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.