Sean “Diddy” Combspaid tribute to his former loveKim Porterin a touching eulogy at herfuneral on Saturday in Columbus, Georgia.
“I just want to say to my kids, Justin, Christian, D’Lila, Jessie, Chance and the other man in the house, Quincy: Your mother instilled in me this, and I pledge in front of everybody right now that I will always be there for you,” said Combs, 49, as the audience applauded at the public funeral inside Cascade Hills Church. “I will always take care of you.”
Eliciting laughter and claps, Combs added, “To the girls especially, we about to enter some different type of times. I want you to be able to talk to me about everything, and I mean everything, and I mean everything.”
Kim Porter with Sean “Diddy” Combs and their children.Charley Gallay/Getty Images
“Some people in your life that’s gonna be irreplaceable,” Combs said. “Kim, we gonna miss you so much. But I ain’t gonna miss you too much because I’m not gonna let your voice inside of me stop talking. I know you like to talk to me a lot once you get on those rants, and I just want you to know I’m gonna be listening.”
Beginning the speech, Combs said, “Anybody who knows Kim, she’s just a person that you vibe with, you know? I can’t put our relationship into a certain box. She always told me, seriously, she felt like God sent … her here to help me out. I’d be like, ‘Girl, what are you talking about?'”
“I didn’t really understand how to love and, you know, we went through some circumstances, my mother and my family, where we didn’t have a big family and all of that,” Combs continued. “She just really started breaking down the exterior of any shell that I put up.”
Kim Porter and Sean “Diddy” Combs.Chris Polk/FilmMagic
Combs credited Porter with helping him shake off a stretch of depression. “There’s something important I need to say,” he started. “From the top of the year, I was going through a real dark time, and I was really depressed. And I don’t know why. I was getting older and … I just went through a dark, dark time.”
“And she would come over and make sure — even though we wasn’t together like that,” he added. “She was that type of person. It’s hard to love somebody when you ain’t with them. … She was just like, ‘Come on, Puff, you got to get up. You got to get up. You got to get up out of the bed. You got to get moving. You got to get up.'”
He then led the mourners in a call-and-response recitation of the word “up.” “So whenever you feeling down, you have to remember that,” Combs said. “As time went on, our relationship took so many different changes, from being boyfriend and girlfriend to being lovers to being best friends to being just straight-up homies, like somebody that you know you can count on. Somebody that has your back, you have their back.”
After making the pledge to their children, Combs concluded, “And we just love y’all, we appreciate y’all, appreciate the family. To all the words that I’m forgetting, to anything I’m forgetting to say, we love you, Kim. Thank you.”
Christopher Oquendo/SplashNews.com
Kimora Lee Simmonsand Tichina Arnold attended the public funeral at Cascade Hills Church, as didUsherandLil’ Kim, theColumbusLedger–Enquirerreported.
Combs,Mary J. Bligeand Quincy spoke, according toTMZ. Yolanda Adams,Faith Evansand the Spencer High School All Class Reunion Choir reportedly sang.
On Nov. 15, officers were alerted after a woman was found unresponsive in Toluca Lake, California. She was declared dead at 11:40 a.m. local time. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office confirmed Porter’s deathin a statement. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coronerstated on Mondaythat Porter’s “cause of death was deferred pending additional tests.”
Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic
The couple, who began dating in the ’90s, shared son Christian, 20, and 11-year-old twin daughters D’Lila Star and Jessie James, in addition to Porter’s eldest child, Quincy, 27, who Diddy considers a son.
Porter and Combs broke up in 1999 and battled in court over child support for Christian; Combs also dated Jennifer Lopez for two years before he and Porter reconciled in 2003. They split for the final time in 2007.
Combs is also the father of two additional children — son Justin, 24, and daughter Chance, 12 — whom he shares with exes Misa Hylton-Brim and Sarah Chapman, respectively.
“I got three girls, three boys, and they’re really kind, great people,” Combstold PEOPLEin 2017 of his large family. “They got a lot of love in their heart. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”
source: people.com
