Tag: memories

Today is not the only day

Today is not the only day I cry.
It’s just the day I always think of some of the other days I’ve cried.

I am a private person, and it’s hard for me to talk about these things in a public forum. The only reason I do it is because the people we’ve lost deserve to be talked about. They deserve to be remembered. And they deserve the tears we cry for their loss as much as they deserve all the happy memories we share about them.

Here are some of the days I cried.

The day I left Steve R.’s hospital room because one of his nurses insisted that I take an hour or two away, for myself. I went to a music store. I looked through tapes for something, anything, to buy that wouldn’t have a single song on it that would make me think of AIDS. I picked out a Def Leppard tape as being very likely to fit my needs. Then I glanced into the glassed-in room where the store kept their classical music. I thought of all the times I’d gone shopping there with Steve. The way I’d be out on the floor looking through tapes, and I’d look into the classical music area and see him where he was happiest–shopping for the composers he loved. And I realized that would never, ever happen again. I paid for my tape and listened to it as I raced back to the hospital. When I got inside his room, he was asleep, and I made myself look at him, really look at him, and face the truth. Then I did what I almost never allowed myself to do in his presence. I cried. I cried hard in the corner, as far away from him as I could get, so I wouldn’t wake him. His nurse came in and caught me and pulled me out of the room and held me while I cried.

The next day, Steve died. And even though not a single song on the Def Leppard tape should have made me think of AIDS, I thought of AIDS anyway whenever I heard it.

Another day nearly three years later, I woke up and didn’t want to go to work more than anything in the world. I had to force myself to leave the house. My stomach felt like lead. The air around me was smothering me. I drove to the end of my block, turned around, and went home. I stood inside my house, trying to figure out what I wanted. I finally went to my photo albums and took out all my pictures of Jeff. Taking them with me was the only way I could go to work. Jeff was not allowing me to see him by then. He was angry. At AIDS. At the world. At me. I had promised him that I would be with him when he died, as he knew I was with Steve, but he wasn’t letting me keep that promise, and it was making me crazy. There is no end to the cruelty of AIDS, but when it robs a person of the ability to know when and how deeply and by whom he is loved, it is cruelest of all.

I went to work that day, but I could barely function. And when I got home, Tim R. called me to tell me that Jeff was dead.

Two people still connected me to Jeff: our mutual friend, Tim R., and Jeff’s ex, John. John with the twinkling eyes. John who’d never been sick. Who’d never been in the hospital until December of 1996. John who made me swear, as Jeff once had, that if the time ever came that he was dying, I’d be there with him. We were sure that time was far, far into the future. John went into the hospital for tests, and John was going to be given the new drugs, the ones that were making some of his friends’ viral loads negligible. The ones that promised years of a manageable disease, maybe enough years so that a cure would be found. John was only in the hospital a couple of days when, for reasons I still don’t know, his condition took a sudden turn. As James and I stood next to his bed, John took his last breaths. I’ll probably never talk publicly about all the things that happened in the hospital that night, but when I cried, the nurses were like angels and James’s father was so kind to me that I will never, ever stop feeling grateful for him.

Tim R. sustained me through the losses of Jeff and John. And when Tim’s doctors told him there was nothing else they could do for him, the new drugs just weren’t going to work in his case, he made a special point of inviting me to his parents’ house, where he was living by that time. We sat and talked, and it took me a while to understand that he was saying goodbye. That he didn’t want me to be shocked by what was coming. That he didn’t want me to feel like anything was left unfinished or unsaid between us. That was the last time I ever saw him. I left roses for him on the family’s doorstep one night. Though he was barely getting around by then, Tim was able to go outside for a few minutes and he was the one who found them. A few days later, Tim died in his own bed at home, with his family around him laughing and reminiscing. It made me feel so good to know he had such a peaceful, loving exit.

Though I hadn’t cried at Steve’s or Jeff’s or John’s memorial services, I couldn’t stop crying at Tim’s funeral. I cried for all of them, and because I was just so tired after years of dealing with AIDS every day. I cried for the families and friends who’d suffered more and greater losses than I could imagine.

Steve, Jeff, John, and Tim are not my only friends who died, but they were my four closest friends who died. I still have friends living with HIV, and I’m grateful beyond words for the drugs that are helping them manage their illness. There will always be days I cry for the losses. But there are more days that I’m thankful for the love of all my friends–the dead, the living, the healthy, the ill. Every time I laugh, it’s an echo of all the laughter I shared with Steve, Jeff, John, and Tim. In the balance of things, we spent most of our time together laughing and almost none of it crying.

Beautiful men, beautiful souls, beautiful friends. I miss you.

Lit Tree

Even though decorating a tree can be a pain, every year when I open the bins and trunks that contain ornaments, I am opening a door to my past. I have too many ornaments and too small a tree, so there are some that are never used because they hold no sentimental value beyond memories of when I’ve used them on past holidays.

We used to live in bigger houses. Then, before Tim moved here, we’d put a large, real tree in the apartment and only decorate our house with smaller things. Some years we didn’t decorate at all because we traveled. However, the year that Tom sadly hung a single ornament on a cactus made me feel so guilty that I think I’ve decorated ever since.

There are some ornaments that I use every time I decorate because they mean so much to me. Small glass ornaments that hung on my family’s tree from the time my brother (eight years older) was a baby. Ornaments cross-stitched by my friend Amy, as well as the AIDS Santa she gave me one Christmas after Steve R. died. A little hand-quilted ornament that my mother gave me after the Thanksgiving that she, my sister, and I worked on Tim R.’s AIDS Quilt panel.

There are ornaments that hung on Tom’s family tree when he was a little boy, and ornaments from his grandmother, who always decorated lavishly at Christmas. Ornaments that symbolize times that Lynne and I have shared over the past 38 years of friendship. (Yes, years before we were even born! Another miracle!) As I said last year, the two garlands that hang over two doorways are filled with the Star Trek ornaments Lynne has given Tom, and the Barbie ornaments she’s given me over many years. There’s a pink rhinestone pig that Lynne says is ugly but which I love that was from her son Jess and his wife Laura one Christmas.

There are little picture frames with pictures of my family and Tom’s nieces and various dogs. There’s the ornament I bought in December of 2001, a fragile ball of cobalt blue with an American flag on it, and each year when I take it out of its box and hang it, I honor everyone lost on September 11. There are several handcrafted ornaments from Tom’s mother, an artist, as well as ornaments she and his father have bought us when they’ve traveled. And there are plenty of Winnie the Pooh ornaments, although most of these stay out all year on an antique set of shelves that bear the name “Pooh Corner.”

Since we don’t have kids, there’s no knowing what will happen to all this stuff when Tom and I die, but I don’t care. It’s enough for me that our ornaments aren’t just glass, plastic, metal, or pewter, they’re memories of and gifts from people too many to mention: people who taught me about love, friendship, and the comfort of tradition.

Holidays can be hard when they remind us of better times or people we’ve lost. The real gifts though, are that we had those moments and those loved ones in our lives. Try to carve out some quiet time to cherish your memories and honor your past.

Jane-Jane’s Hand

Last night Jim and I were talking about crazy grandmothers. It seems nearly everyone has a crazy grandmother story. I didn’t know either of my biological grandmothers–they died before I was born. However, my father’s father did have the good sense to remarry, so I had a step-grandmother. I adored her, and certain scents always make me think of her. I had actually been remembering her the other night as I was slicing fresh okra and enjoying its smell. To keep me out from under her feet when she was cooking, she’d give me a big metal bowl full of the ends and peelings of her vegetables and sit me on the back porch outside her kitchen. I would pretend-cook okra, squash, carrots, and potatoes while she cooked the real thing.

Her name was Mary Jane, and among other things, she’d been a postmistress in their little Alabama town. She’d had a breast removed because of cancer, but I never knew her to be sick or to complain about anything. My brother, sister, and I called her Jane-Jane. When my brother was little, he misheard a church hymn with the lyric, “hold to God’s unchanging hand” as “hold to God and Jane-Jane’s hand.” To all of us, that was perfectly logical, so we always sang his version.

Jane-Jane’s thinning white hair was always pulled back in a tiny bun at the nape of her neck, and no matter how hot the Alabama summer, she was always in a dress with all the proper undergarments and her thick support hose. She managed to be every bit a lady even when she dipped Bruton snuff (a brand I misspelled in A COVENTRY CHRISTMAS and another of those scents I associate with her). One of my mother’s most “mortified” memories is when Jane-Jane went with us to the laundromat one morning. I was around two, and letters had begun to fascinate me, so I would always call them out and ask, “What’s that say, Mama?” Apparently, I found some new ones scratched onto a washing machine, because I began spelling out, “F…U…C…K…. What’s that say, Mama?” Fortunately, like all ladies, Jane-Jane could be conveniently deaf.

Jane-Jane drove a car that looked a little like this:

That car always smelled like gasoline, and so did the outlying garage where she parked it. I loved to sit in the car and pretend-drive, though I may have just been addicted to the gasoline high. My mother hadn’t learned to drive back then, so when my father was away, Jane-Jane was always our chauffeur. I remember one day when coming home from church, I heard my mother’s sharp intake of breath as Jane-Jane drove past a man on a bicycle.

“Miss Mary Jane, I believe you brushed his pants legs with your car,” my mother said a little tensely, but again, Jane-Jane became conveniently deaf and never acknowledged that she heard her, any more than she acknowledged that she shared the road with anyone else.

Jane-Jane had transformed the entire front yard of my grandfather’s house into an unruly flower garden. No sweet flowers for her, she liked the ones that gave off more acrid, pungent odors, and I still like those best, too, and they always evoke her memory when I smell them: black-eyed Susans, marigolds, daisies, sunflowers, chrysanthemums, zinnias, and four o’clocks.

I thought of her today at the grocery store when I saw these flowers. I was much too young when she died to have been able to tell her what she meant to me. I hope she knew I loved her.

‘Cause a little girl inside me will always be holding to Jane-Jane’s hand.