Maybe You Never Cry Again

Written and Narrated By: Bernie Mac

Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins

A fine tribute to a funny man gone way too soon

One of the saddest days in the world for me was when I discovered, August 9, 2008, that Bernie Mac had died, at only 50-years old. I’d been an avid watcher of his hilarious TV show, and as someone who canNOT tell a joke to save her life, I thought his timing and delivery were AWEsome things to behold. The man could take anything, any situation no matter how dire, and make it funny. Plus, and this you just don’t see too often: The man could laugh at himself.

So coming upon Maybe You Never Cry Again on sale via Kobo audiobooks was a definite YES for me. I love a good memoir, and I love to hear stories of persevering, overcoming, triumphing in the face of bad times and rejection galore.

Oh boy, does this audiobook have that or what? From the first bit, where Bernie thinks life is quite golden, eating only bologna slices cuz that’s all that can ever be afforded, not knowing that that means his family is living in poverty, we get to hear via Mac’s wonderful narration that he did indeed think life was good. He had a mother who was a best friend, good and loving grandparents (Who would wind up being featured in his first spontaneous standup routine at church)… and a wayward father, plus a brother who would beat the holy hell out of him. But the latter two? They never got him down.

Mostly, he had a deep and abiding desire to emulate the black men who were comedic icons to him. He and his best friend used to refer to each other as: Hey, Bill Cosby! Hey, Richard Pryor! The man knew he was going to do comedy, it was just part of who he felt himself to be. Period.

Enter becoming a husband. Enter fatherhood. Enter hard work, eviction notices, bills that couldn’t be paid, getting laid off or fired—even so much as losing two jobs in a single day—from desperately soul-killing jobs. And all the while, he kept insisting to his wife that they could be saved via a career in comedy. Always the Funny Man, the Life of the Party, Mac studied the greats as comedy evolved with new superstars to go with the classic geniuses, refined his delivery, worked on his amazing sense of “story”. He worked parties, he worked commuter trains, anywhere a crowd could be gathered, or even just a few to pass the hat, he was there. Later he would go on to work in clubs starting on shlock days, working many, many shows, never ever complaining. He knew that being positive, being reliable, was the way to go.

The book chronicles his childhood, all the way to high moments of getting those big breaks, which turn out to be only stepping stones on such a journey as his. It doesn’t get into his major successes, but it wonderfully shows the successes he had as a man, as a father.

Tho’ I had to up my usual x1.25 speed to x1.5 to make the delivery smoother, and tho’ there is a cell phone that goes off a couple of times during his narrative, Mac proves to be good at delivery for his own words. There are some truly touching parts, such as losing his mother to cancer when he was still quite young, and there’s the humiliation and sense of emasculation at having to go on public assistance: All delivered in a low voice, as though he was re-experiencing it all even as he says it here, many years later.

I’m sooo glad that it ends well for him, cuz there are so very many trying times, and I could NOT help but think of how death came for him far too early. He had so much, and I always felt he’d been cheated.

But listening to him here, seeing how he turned every bad thing into something positive (Firings and evictions could make for inCREDible standup routines just hours later!), I guess I feel I shouldn’t take things hard for him. It sounds like he lived his life to the best of his abilities, embraced the wonderful.

He was quite a character, and it seems like he lived his life fully awake and alive. I guess we should all be so blessed.