individual in Brown or Houston's respective lives that has or ever will impact either as much as each other did from their 1992 meeting until Houston's last moments. To watch the fallout sweep across social media last night after Houston's publicist confirmed her death, two reactions seemingly set themselves apart: adoration for Houston and sympathy for a fight events long since decided would not end in her favor, and also resentment of Brown.

I was writing about Houston possibly joining "The X Factor" when I glanced at my Twitter sometime around 5 PM CST. I quickly deleted the 500-some words I had just written, and in a surreal moment, began recounting Houston's storied career and troubled life. Maybe it's not coincidental that right around the time I started addressing her marriage to Brown, I saw the first tweets and Facebook statuses proclaiming variations on "f*** Bobby Brown."

He didn't kill Houston himself obviously, but in the Court of Public Opinion, he may as well have just been convicted of manslaughter. Valid or not, many of Houston's devotees and sympathizers can't and won't accept anything less than that had it not been for Brown and 15 hard-living years by his side, she'd not have died a frail, weathered-looking shell of herself at 48.