Baby I'm Amazed

Baby,

I’m amazed. Amazed that I can take care of paying bills, moving and all the other mundane business since you’ve been gone. I’m amazed that I haven’t fallen to pieces. Amazed that I’m trying to get on with my life.

My life collapsed when I knew you weren’t coming back home alive. I have your ashes (part of them—the rest went to your family) in the bedroom. They don’t count as you really being here.

I don’t think you’d want me to go somewhere, hide from the world and wallow in grief. I’ve tried not to, but it’s hard some days.

I miss you so much. I carry part of you everywhere I go, I know, but I miss the part I can touch. The part I can kiss you on the forehead. The part that let me muss up your hair because I wanted to rub your head.

I’m amazed that we made it to where we did. Between the two of us, it was an uphill battle. But we made it.

I’m amazed that I’d rather be by myself than around other people. They only remind me that you’re gone. I don’t feel it so much when I’m home.

Here, you’re all around me. I want to walk into the bedroom and see you sleeping, but I can’t. Instead, I look at things and remember why we have them and the stories behind them.

You’d like the new place. The kitchen’s bigger, and the floor plan makes it seem more spacious than the old place. I lost 140 square feet, but I don’t really miss them.

The cats are doing well, more or less. Lucy still goes to hang out at the pool outside our old front door. And she doesn’t like having to stay in all day when it’s too cold. You could let her in and out when the weather got bad, but once I leave in the morning, she’s stuck outside all day.

Amanda is adjusting better. Her favorite spot on the bed is still there, so she’s content. She ventured out onto the patio, deemed it acceptable and came back in. She spends most of her day curled up on the bed.

I went to a service at the Methodist Church by the grocery on Koenig on the winter solstice last week. It’s billed as “The Longest Night” because it’s is the longest night and shortest day of the year, but it’s more about the long night of mourning and bereavement that comes with death. I wasn’t the only one there crying.

Christmas wasn’t Christmas without you here. I didn’t think it would be. Without you here to fuss over and cook for, it felt like just another day. I got some nice steelhead trout filets, grilled them and had dinner at home.

I’m learning first-hand why your nerve damage was so frustrating. I’ve been walking with a cane for the last 2 ½ weeks because of problems with my knee. My knee and the thigh directly above it alternate between numbness, sharp pain and an intense burning sensation. Sometimes it travels down my shin into my foot.

You’d be proud of me: I actually went to the doctor. He ruled out Parkinson’s, diabetes and thyroid problems, then referred me to a neurologist. I have an MRI and an EMG scheduled for next week.

Walking with a cane is tricky, I’ve learned. Doing so only leaves me with one hand, and trying to find somewhere to prop it when I need both hands is a total bitch. It keeps falling over.

You know I loved you, and I will forever. It’s one thing death can’t kill. If I let it, death would kill my spirit, but I’m not allowing it to. I know that, no matter how many times I ask why, I’ll never get a good answer. The “why” questions usually have no answer in this context.

Don’t spend your time worrying about me. In time, I’ll be okay. I might even be happy again one day. Part of me has remained happy because of the years we had together. It’s not always obvious, and sometimes, finding that happiness seems almost impossible. It’s buried under layer after layer of pain and grief and loss.

But I will survive. I hate to quote Donna Summer (not really), but “I’ve got all my life live and all my love to give, and I’ll survive. I will survive”.

I know that your worrying about me came from a place of love, but you worried too much. I’m devastated and grieving, but I’m doing okay. Not great, but okay.

At this point, “okay” is a good thing.

As I said, I’m amazed that I’m not falling apart. I must be stronger than I thought, and part of that must be because of you.

I’ll see you on the other side.

JM

Holiday Recipes (That are Good All Year)

Food has always been an integral part of holidays and feast days. Easter has lamb, Thanksgiving has turkey, Memorial Day and Labor Day have anything that comes off a grill. But there is no definitive Christmas food. Some have ham, some turkey and the adventurous have duck or goose. I've even made a prime rib for Christmas dinner.

Since there is no definitive food, Christmas is an opportunity to be creative. These are some of my ideas. They're good any time of the year, too.

Roast Pork Loin with Orange and Rosemary

Ingredients:
· 1 Pork loin of good quality
· Fresh-squeezed orange juice – ½ cup per pound of pork (use the small, cheap oranges – they generally have more flavor and more juice)
· 4 sprigs of rosemary per pound of pork (don’t even think about using dried – it has to be fresh or it’s no good)
· ¼ cup diced white onions per pound of pork
· ¼ cup olive oil (extra virgin)
· Salt (preferably sea salt)
· Black pepper (freshly cracked)

Salt and pepper the loin and rub about half the olive oil in. Toss in the orange juice, onions and rosemary. Use a pyrex baking dish. Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour. It can sit overnight and will be better if it does.

Once it’s marinated, preheat a thick-bottomed steel skillet or cast iron one, add the pork and let it brown on each side. The temperature should be hot enough to caramelize the outside but not really cook the inside or make the oil smoke.

When it’s a pretty brown, take the loin out and put it back in the dish it came from.

Put the glass dish, covered, in a medium temperature oven. Cook until it’s just done. (You need a good meat thermometer for that. They’re cheap. Get one.)

When the loin is done, take it out and lay it on a plate or cutting board to rest.

Pour the dripping into the steel skillet, add a cup or so of good white wine and a couple of tablespoons of butter. (Real butter, unsalted). Gradually bring it to a boil so as not to make the butter clot, and then simmer until you have a thick sauce. Scrape the bottom of the pan regularly to incorporate the crusties into the sauce. They add a lot of flavor.

When the sauce reaches a divine consistency, take it off the heat, put the loin on a serving dish and pour the sauce over it.

Serve as medallions with some sauce atop, under or beside.

Garlic and Dill Potatoes

Ingredients:
· Red potatoes, cubed but not peeled.
· Garlic, pressed or chopped. (Don’t ever use garlic powder. It’s awful.)
· Fresh dill. Drag you fingers down against the way the leaves grow to harvest it.
· Butter (2-4 tblsp).
· Salt.
· Pepper.

Bring a pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Toss in the potatoes and let the water come back to a boil. Reduce the tempature to a low simmer. Cook until they’re tender, but no mushy.

Drain off the water or pour them through a collander and put back in your cooking pan. Add the butter, garlic and dill. Mash until they’re a consistency that you like. I like the old-fashioned hand mashers.

Salt to task and garnish with a little fresh dill.

Tarragon Green Beans

Ingredients:
· Fresh green beans, cleaned and cut to about 2 inches each
· Butter.
· Salt.
· Tarragon. (Fresh tarragon is hard to come by, but the dried is acceptable in this case. It has so much flavor you don’t need much.)

Prepare your beans by snapping off each end and pulling the string off. Wash them thoruoghly.

Bring a pot of lightly-salted water to a simmer. Add the beans and let them simmer until they’re a bright, beautiful green, cooked but still crisp. Drain the water off and add the butter and tarragon. Salt to taste.

Citrus Fruit Salad

Ingredients:
· 2 cups cantaloupe
· 1 can pineapple
· 1 cup white grapes
· 1 Granny Smith apple
· 1 lime
· 1 lemon
· 1 juice orange
· 1-1.5 cups honey

Peel, seed and cube the cantaloupe. Cut the grapes in half lengthwise. Drain the pineapple. Add these ingredients to a bowl.

Juice the lemon, lime and orange into a cup or small bowl.

Peel, core and cube the apple and add to the fruit mixture.

Pour the citrus juice over the fruit. (The juice will keep the apple from discoloring. That’s why you peel it after you have the juice ready.) Pour enough honey over the mixture to achieve a consistency you like.

The fruits that can be used are as varied as your supermarket’s produce department. The only essential is the cantaloupe. To adapt it for the season, add strawberries and toasted coconut in the summer or nutmeg, cinnamon and clove powder for the fall and winter. Be careful with the clove powder: it’s potent, so start with a small amount and add more to taste.

Honey Strawberries and Ice Cream

Fresh strawberries, sliced

Honey

Ice cream

Add enough honey to the strawberries to glaze them. Spoon over ice cream. I prefer Breyer’s whole-bean vanilla—it offers a nice counterpart to the strawberries.

To add a bit of novelty, include other fruits like blueberries, pineapple or grapes. Also, some coconut, pecans or slivered almonds can add a different dimension to both the flavor and texture.

Baby carrots sauteed in butter with fresh dill

Melt a few tablespoons of butter in a thick-bottomed pan. Be careful not to let the butter turn brown (turn the temperature down if it starts to smoke or turn brown). Cover the pan. Stir occasionally, but not often, as they cook. Every time you take the lid off, you’ll let heat and moisture out.

Pull the leaves off the dill and toss them on after the carrots are cooked. Add a little salt if needed.

Honey-glazed carrots

Prepare the same as above, but instead of adding dill, pour enough honey over them to give them a nice sheen.

Thanksgiving Letter to a Dead Man

Dear Sweetie,

I miss you so much tonight. Instead of getting up at the crack of dawn and starting our dinner, I slept in, watched TV for a while and drove down to San Marcos to see my sister and her girlfriend. We had a nice, big meal, and the company was good. I even brought some left-overs home.

But it wasn’t the same as what we used to have. I didn’t get to see you waking up and smelling all the food already cooking or see the twinkle in your eye when you knew it was real and all for you. Many years, I only “put on the dog” (as you used to say) for you. I knew how much it meant to you, and I couldn’t find it in myself to deprive you of that if I could provide it.

I always knew it was important to you, but since you’ve been gone, I’ve found things that you’ve written and drawn that help me understand why. You wanted what you never had, or at least could never count on. It was a symbol of the normal, stable life you always wanted.

I miss your cackling laugh and your beautiful spirit. I miss your generosity and openness. I miss you nine ways to Sunday.

I’m moved, but not moved in. I have boxes and boxes yet to unpack. I can’t find much of anything and am fretting again about where to put every single that goes on the walls. Once again. You wouldn’t be too surprised at that, I’d imagine.

I gave your prayer cabinet to John. I also gave him some of the brass and pictures of the guru to him. He’s thrilled to have them. I thought he would be a good steward of them. I gave your tools to your brother, as well as the wedding picture of your mother you had crammed away in the guest bedroom closet. I’m going to send the pictures of Doug and Charlie to Heidi.

I also found pictures of you as a kid. I’m keeping them. You were cute, even then. By about fourteen, you’d moved from cute to hot.

I sit here thinking about all this and realize there was so much about you I’m only finding out now. Or finding out more fully.

I’m doing okay. Not great, but okay. I keep telling people I’m doing as well as can be expected, but I’m getting tired of people asking. There’s only so much sympathy I can take.

I miss you when I laugh, because I know you would laugh, too, at whatever I was laughing at. The absence of that cackle is so real that I can almost touch it. I think that’s when I miss you most.

Happy Thanksgiving. If I could, I would have made you a big old turkey with dressing and giblet gravy and everything else.

Just like you liked. Just like I liked.

Get your deserved rest. I'll see you on the other side.

Namesake

When I called my mother on Monday a little after noon, she told me nephew had just been born. He had all the right parts in the right places and was learning how to use them. My sister had only delivered 15 minutes earlier, but Mama handed her cell phone to her (so she could dote on the baby, I have no doubt). She sounded awful, as I expected, so I made sure she was okay, congratulated her, told her I loved her and was thrilled to have a new nephew and let her get back to trying to recovering.

Later that afternoon when I was sitting in a restaurant having a late lunch, my phone rang. It was my mother. She told me that the baby and my sister were both sleeping. And that my baby sis had named him after me. I had to find someone in the restaurant, tell them not to take my food yet and walk outside because I didn’t want a bunch of people I didn’t know watching me cry.

I was stunned. I hadn’t talked to her about names, so I had no idea which ones she was considering. I wasn’t even sure she was thinking about names, because she was planning on giving him up for adoption. She was having a hard enough time trying to make and live with a decision about that, so I didn’t ask about names.

I talked to her that evening, but didn’t ask about adoption. I figured that, if she’d made a decision, she would have told me. Instead, I told her that if she gave him up to make keeping his name a condition of the adoption. His middle name is his useless, absent father’s middle name, but I thought it was important to him to carry some small part of his heritage with him.

Then I asked her why she named him after me and told her how honored I was. She told me that she’d only known two men who stood by her and supported her, regardless. One was our father, and the other’s me. She’d already named two kids after Daddy and said it was my turn.

That’s not to say that both Daddy and I haven’t been ticked at her over the years. But she’s the only little sister I’ll ever have. At the core, she has a big heart and a profound ability to empathize with other people. She’s made some monumentally stupid decisions in her life, but I imagine most of us have. I know I have.

I’ve been recognized for many things over the years, but none can compare to this. Some people get buildings named after them. I got a kid who’ll carry my name, misspelled the right way, into the future. It’s as close to having a kid as I’ll ever get. In a way I have an honorary son.

Baptists don’t do christenings, at least not where I come from, and I seldom hear of godparents being named up there. I guess I’m a Baptist godfather.

As ominous as that sounds, it’s not a bad thing.

She decided to keep him, by the way. A number of people were interested in taking him, but once she saw him and named him, she couldn’t give him up. I suspected as much once I found out she’d given him my name.

I called last night, and Mama was giving him his bottle. My sister and her 16 year old son are staying with her while she recovers. Mama called him “Peanut”, and I told her his name was not “Peanut”. He has a perfectly good one that she should use.

She said that they were trying to figure out how to distinguish which of us they were talking about. I live 750 miles away, and I would hope that if one of them says “Jeffery pooped in his diaper again” or “Jeffery said his first word” that they would not be confused about which of us they’re talking about.

I’ve been walking on air for the last 3 days. I’m in the middle of moving, which is its own special hell, and still mourning the loss of my partner a couple of months ago.

I’ve been dreading Thanksgiving because Shannon and I always spent it together. He insisted on a huge traditional meal every year. I made him a turkey with dressing and giblet gravy one of our first together, and he insisted on it every year afterwards, even if it was just me and him.

Going through his things since he died and I’ve been packing, I found some that let me know that his early holidays were never very good and that he longed for a traditional one centered around the family dinner table. He loved waking up and smelling food already cooking, the aromas of sage and onions and turkey filling the air.

He was as sentimental as me, and I wasn’t sure I’d have much to be thankful for this year, other than a job and a roof over my head. Now I have something much bigger.

I’m tired and bruised and worn out from the moving, but I am going to have a good Thanksgiving knowing that my baby sis thought enough of me to name her baby after me.

As I said, some people get a building named for them. I got something much bigger and infinitely more valuable: a tiny human being.

It Gets Better

This is an open letter to all gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans-gender youth, young adults and anyone else struggling with sexual orientation or gender identity. For more help and/or support go here: http://www.noh8campaign.com/.

When I was a kid and young adult living in West Tennessee, I knew I was gay, but tried my best not to be. I wanted to be “normal”, but I knew I wasn’t. I felt like a freak.

And what’s worse, I lied to everyone for years and hurt many people along the way. But I lived my life into my twenties, well a decade after I knew the truth, with the lie. I tried to convince myself that I wasn’t gay, but having never been sexually attracted to a female but being very interested in males in as little clothing as possible should have been a wake up call.

I missed the call.

Instead, I contemplated suicide. I had brushes with mental illness because of the stress and anxiety of hating who I was. I did the kind of rash, stupid things that young people are prone to do.

All I knew was that my life would be horrible if I was honest. I saw it all around me. Gay people were “fags”, beneath contempt, but certainly targets for people with baseball bats. I lived in fear for my own safety.

I got the wake up call around 2 a.m. one morning when I jumped out of my girlfriend’s bed, threw on my clothes in less than a minute and hid out all night at a McDonald’s to avoid her. I realized that I couldn’t have sex with her because I didn’t want to. I didn’t know or care what to do with her in that way.

That’s when I finally did it: I admitted to myself that I was gay in the middle of the night at a McDonald’s in Waco, TX.

When I finally answered my door several days later, my girlfried was confused, then hurt because I had been lieing to her all along. My only explanation was that I had been lieing to myself, so how could I be honest with her?

I was resolved to go forward and live the miserable life I deserved for being such a deviant person.

But it didn’t turn out that way. I found out that, in the grown-up world, employers tend to reward performance. And in progressive cities like Austin, where I put down roots, most people don’t care.

That isn’t to say that life as a gay man isn’t painful. I’ve out-lived 2 husbands. But the pain is no different from that of a man my age who’s out-lived 2 wives. It hurts the same way, whether you’re straight or gay.

I wanted normal, and that’s what I got. Between the two, I had over 15 years of domestic bliss. Like any relationship that’s real, both were sometimes stormy, but they were real. Just like the ones “normal” people have.

When I was 13 or 18 or even in my early 20’s, I didn’t know that was possible. So I lived a life of quiet, closeted misery, instead. But as I grew older, I realized that it was other people who were wrong, and that there was nothing wrong with me. That I had a God-given right to be happy and that the only person who could take that happiness away from me was me.

It hasn’t always been easy, but when I moved in with my first partner and we made a home together, I realized a childhood dream: to have a handsome, charming, educated and caring husband. Our life together was wonderful. I finally had a place where I belonged. A place where someone loved me just for me.

I was always meant to be married.

He unexpectedly died 5 years later from a bizarre lung infection. I was crushed. Totally devestated. I went a little crazy for a while, but 5 years later, I met my next partner.

He was a little bit on the crazy side himself, but so kind, sweet, loving and persistant that he won me over. Our life together was never normal, except in the ways it was. Most people don’t have to put a partner in the hospital because he’s catatonic and having psychotic hallucinations.

Most people don’t have to plan their life around trips to the hospital to visit. Until they do.

The rest of our time together revolved around my going to work and coming home and him taking care of the details of our lives, like keeping up with bills and shopping for groceries. We dealt with his increasing mobility impairments the ways any couple would: a cane, then grab bars in the shower, then a walker and, finally, a wheel chair.

All not very pleasant, but all very normal. As the medical appointments increased, I made sure that every person who treated him knew that I was the medical power of attorney and that I would be involved on one level or another. I demanded their respect, and I got it. No one questioned me or my right to be there or to make decisions.

He’s been gone for about 2 months now. I had him cremated, and we had a small memorial that he would have liked. Small and simple, though it was, many people told me it was the most beautiful one they’d ever been to.

That may not sound like much of a message of hope, but getting to honor him in the way I wanted and knew he would like and approve of didn’t seem possible to me even 15 years ago.

I turned 45 in June, and I have two dead husbands. But I’m happier than I ever thought I would be. I have losses to deal with, but to lose something, you have to have it first.

I’ve had the same job for almost 11 years. I’ve grown my job into being integral to company operations. I have the love and respect of my coworkers, and I have friends that are real.

I’m still mourning the losss of my last husband, but I’m happier than I was 25 years ago. I’m a mess some days, but I’m a mess for all the right reasons.

I never saw it coming. But it happened. Even so, my life has been better on all fronts since I decided to be honest with myself.

It gets better. It gets much better.

We all have to give ourselves time to grow into the people we’re going to become, whether we’re gay, straight or other. None of us get there overnight.

I won’t deny that the process is painful, but it’s amplified in the GLBT world. You’re not only growing up, you’re growing up different.

In time, you will see that different can be one of your strongest assets. You won’t see the world as most people do. And you’ll have a pool of strength to draw from than many people never have to develop.

You will go far if you give yourself the chance and the freedom to be who you are. The only choice involved in sexual orientation or gender identity is how you repsond to that knowledge. You will find that it becomes one of the least important things about you. It will be a footnote. Nothing more.

I wish I’d known all that when I was 12 or 13. If I’d known it was possible, my life would have been easier.

It is possible. In fact, it’s probable, once you get past the shame and guilt and self-loathing. There’s nothing to feel guilty about or ashamed of or hate about yourself.

You’re different. We’re all different in different ways. Use your difference as a source of strength. Be proud of who you are, not because of your orientation or identity, but because of who you are.

Go bravely into the world and become the person that God wants you to become: a whole, happy one at peace.

The Next Beginning of the End

Moving is a bitch, no matter how you go about it. Trying to put your life into boxes and then getting them from point A to point B sucks, whether the aftifacts of life have to make a trip of a hundred feet or a hundred miles. I’ve avoided doing so when I could.

But I’ve committed to the move. My electricity will come on Friday at the new place and go out here on Monday. I pick up the keys to the new place after 10 a.m. on Friday and have to turn my current ones in on Monday by 5 p.m.

I was younger and more resilient once. I ain’t no more. I’m not a college student packing up to go home for the summer break. I’m an aging man whose feet and back hurt more than he wants to admit.

Lifting boxes, arranging furniture and sorting through possessions, deciding what comes and what stays is exhausting. Lifting the boxes is the easy part. If it’s in a box, I’ve already decided to keep it. Whatever it might be.

It’s all the other stuff living in limbo that gives me problems. I don’t what to do with it. Part of me wants to keep it for sentimental reasons (as tenuous as those may be), and part of me wants to clean house.

I’ve already given away Shannon’s prayer cabinet and a good part of his Indian brass. That gift to a dear friend felt good. The rest, I’m not so sure. I know that his cabinet and artifacts will be cared for and honored by someone who will appreciate them more than I ever could.

Getting rid of other things, I’m not so sure about. I have 17 grocery bags of books that I was going to take to Half-Priced Books, but I can’t seem to part with them. I have 9 good-size boxes that I’ve packed to move, and I still have books to get in boxes.

I’m getting rid of a rattan sofa and an enormous console for sure. The sofa is ungodly uncomfortable, and the console is too big for the apartment I’m moving to. I keep thinking I might have enough room for all the books once I get rid of those two pieces of furniture.

I’ve run out of room to stack boxes, so I’m going to have to wait until tomorrow after I pick up the keys for the new place to move them and make room for for more boxes to take their place.

And then there’s the endless address-changing. The phone company, the electric company, property insurance, life insurance, health insurance, 401(k) managers, banks, credit card issuers, etc. The list goes on and on and on. I’m sure I’ll forget someone important, but won’t realize until I get a nasty phone call from someone wondering why I haven’t paid a bill I never received.

I’ve done a change of address with the USPS, but I don’t have a lot of faith in their re-routing mail ability. We routinely get things back at work that say “Moved – Left No Forwarding Address” when the address is perfectly legitimate. They often show up 2-4 months after they were mailed, but sometimes as long as a year later. Most go through if I re-send them, so that tells me somebody was on drugs that day.

The hardest thing about moving this time, though, is that this place was the main home Shannon and I shared. We lived for a couple of years in an apartment where neither of us had real breathing room, and when we were able, we moved to a bigger place. In a better neighborhood.

Our old neighborhood was a quiet, unnoticed little gem. It wasn’t fancy, but it was nice. Big trees, quiet streets, good neighbors.

I’d been there for several years before I met Shannon, but shortly after I met him, I began to notice a decline in the neighborhood. It started with reports of burglaries, but then I began to see more and more obvious drug deals taking place on our street. One car pulled up next to another on the street behind an empty commercial building with engines and headlight on, and some sort of exchange took place.

There were other incidents, as well, and I didn’t feel safe and worried about Shannon’s safety. He was already mobility-impaired and probably wouldn’t have been able to defend himself with anything other than a cane. So we had to move.

This is where we moved to. And leaving here will mean that I’m leaving him behind in yet another way.

I know that I’ll never totally leave him or that he will leave me. But it’s just one more concrete piece of evidence that he really is dead. That he won’t be sitting on the sofa in the living room or snoring away with his arms flailed out in the bed when I come home from work.

I’ve read that moving, even a short distance, is as stressful as the death of a loved one. Both involve a lot of the same things: notifying people, taking care of personal business, adapting to a new way of living. They both involve change and new beginnings.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” That’s how a song by Seismonic puts it. For a pop/rock song, that’s pretty deep. I am at the end of that beginning and the beginning of this one, regardless of how it plays out.

I have two dead husbands, so I’m not shopping around for another. Cheap sex: maybe. New husband: no. I’m not ready now and don’t know that I’ll ever be. I’m getting to old to be starting over, yet again. I’ve just lost my taste for it.

For now, at least. Those could be famous last words.

I’m getting used to living by myself. It’s 2 months ago today that Shannon died. My life is hectic and chaotic and so stressful that there are days that I want to find a quiet corner somewhere, curl up in a fetal position and cry until it quits hurting.

Normally the work stress or the paying bills stress wouldn’t bother me so much. But he looked after the bills, and I came home to the man I loved. But it's just me now.

I have to now deal with the reality that a similar scenario isn’t likely any time soon. I have to begin again, whether I want to or not. I have no choice, and this move will make that clear in ways I can’t ignore.

It will be tangible evidence of a new beginning, as well an end.

All of the little details will get taken care of. They’re easy enough, even though they will take hours and hours. It’s the ones that will take a lifetime that I worry about.

I don’t want to start over again, but the choice was not mine to make.

Starting Over

I’m starting over again, and it’s scary as hell. I’m on my own for the first time in over ten years. Not only has my household income suddenly dropped about 25%, but I’m all alone, trying to figure out how to move forward.

It’s easier for me to hole-up in my apartment and ignore the world than to keep on explaining what happened and how I’m doing. For the record, what happened is that Shannon died. The details don’t matter. He’s dead.

As for how I’m doing, I can’t really tell the truth about that without inviting sympathy that I don’t really want. I want to get on with my life. I appreciate that people care, but Shannon’s death is a deeply private matter for me in many ways. Some days I want to find mountaintop and scream “Yes. I’m doing okay. Not great, but okay. Give me some time and space”.

I know that people mean well, but I can’t put into words the vacuum I’m living in right now. Part of me is missing, so how could I be doing well? That should be self-evident: I’m a mess.

I can’t find words to describe how big that hole in my life is. Or how much I hurt from my head to my toes every day. I feel like an amputee having “ghost pains” in a body part that’s no longer there.

In the end, none of the details matter: dead is dead.

What matters now is moving forward, trying to move beyond. Scratching and clawing to stay one step ahead of depression. And some nights, it’s a close fight.

Most people don’t see that because I choose to keep my grief private. It’s too personal to put on stage. It’s like one of those dreams where you show up somewhere in your underwear. Or even naked.

I put on a brave face even when I would like nothing better than to go home, turn the phone off, crawl into bed under a pile of covers and hide from the world. The pain is so palpable that I can almost reach out and touch it. It follows me everywhere I go.

I’m a private person by nature. I don’t talk candidly with very many people, and my public personna often belies what’s going on behind the mask. People think I’m being strong, but I don’t feel strong. I feel helpless and alone and profoundly sad.

And scared. Scared of starting over yet again, wondering if I’ll be able to learn how to live alone without going crazy. I hide out in the study because that’s where I always went when Shannon was asleep or not here. It was my hidey-hole. We shared the rest of the house, but the study was my territory.

I haven’t been able to sit in the living room for very long since he went in the hospital. When he was alive, the room felt empty without him in it, even if he was asleep in the next room. Now, it’s even emptier.

I’m moving next week. It’ll only be 100 feet, but it might as well be 100 miles. I’m moving mostly for economic reasons (I need to pay less rent), but I wonder if doing so might not be therapeutic. It will be a tangible symbol of starting over. It will be my apartment, not ours.

A song has been cycling through my head for weeks and weeks now because of one line: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” It’s one of the great ironies of life: I’m beginning again even as my last new beginning ends.

I’m not leaving him behind. There’s no way I could. He is a part of me and always will be. As I have told several people, the most I hope for is to get beyond his death: I’ll never get over him, and don’t want to.

I want to get beyond.

Leader of the Pack

I got the final bill from the hospital for Shannon's 2 weeks in the ICU: $204,000, of which Medicare is paying $175,000. For the $29,000 discrepancy, they want $1,100 immediately. I've also gotten bills from several contractors that provided services like imaging and respiratory therapy for additional amounts. This total cost will come in somewhere between $205,000 and $210,000.

All that with little to no detail about what the charges are for.

If anyone doubts that our health care system is broken, those should be some sobering numbers. What's most shocking to me is that there is a two-tiered price system: one for people with insurance and a more expensive one for those that lack it. If my insurance company or Medicare is paying for something, providers discount the service. People without insurance pay more.

Health insurance is more expensive that some realize, but since I pay the bills at work, I know just how much it costs. I couldn't afford it if my employer didn't cover 75% of the cost. It's well over $600 a month just to cover me. I pay 1/4 of that.

For those without access to affordable health insurance, not only do the bills add up quickly, but they'll be charged more than I would in the same exact circumstances.

It spotlights the fundamental inequity in our health care system: because I'm lucky enough to have coverage, I'm charged less. I suppose I pay for it when premiums go up. But those increases don't mean a provider will be reimbursed on a higher level. That only mean the insurance company's profits will once again set records.

Any health care-delivery system that by its nature serves largely to provide profits to insurance companies won't be very good. That should be self-evident. Health care systems should exist to provide health care.

I have no doubt that individual practitioners never think about what something costs when they order it. I doubt that they even know or care. As it should be. They're treating a patient and doing what needs to be done to provide a standard of care that they find acceptable.

But the system, as it exists, drives costs up. People who can't afford health insurance certainly can't afford a $205,000 bill. Had Shannon not had Medicare, the entire bill would have be absorbed by other consumers, as opposed to the $29,000 that will be passed on because of Medicare's reimbursement rate. While that might still seem a high number, my private health insurance never reimburses at the rate medical providers would bill someone without insurance. Aetna would probably reimburse at a similar rate.

Therein lies the irony of our current system: the people who can afford it least are charged the most for health care, almost regardless of who is billing them. If my primary care physician normally charges $50 for an office visit, I give them $10 and Aetna sends them about $25. If I didn't have insurance, I'd have to pay $50 before I could see a doctor.

While my doctor makes less because I have insurance, the AMA has been a strong supporter of reform. They recognize that universal health care would, over time, lower its cost because most people would see a doctor if they could before they were so sick that they have to get emergency treatment . Very expensive emergency treatment that often leads to hospital admission. Then, the costs go higher, and the outcomes aren't as good as for people with insurance.

Health insurance encourages early care before illnesses begin to compound on themselves. It's one thing to go to a doctor who will charge $50 for 15 minutes and another when the visit will cost $10.

Universal care will ultimately lower health care costs because earlier medical intervention will forestall expensive emergency room visits and hospital stays by making earlier treatment available. It's much easier to treat someone with pneumonia during the first week they have it is than to treat someone in an ICU because their condition has deteriorated to the point that it's the last, best option.

Without reform, costs will continue to spiral out of control. It will eat up even more of the GDP that it does now. While some argue that universal care will bankrupt the country, I think the opposite is true. Not doing anything paints a far bleaker picture. Costs will continue to increase, and more employers will stop offering coverage. For the ones that continue offer it, employees' rising costs would force many out of the system.

The most powerful country in the world has about the worst health care system of all industrialized countries as far as access to quality care goes.. We lead the pack on many issues, but not this one.

Telling Lies

People ask me all the time how I'm doing. My guess is that they don't want to know the real truth. They ask so as to be polite. But they don't really want to know. So I tell them that I'm okay, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

And the truth is that I'm doing awful. Shannon's been gone for about 6 weeks now, and he was in the hospital for two weeks before that. It's been two months since he's been here where he belongs.

I miss him almost every minute I'm awake. And he invades my dreams, so i don't get a lot of sleep. I usually wake up when I start dreaming about him.

And then, the realization sinks in, yet again: he's gone. My bed is empty except for me.

I used to be able to sleep, even though he was snoring. It let me know he was there, so I'd curl up around him and let him lull me to sleep.

No one who asks me how I'm doing wants to really know much of that. Except maybe my mother. We both have dead husbands, so we have a lot to talk about. She knows what it's like.

Only the people who have a dead spouse or partner understand or care to any great degree.

They don't understand how hard it is to move forward, pick up the pieces and try to start over.

I don't fault them. Many people don't know how to even address the topic. It's too scary a place for them to go. They're so afraid of death that they don't want to admit that it really happens. But it does.

I will die one day. As will all the people that I care about. I know that. I'm painfully aware of that simple fact of life: it will end some day.

I'll go on until it's my time to check out and finally get a good night's sleep.

I could use one these days.

I, Too

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed--

I, too, am America.

--Langston Hughes

I share Ft. Worth City Councilman Joel Burns’ experience of being harassed as an early teenager because I was perceived as being gay. I was, but I barely knew what sex was, and suddenly it seemed to be every one else’s business. The bullying was too humiliating to tell anyone about. So I didn’t.

Instead, I lived inside a shell pretending to be straight until I was 25. I had girlfriends to keep up the appearance of heterosexuality, but was never sexually attracted to any of them. I made it through high school and college by using girls and then women as beards. I lied to them, to the world and to myself.

That fundamental dishonesty was probably as bad for me as being harassed: I was harassing myself.

I felt like I was broken, that I possessed some basic defect that would make me miserable for the rest of my life. That my life would be lonely, depressing and not worth living. That I would be a freak, shunned by the world, for the rest of my life.

So I lived in my shell, desperately alone.

In grad school, I accidentally outed myself to a close friend while, ironically, we were watching “professional” wrestling late one night. We’d both had a few beers, and I told him that wrestling reminded me of a drag show. Then I had to explain why I knew so much about drag shows.

He was a little shocked, but didn’t care. He was a friend. A good one.

I systematically told my closest friends over the next few weeks, and it was a truly liberating experience. I finally felt free and normal. It had taken me over a decade to do it, but with every confession, the weight on my psyche lightened.

The worst was my last girl friend. We hadn’t been together for a while, but she lived right upstairs. I told her, then didn’t answer the door for three days. I was getting stronger, but I wasn’t ready to deal with her pain over my deception just yet.

I’m older now and have two dead husbands that I loved dearly. I’m not happy about the “dead” part, but I had many happy years with them. That’s something I couldn’t even have dreamed of when I was 13. Or even 23.

I contemplated suicide for a while when I was an undergraduate, and even as a grad student. I remember one cold winter night in my old bedroom at my parents’ house on a school break. I curled up against the wall and listened to the wind howling outside. I was so alone and isolated. I couldn’t be honest with anyone, not even myself, about anything. I didn’t see how my life could ever be any better than the miserable one that it was.

Things got better. I learned how to be a man. The gay part became secondary. It hasn’t defined who I am like I thought it might have way back then. I’ve grown to become a man who happens to be gay. It’s one of the least important things about me.

I wish I’d known that a couple of decades before I did. I lost so many years to the dark place of guilt and despair that I've treasured the happy ones more that I might have otherwise.

Maybe I should be happy that those dark years made me stronger and more aware of what matters and what doesn't. But I came very close to not making it.

If anyone had told me when I was 23 that I would be 45, still alive and at peace on a fundamental level, I'd have laughed. I had no point of reference to understand that life as a gay man could be happy, fulfilling and normal.

Even with two dead husbands, I'm happier than I was then.

Miles to Go

When Rich died 15 years ago, I was profoundly shocked and unprepared. He was only 27, and I didn’t comprehend that someone so young could die of natural causes. I knew that it happened, but I don’t think I really believed it could. At least not to him.

I was 30 then, and now I’m 45, dealing with the same issue again. I was shocked to walk into the ICU and see Shannon's tiny room full of people with every light on. I knew what was going on from across the unit. I must have looked visibly shaken, because someone came up and asked me if I was Jeff before I made in 10 feet from the door.

The hospital had left a message on my home phone minutes after I left to go see him. They didn’t call my cell phone, and that’s probably just as well. I might have run the car off the road if they had.

The shock is wearing off slowly, and I wasn’t really prepared for Shannon’s death. I don’t know that anyone can “be prepared” for the death of anyone they love. I think we psychologically fight the awareness that death is a possibility as long as we can and only acknowledge it when there is no other choice.

I wasn’t prepared, but I was better prepared than I had been 15 years ago.

I was talking to a co-worker whose husband died the same weekend Shannon did. She said she has 3 divorces under her belt, but this is the first time she’s been a widow. She wanted to know what it was like and how long it took to get over. I told her that I’ve never gotten over Rich’s death, but I’ve gotten beyond it.

That took 5 years.

I think that’s the best any of us can hope for: to get beyond.

I’m nowhere near that right now as regards Shannon. I found out today that my co-workers had contributed $350 in his memory to the local food bank. Enough for 1,050 meals. My first thought was that I had to tell him, and then I realized I’d have to hope he knows in his own way. It made me cry.

He would be happy that the money wasn’t spent on anything else. Not flowers or plants or anything other than where it went. As am I. It was a fitting tribute to a fine man that I’ll never get over.

When I’ll get beyond is anyone’s guess. It won't be soon. I hope it's not 5 years. That's too long. Longer than I want. Regardless, I have miles to go before I sleep.

The Great Beyond

Shannon's memorial was Saturday. I planned a simple service with some of our favorite music and friends and family talking about him. It was kind of like group therapy with a planned program. It was lovely, and I left feeling exhausted, relieved that it went well and proud of my last gift to him.

When Rich, my first partner, died 15 years ago, his family swooped in and took control of everything. As a result, his funeral was a travesty. It had nothing to do with him.

I vowed that wouldn't happen with Shannon, so his memorial was all about him. He would have liked it.

I officiated and then delivered remarks that I prepared ahead of time.

This is how I opened:

We come together at times like this for mutual comfort and support or to support others. It’s all part of what the great Southern writer Eudora Welty called “the pageant of grief.” It’s for the living more-so than the dead. She said that the rituals surrounding death have evolved to provide some sort of structure to what often seems like an unexpected train wreck and the grief that follows. That occasions like this help us give that grief a name and help us realize why we’re grieving. They help us crystallize why we grieve. Why we will miss someone.

This event isn’t about anything so much as remembering why we loved Shannon. It’s not about death: it’s about life and celebrating his in particular.

Several people spoke in between musical interludes, and then it was my turn. This is what I said:

We all knew Shannon in different ways. He was a cousin, an uncle, a brother, a son and a friend long before I knew him. However, I am probably the only among us that he stalked. He always said “pursued”, but one man’s pursuer is another one’s stalker.

He almost literally blew into my life on a bitterly cold, windy evening in January 2000. I will never forget that first encounter. I was sitting in a small club in downtown Austin that was deserted because it was so cold outside reading a book and minding my own business. I felt a blast of frigid wind before I heard the door close or saw anyone.

The bartender looked up and said, “Shannon, close the door behind you. And go fix your hair.” It was longer back then, and had flopped over somewhere between upside down and sticking straight up.

I looked up and saw a typical Austin kook with a bad haircut, so I went back to my book. He went to the men’s room and emerged shortly, still looking kooky but better groomed.

He was wearing a shirt I’m sure he had gotten sometimes in the 70’s, rainbow toe-socks, jeans and sandals. I hadn’t seen toe-socks since the 80’s and wondered where he had come across them. They weren’t attractive in the 80’s and nothing had changed, especially not with the sandals. Sandals when the wind chill is hovering around 20?

He took the seat next to me and insisted on talking. He was intrigued that I was sitting in a deserted night club on a cold, windy night reading. I told him I was sharing a too-small apartment with a friend and needed some space and that I was reading because I wanted to.

I finally had to put the book away. I knew I wasn’t going to get to the next paragraph with him there, much less the next chapter. I discovered that he was intelligent, well-educated and definitely a bit of a kook. That’s when he started stalking me (or “pursuing” me, depending on who you talk to).

I was at a difficult point in my life, still mourning the loss five years prior of my first partner, Rich. I was emotionally unstable and generally unhappy. Anyone who was sane would have just walked away from me and called it a day. But we all know that sanity wasn’t Shannon’s strong point, so he stuck around.

I was evasive and elusive for months. I didn’t want a relationship because I was still dealing with the wreckage and baggage left over from my first. Still, he called. He showed up places he thought I might be. He courted and wooed me, but I wasn’t having any of it.

Then I found out that my best friend, who I was sharing the too-too small apartment with, had throat cancer and the prognosis wasn’t very good. The day Bucky left for MD Anderson in Houston for treatment, I called Shannon and asked him to come over and stay with me. I didn’t want to be alone.

He was there in record time. And he never left.

He stayed with me through the illness, the death and funeral. I’m not sure what I would have done without him.

He was a prince that anyone here could be proud of. He never shied away from any of it, unlike the many people that jumped ship like they were rats and the boat was going down. He stood by me and held my hand during the funeral.

I knew he was a keeper.

Neither one of us has been particularly easy to live with, ever. But we made a life together, never-the-less. And it was good. All of it.

When I look back and remember the times that he didn’t know me because he didn’t know who he was, they fade away. They were a small part of the great tapestry of life that we created together.

More than those dark times, I remember a trip to Padre Island National Seashore. It’s a pristine beach where you can sit for hours and contemplate the waves coming regularly onto the shore and watch the pelicans flying in formation overhead, absorbing serenity and peace. I did just that until some idiot (named Shannon) threw the left-overs from our picnic lunch into the air near me and I was swarmed by sea gulls.

There’s a picture of me dancing around trying to fend then off somewhere. I’m surprised the picture came out because he was laughing and cackling so loudly. The picture will never be seen again. Except by me.

I remember walking around New Orleans and having him take pictures of the back of my head in front of whatever building struck my fancy. Riding on the street car and taking a swig of something I still don’t know what was from some European tourists. It was some sort of concoction in a Gatorade bottle, and they were passing it around. Those German kids made us look like amateurs when it came to partying.

And the times we spent at Hobbit House in Bastrop state park, where there’s no phone, no nothing. They had a bathroom with a shower. I said “Let’s go”. It’s cabin #2. The weekend in Fredericksburg at a little cabin with a great view and tiny shower. It also came with a calf out back who loved having his picture taken. I nicknamed him Glamour Boy. I started with Glamour Puss, but then looked a little closer. He was definitely a boy.

I remember how much I missed Shannon when we had to be separated, but always knew that he’d be fussing over the cats and taking care of what needed to be done. One of his legacies is a series of spoiled, demanding cats. They pester me now because they can’t find him.

Mostly, I remember the mundane days and nights of me going to work and coming home. Him calling me to remind me to pay one bill or another. He was always better at that than me. The simple joy of coming home to someone I loved every evening is what I remember most. As unglamorous as that sounds, it’s all either of us ever wanted, and it’s what we had.

I keep looking at his end of the couch and expecting him to be there or for him to come walking out of the next room. But he’s not there.

In a way he is. I can almost see him in places where I expect him, just not quite so clearly as before. Or I hear a noise and think it’s him. Or thinking I’ve got the tell Shannon this or that because he’d get a kick out of it.

I have a long standing theory that relationships often do better when there are at least as many TV’s as people. Shannon liked his cops and robbers shoot-em-ups, and I’m more of a PBS kind of guy, so I often either watched something else or worked on a project in the next room. Of all the things I will miss most, it’s walking through the living room for one reason or another, kissing him on the forehead, rubbing it and telling him he was my baby. And that he would be forever.

That simple thing I’ll hold next to my heart when it’s January and the wind is bitterly cold. That alone will keep me warm on the cold, dark nights ahead. It’s what I have left.

In the end, I don’t think it’s possible to capture the essence of a person in words. So I will suffice to say that he was among the sweetest, kindest, gentlest, most generous and loving men I’ve ever known. While he remained something of a kook, he was my kook.

I wrote a letter to him a few days before he died, but every time I was at the hospital, he was either asleep—I wanted him to get his rest—or someone was fussing over him. I thought that Saturday night would be a quiet time to give it to him.

I never got that chance.

So I’ll read it to you:


"Sweetie,

"I miss you something fierce. The house is still empty, and the cats are getting more neurotic. They were actually curled up not far from each other earlier: Amanda in my desk chair in the living room, and Lucy on the desk right above her. No taunting or hissing or anything. I think they miss you, too.

"I hate not being able to have a conversation with you. You’re the person I talk to about the things that I don’t with anyone else. And me doing all the talking isn’t exactly a conversation.

"I know that it’s got to be frustrating for you, too. Probably even more-so than for me. I’d probably be a bigger mess than you in the same situation. I’m mouthy (I take after Mama, as you well know), so anything that interfered with that would give me real problems.

"I’m doing the best I can to take care of you. Part of that is listening to the doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists, then making decisions when I have to about your care. None of them seem to mind when I ask what they’re doing and why. They actually seem pleased that someone cares enough to ask questions.

"I haven’t seen anything that would make me think that you would be better off anywhere else. To the contrary, I think you’re in the best place you could be right now. Where people who know how can take care of you.

"It hurts my male pride not to be able to take care of you myself, but my love for you is much greater than my pride.

"I will do anything I must to get you home where you belong. Even if it means a long, slow haul. You stood by me when I needed you, and that’s when I knew I loved you.

"Now it’s my turn to stand by you. For the long haul, no matter how long it gets.

"I love watching you sleep. A few times I’ve come in, and you were asleep. I haven’t woken you, but I’ve stood by the bed and watched you sleep. You seem at peace, and I want to savor the moment but still let you get your rest.

"I guess I’m taking care of you by proxy: I’m allowing people who know what they’re doing to do what I could if I knew how. I’m not sure any of them could look at a balance sheet and know how to read it (or even what one is). Their specialties lie far from mine.

"I feel so helpless and alone, even though I know on one level that I’m not. We have support from others on many levels, but the honest truth is that we’re the ones dealing with it the most.

"I’ve spent about 3 hours a day coming, going, parking and making it to the ICU. That doesn’t include the time I’m actually in the ICU. I drove 240 miles last week, mostly coming and going to and from the hospital. I eat lunch at my desk while I’m working so I can come see you at noon. But I don’t mind. I start to get neurotic as the cats if I can’t see you.

"You’re the person I share my life with. All of it. Good and bad. You’re part of me.

"That part of me is missing itself. I want you home, but only when I can take care of you properly. Right now, I can’t. And it breaks my heart.

"All I can say is that I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Without you, I’m only half a person."


I grieve because he was my beginning and my end. My life revolved around him. And for a good reason: he was worth it. He was a kind, gentle, intelligent, generous man who never ceased to challenge me or encourage me to become my better self.

Today, I celebrate the years we had together and the wonderful, kooky, sweet, complicated man he was. We had a good life together. A great life, even. He was truly happy, perhaps for the first time in his life, in spite of his deteriorating mobility and multiple health problems. He knew I loved him and would be there, come hell or high water. He basked in that love. I loved him well. He was not mine to keep.

Good night, sweet prince; and flights of angels sing you to your rest.

He was cremated. The box pictured above holds part of him. The rest went to family members.

He is at peace, I think, as am I, to one degree or another. I'm sad, but not immobilized by grief. I'm trying to learn how to be a single person again and allow the reality that he's gone sink in slowly.

I told someone today that I'll never get over his death. The best I can hope for is to get beyond it.

My Hero

Shannon Montgomery Stenberg was born August 7, 1951. He passed on to his greater life Saturday night, September 11, 2010.

After a difficult and tumultuous youth, he blossomed into the man everyone knew he could be. He was kind and gentle, always eager to help anyone in any way he could, and a talented musician who loved nothing better than playing his guitar and writing songs.

Shannon spent his life as a musician, cabinet-maker, student, teacher and Hindu disciple, all worthwhile and fulfilling pursuits. He lived his last decade with a partner who loved him dearly, without condition. Although Shannon suffered from chronic mental illness (a topic he never shied away from) and became increasingly mobility-impaired, they were among the happiest years of his life.

He is survived by his partner, Jeff Morgan of Austin, his mother Johnnie of New Braunfels, TX, his brother Gary and sister-in-law Leslie of Austin, his brother Mike and sister-in-law Beth of Warrenton, VA, his beloved aunt Anno and cousins Claudia and Heidi of Magnolia, TX, and countless other cousins, nieces, nephews and friends.

A memorial reception will be held on 1:00 pm Saturday, September 25, at 31900 RR 12 at the West Hill Center in Dripping Springs. All family, friends and loved ones are invited to attend.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions be made in Shannon’s memory to the Capital Area Food Bank, a cause that he believed in and supported regularly.

We loved him well. He was not ours to keep.

Crazy 8's

On the topic of “unalienable rights” as proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence, people question from where those rights come. Our founding fathers stated that they were we were endowed them “by our creator.” I can’t speak for what they considered the endowment process to be or how they imagined “our creator”. All I know is that the principle of unalienable rights makes common sense.

Governments that do not guarantee “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” for all citizens ultimately fail. Those deprived of rights eventually rise up against the unjust government to claim their dignity. That’s what most revolutions are about: claiming dignity in the face of injustice.

Marx and Lenin played those cards better than just about anyone. They exploited the burgeoning resentment and popular loathing of the ruling class. The people were fed up with the oppressive, capricious brutality and injustice the regimes had practiced for centuries. The Communists didn’t mention that the regime that replaced the tsars would be as equally oppressive, brutal and unjust, but they stirred up a frenzy that ended the Russian empire and led to the creation of the Soviet one.

The second Russian Revolution that began with the destruction of the Berlin wall and the reunification of the two Germanys after decades of partition mirrored the first. It was by and large peaceful, not the bloodbath of the 1917 revolution. But it was driven by the same factors: oppressive, capricious brutality and injustice.

That brings us to the crazy eights: two voter approved propositions, one in Arizona and one in California, that are both destined for a Supreme Court battle. And for anyone that believes God doesn’t have a sense of humor, both of these patently unjust laws were passed by the same name on the respective ballots. But they boil down to the “dictatorship of the proletariat”.

Marx would be proud.

The Arizona law, in effect, requires that every person carry proof of citizenship at all times. The only real proof of my citizenship is my birth certificate, and the only copies of it are 750 miles away. My passport expired years ago, and I’ve never renewed it because I don’t have plans to travel outside the country any time soon. But in Arizona, if I couldn’t produce documentation of my citizenship, I could be detained (stuck in jail) until I could get a copy of my birth certificate sent to me.

I’m 45 years old, and I’ve never had to prove my citizenship to anyone except employers. I have a valid Social Security number and card, and that’s always been good enough. But, in Arizona, that would not be proof of legal status. I’m not going there any time soon because I don’t want to have to order another copy of my birth certificate from the Gibson County, Tennessee, custodian of records.

A federal judge sanely stayed its implementation pending appeals.

The other crazy 8 was a proposition in California that outlawed gay marriage. After a federal judge struck down the prohibition of same-sex marriage, opponents organized and passed a ballot proposition to amend the state’s constitution to specifically bar it. Another federal court has since found the new law unconstitutional on the federal level.

Both of these cases are about denying “unalienable rights”. Mr. Jefferson was a slave-owner when he wrote those words, but the concept of rights has always been fluid. He might well be proud that his words are being used to defend minorities today, whether those rights are sought based on sexual orientation or ethnic origin.

Historically, times of financial crises have led to the demonization of one particular segment of society or another. In the 30’s it was Jews, Catholics and homosexuals. Hitler rode to power on that message.

Today, it’s Hispanics, Muslims and homosexuals. I suppose fear-mongering by ambitious (and sometimes psycho) politicians will always be there. They will wrap their ethnic, religious and social hatred up in a flag and campaign on that platform. They will continue the tawdry practice of politics as it’s practiced today.

I long for a post-partisan, sane political arena. When politicians get mired in racism and homophobia, they don’t have time to take care of the people’s real business. They spend it on sound bites, in-fighting and attacking their opponents.

I don’t know what divided the country so long ago and why we can’t move to a place of consensus. The civil war was officially over a long time ago. We are now in the middle of an un-civil one fueled by news cycles and instant access to information.

It’s time to go back to unalienable rights. Don’t require that everyone carry citizenship documentation at all times. Let people of legal age marry if they want to. Get back to the business of governing and trying to get us out this hole we all dug.

And the hole is deep.

The government intervention, almost unprecedented though it has been, to prevent the economy from collapsing into a bigger mess than the Great Depression, started with a Republican administration. The Democratic one that followed continued and expanded that economic aid has been blamed for the whole mess and roundly criticized for not fixing things quickly enough.

It took us more than two years to get here, and it’ll take more than two years to get back to better. Ten years would be a more realistic estimate. The market doesn’t lose and then regain 40% of its value overnight.

Don’t blame the whole mess on ethnic and religious minorities or homosexuals, or even the so-called "liberal intelligentsia". Hitler already did that. So did Lenin and Stalin, as well as any number of petty dictators.

It didn’t work out too well for any of them. How's it working for you?

Mouthy

I have a long history of being mouthy, and since same-sex marriage is a hot topic, I sent letter to the editor of the Austin American-Statesman. They published it today. (I had a few others posted on other topics.) It's a condensed version of the last piece, but includes a response and a reply.

This is the text of what I submitted, only mildly edited by the paper's staff:

The federal court's ruling overturning California's Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage reignited a firestorm and has left politicians (including the president) with the options of either supporting it, condemning it or taking the middle road. The middle would be domestic partnerships.
While it is politically expeditious to endorse domestic-partner laws, endorsing gay marriage is a much stickier wicket. I realize that. But the truth of the matter is that not doing so perpetuates the class of "other."

"Separate but equal" was ruled by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional long ago. This issue is no different.

I am tired of being "other." As George Orwell so tersely put it in "Animal Farm," "Some animals are more equal than others."

As it stands, most people I know are more equal than me.

That's how it shakes out at the end of the day. I'm separate, but by no means equal.
Austin

Someone posted this response:

Regarding the "some animals are more equal than others" quote, there are valid reasons for saddling horses and rounding up cattle. The idea that all animals are the same is as silly as seeing no difference in men and women. The worst part of this is trying to point out the obvious without sounding stupid.

This was my response to the critic:

I'm afraid you're the one who sounds stupid. "Animal Farm" is an allegory about fascism. The whole point of Orwell's statement was that, although we are all different, our rights should be the same. The function that an individual serves in society is a totally unrelated to any discussion of rights.

In addition, you seem to imply that men and women should be treated differently because of their genitalia. To take your argument to its natural conclusion, it would justify assigning rights based on societal function.

Your logic is severely flawed, and your attack is ad hominem and thoroughly unreasoned. As well as unflattering. It paints you as either unintelligent or as a bigot.

I think the exchange speaks volumes about the whole issue. Many people cannot overcome ingrained bigotry and rely on poor and/or illogical arguments to rebut challenges to it.

Other

The federal court’s ruling overturning California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage re-ignited a firestorm that left politicians (including the President) with the options of either supporting it, condemning it or taking the middle road. The middle would be domestic partnerships.

While it is politically expeditious to endorse domestic-partner laws, endorsing gay marriage is a much stickier wicket. I realize that. But the truth of the matter is that not doing so perpetuates the class of "other".

I’m hoping the debate the firestorm kicked off will encourage sane debate about the issue. But I doubt that it will. It comes ready-made for partisan politics and name-calling. It’s an opportunity for sound bites about “activist judges”, “judicial legislation” and the general decay of moral values. Some will even claim that it will lead to legalized pedophilia and bestiality.

That’s a slippery slope they often fall down to score points with constituents who won’t bother trying to trace A to B and find out that they don’t meet. Laws protecting children and animals would in no way be impacted by laws that allowed consenting adults to choose and legally wed the person of their mutual choices, regardless of sex.

And our legislators, whether state or federal, by and large don’t want to hear about what is inherently good about gay marriage. As a body, they are too cowardly to address the issue directly. They’d rather keep sliding down that slippery slope.

They don’t want to hear or accept the simple truth that long-term gay relationships are as stable, fulfilling and healthy as long-term heterosexual ones. That children of gay parents have the same chances of a having a healthy, nurturing childhood as those of heterosexual couples. Sexual orientation plays little to no role in defining good parents: it’s the individual parents who are either good or bad at the job.

They don’t want to know that millions of gay families already exist in everything but name and have for years.

Instead, they revert to their prejudices and preconceived notions about what “gay” is, while not recognizing or acknowledging that their actions predicate and foster inherent bias and discrimination aimed at more of their constitutes than they want to admit exist.

Some days, I want to stand up and scream, “I’m a human being. I hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Let me be happy in peace, dammit.

And while that statement draws on the Declaration of Independence and has no standing in a court of law, it should guide and inform anyone interpreting the law.

Most politicos would like for people to think that law is cut and dried: that it’s precise and covers every scenario and anticipates every possible outcome. But law is fluid. It requires judgment calls. It requires speculation about original intention and possible outcomes. It is not the static, immutable creature that some want to pretend that it is.

"Separate but equal" was ruled by the Supreme Court to be unconstitutional long ago. This issue is no different.

Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution broadly for a reason: they knew that they could not anticipate every situation or issue that might arise in the future. So they made the provision that it could be amended and that the sometimes-vague language could be interpreted by judges. They didn’t write a document for the 18th century: they wrote it for all ages and times.

They framed the language to protect persons who had been persecuted in Europe because of their religious beliefs. To protect the “others” of their day. Over time, the list of “others” protected grew to include people of color and women, as well as legal immigrants, regardless of where they came from.

Same-sex partners’ battle for legal countenance is the civil rights movement of our time. It follows in the footsteps of the suffragists in the teens and, later, Dr. King, who so eloquently gave a voice to a disenfranchised body of citizens. His “I Have a Dream” speech is great, not only because of the hope implicit in the words, but also for the implicit indictment of the larger society for keeping that dream from coming true. What he didn’t say was as important as what he did say.

I am not so eloquent or patient. I am simply tired of being "other". But as George Orwell so tersely put it in “Animal Farm” (his satiric novel about fascism), "Some animals are more equal than others."

As it stands, most people I know are more equal than me.

That's how it shakes out at the end of the day. Separate, but by no means equal. Just “other”.

She's an Angle, not an Angel

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is in a fight for his political life in Nevada. His opponent, Sharron Angle, is running on a platform of privatizing Social Security and Medicare, neither of which make any sense to anyone who has a 401(k) or private health insurance.

Privatizing Social Security would mean putting that money in the financial market, which is currently so schizophrenic that I take comfort in knowing I can’t take any money out for at least 20 years. Maybe it’ll be better by then. But to transfer all my Social Security money over to that market means I could lose as much as I’ve lost in the past two years.

I have good, conservative investments, but I lost 40% of it when the market crashed. I’ve regained a good bit of that, but not enough to regain contributions made since the crash.

That is no way to manage Social Security.

On the Medicare front, I have said long and loudly that the VA has one of the most efficient health care systems in the world. They went from sub-standard to being world-class. My health insurance costs about $700 a month. The VA provides comparable or better care every day.

Instead of privatizing Medicare, take the VA model and run with it. It’s a very good model, and provides a better path than the alternative suggested by Ms. Angle.

While she paints Mr. Reid as a radical, she’s the real one. She's a tea-party girl who hasn’t thought through what her proposed agenda would do to her proposed constituents. It’s typical reactionary bile.

I have to wonder which knee is jerking harder: the right or the left.

My guess is that it’s the right one. And in this case, right is wrong.

Respect

That the Gulf oil spill is only the latest in a long string of insults and injuries to the Mississippi River Delta should come as little surprise to anyone who grew up or lived very long in the Mississippi River valley. Those of us who pay attention know that the Army Corp of Engineers’ projects up and down the river to contain flooding have done nothing more than treat the mighty river like a giant drainage pipe. Growing up near it, I learned early on that it is too powerful and vast to be contained or managed.

Great rivers like the Mississippi are living organisms that change over time, and they resist efforts to change them. It has been steadily moving east for eons, eroding and undercutting the hills and bluffs to the east while leaving the land flat to the west, where it has wandered from. It’s a sort of aquatic bulldozer that chews away slowly on its eastward journey and leaves prairie in its wake.

We know that the river is ancient because of its snaky path. As rivers cycle through the annual flood season over and over again, the floodwaters create new channels within the flood plain. They meander and either create oxbows or, when the flood cuts a new channel through the ends of an oxbow, create oxbow lakes.

During the flooding, the river picks up pieces of every region it drains and sends them downstream to the delta, where they form barrier islands and fresh water wetlands, ecosystems that not only support and nurture a diverse and rich life, but also serve to protect the mainland from storm surges.

Since 1932, Louisiana alone has lost 1,875 square miles of land: barrier islands that no longer exist. They have succumbed to the sea because they lack the constant replenishment of silt that used to drain the big river and settle naturally. But for silt to settle, the water cannot be moving fast. It must linger as the sediment falls out. That’s what made the delta such a bountiful cropland.

The Army Corp decided that it could tame the river like some feral animal. But the river isn’t and never has been feral: it’s been wild and refusing to be anything else. During a rainy year, the evidence of that abounds.

The natural flood plain is miles wide, but instead of recognizing this and not building in it, the Corp has built mile after mile after mile of levees to contain the water and move it downstream faster. But levees fail. Years of repeated flooding weakens them, and then they collapse. When they do, the river goes back to where it has always lived.

The levees not only hurt our coastline, but they also provide a false sense of security to those who live along the river’s banks.

The idea of taming nature is a neoclassical idea that belongs more in the 17th or 18th century. Those thinkers believed that nature was to be studied and controlled. That man was put on earth to understand, subdue and dominate the chaotic natural world in which they lived.

A more modern (and old-fashioned) approach would be to live in harmony with the natural world. Tear down the levees. Move out of the flood plain. Let the river get back to doing what it does best.

Because the floodwaters from about 1/3 of the US are funneled into and down this poorly engineered pipeline, we are losing barrier islands at an alarming rate, as well as the wetlands that are the home of a unique and irreplaceable ecosystem. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. We won’t be able to get it back.

This eco-disaster didn’t happen because of the oil spill. It only shined a light on what has been a continuing disgrace to this country: that we have allowed one of our greatest assets to become degraded almost to the point of extinction.

And I will say again that anyone who lives along the river knows it can’t be tamed or even managed to any great degree. It will continue to erode bluffs and break levies, even as it dumps its load of precious silt that should be renewing barrier islands and wetlands into deeper water off shore where it does no good.

The natural cycles along the length of America’s mightiest river have been disrupted for decades, all in the name of flood control, while the simplest, most logical and efficient response would have been to leave the flood plain undeveloped.

Live around it rather than attempt to control it. Give it the respect it will refuse to quit demanding.

It will win in the end. It always does. It always has.

The Other Side

It's Fathers' Day, and it will be 3 years in a few weeks since Daddy died. I sent some money to my mother last week and asked for her to buy some flowers to take down to the cemetery and to tell him they were from me. He's buried at Hopewell in Medina, TN, in the family plot. It's an old, country cemetery that dates back to the mid-1800's.

The trees in the older part have to be at least 150 years old. As are the oldest head stones. Some are so weathered, it's hard to read the carving, and some have fallen over or broken because of the harsh winters. They get a crack, it rains, then freezes and the water expands into ice and breaks them in half. Sometimes right off where they come up out of the ground.

Daddy's been there a lot less longer than some of his neighbors. His mother died in '86 and is buried a couple a spots over. As is my little brother, Douglas, who was born dead in 1969. Daddy has more family within 100 feet of him than most people even have family.

It's a nice spot with a view down the hill. It's where he grew up. And Mama, too.

I didn't realize it until Daddy died, but my parents had one of those great love affairs that you usually only see in movies. They lived through economic hardship (the 70's weren't really that pretty), raised three children and then took on two more when they finally had the house back to themselves. But they stuck together through all the bad times and turned unexpected responsibilities into good opportunities to have a richer life.

I was lucky. I got a father that taught me how to be a man. He was slow to anger and long-suffering. Between me, my two sisters and Mama, he had plenty of reasons to get irate. But he didn't. He had a special way of making us feel overwhelmingly guilty without saying a word. Just the shake of his head could send me seeking repentance and atonement for whatever I had done wrong.

All along, he relied on my mother to take care of details. He took care of generating cash, and she took care of most everything else, but they made plans for the future together. They both seemed comfortable with the arrangement, and I’d be the last person to question it. It worked well for them, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Mama's spot has been long reserved at Hopewell, next to his. We went down (about 60 miles away) when I was a kid and put out makers to delineate our family plot. According to the rules of country cemeteries, once we staked our claim, it was ours. People who have family there voluntarily contribute to its upkeep. That's the way it's been for as long as I can remember. And I've been visiting that cemetery about as long as I can remember.

I think there might have been a small church there at one time, just by the way things are laid out. There's a nice place to put one at the foot of the hill as you come in, so I guess there might have been a church years before me or Daddy or Mama was born.

It's a lovely place, one where I find peace. Church or no church, the view is lovely off the hillside. It's the one I'll end up with, one way or another. If I go before my partner, he knows where I want half of my ashes. The other half will be his to do with as he wishes. At least half of me will end up in an urn on a hillside in Tennessee at the foot of my little brother's grave.

I always wanted a little brother. Growing up in a houseful of women, me and Daddy were always outnumbered. Had he lived, he would have evened up the score. His name was Douglas, and he was born dead, but I never even saw him.

I would have been a good big brother, I think. He would have been 40 this year.

Maybe I'll get to know him on the other side.

When I left Daddy in that room in Memphis after all hope had run out, I kissed him on the forehead and told him I'd see him on the other side. Then I pulled the sheet up over his face, told him goodbye one last time and walked away.

As Good as It Gets

I always look forward to June because that's when Jim's tomato crop comes in. He grows heirloom varieties and brings what he can't use to the office to give away. He knows I appreciate a good tomato, so he always lets me know before he puts them out for general consumption. I think he wants the folks that will enjoy them most to have first dibs.

My grandparents were produce wholesalers whose business was built on tomatoes. The ones they got in the summer were the best: locally grown with a bright flavor and meaty texture that one can't find from the "shipped-in" ones they got in the winter. In the off-season, they came mostly from Florida and were in no way comparable to the "home-grown" they got in the summer.

During the summer, it was impossible to leave their house without a bag of them. The blemished ones, the ones they couldn't sell. They gave them away to anyone and everyone who stopped by. And the "damaged goods" tasted just as good as the perfect ones. They just weren't as pretty.

Canned tomatoes are generally better in the off-season than what you can buy "fresh" because they are bred and grown to be canned, not shipped. Unless harvested locally, the ones you see in the grocery were probably grown hundreds of miles away and shipped by trailer or train (or both) to your grocery store still half green. Tomatoes bruise very easily, and one bruise can cause many others around it to rot. They have to be culled daily. It's a lot of manpower.

To get around that, growers bred varieties that travel better, but at the expense of flavor. That's why the tomatoes that look so good at the store end up being a pulpy, mealy, tasteless filler. They don't bruise as bad, but they have no taste. They're a waste of time and money, as far as I'm concerned. And the ones that are worth eating that have had special handling cost a small fortune.

Canning tomatoes, on the other hand, don't have the restrictions or cost of "fresh" tomatoes. As long as they're not rotten, whether they look pretty or not is of no consequence. They generally don't have to be shipped too far from the cannery, because it's cheaper to acquire them locally than to buy them from 750 or 1,000 miles away and hope they get there in reasonable condition.

My family never had a lot of money, but I grew up with a privileged life. I had good, fresh food that tasted like the sun that had nurtured it.

In addition to tomatoes, we had fresh cantaloupes, watermelons, green beans, corn (white and yellow), purple hull peas, okra, squash and just about anything else that was in season.

Good, fresh food is to be cherished for the short time it's in season. The season will end all too soon, and then it's back to the cans and the freezer section.

A Travesty by Any Other Name

People use the word "tragedy" way too often to describe what amounts to what I would call a travesty. Katrina was a good example: the only tragic thing about it was how the relief effort was handled. And that led to what can only be called a travesty.

They also refer to the recent Ft. Hood mass killings as a tragedy. In reality, it was a catastrophe, one that points to the Army's unwillingness to discharge a doctor because of poor performance and questionable behavior. They need doctors these days, and they might have bent rules and/or ignored warning signs to keep the shooter among the ranks.

In its purest form, "tragedy" refers to ancient Greek plays. They more or less defined the genre, one that still exists today. In the Greek plays, characters were often the victims of fate and fallibility. They could not control their own future, no matter what they did. Their flaws doomed them to misery or death.

I'm not sure if Shakespeare was familiar with the Greek tragedies, but I suspect he might have been. In his tragedies, the protagonists slowly spiraled to their eventual demise, as happened in the Greek dramas. His writing shares with the Greeks the inevitability of the outcome. In some ways, it's like watching a car crash in slow motion.

People routinely refer to the oil geyser in the Gulf as a tragedy or catastrophe. Tragedy implies inevitability, and this mess doesn’t rise to that occasion, except on the flaw side. The flaws could have been easily addressed by a good risk management officer. They were not inevitable.

And while the end results will probably prove to be catastrophic, that word doesn’t describe the devastation adequately, either.

This mess amounts to nothing less than a travesty. Lax oversight by the federal government and the corporations involved led to a travesty. The spill is catastrophic, no doubt. The real tragedy is that an enormous multinational corporation put cash above safety.

11 men are dead, and the Gulf is slowly filling up with oil. That is the real tragedy: the outcome was inevitable, but didn’t have to be.

It didn’t have to happen. But because of the loosening of oversight in earlier administrations, it did. The regulators were too cozy with the companies they were charged with regulating. The conflicts of interest ran almost as deeply as the oil spewing into the ocean.

The Gulf is one my favorite places in the world. Sitting by the sea or wandering out in the surf just enough to get my toes wet makes me happy. It brings me peace. On the beach, I can see forever. Infinity and eternity become real.

I’m afraid I might lose that forever. The region may not recover in my lifetime. That’s where tragedy begins and far from where it ends.

Hundreds of thousands of people are or will be directly affected by the spill. Thousands more will suffer the indirect effects. Not only will fishermen no longer be able to fish, hotel workers will be laid off because they have no one to take care of, as will the waiters that serve tourists and the cooks who feed them. Small businesses that cater to tourists will be devastated and bankrupted, as will anyone who depends on gulf seafood for their livelihood.

This is travesty on a grand scale. It smells foul, but there’s nothing I can do about it.