Tag: grief

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Eye of the Storm, by Phillip Hoyle

I must have entered into the relationship through the eye of the storm. Our connection was pacific, even inspiring at the beginning, but somehow the eye passed and I found myself caught up in a hurricane of problems.

The calm beauty of our first nights together featured a sexual exploration like I had never before experienced, the two of us touching, responding, initiating, enjoying a reciprocal openness and delight. That second morning when I had to leave early—well 3:00 a.m.—to feed my visiting family, he again said, in a childlike voice, “Don’t go.”

“I have to go, but the kids leave today. I’ll meet you after work; we’ll have the whole night together. I’ll fix you breakfast.”

“I want to fix you breakfast,” he insisted.

That third night turned out like I’d hoped, and we basked in one another’s presence, held onto each other, actually slept in his bed. And then I was introduced to his skill as a cook, that breakfast the first of many meals we shared in following months.

But within a few weeks I knew he was HIV positive, was in deep legal trouble facing a third degree sexual assault charge, had twice tried to kill himself, had serious financial problems, was just newly out to his parents, was getting medical attention through Denver Health, had recently been in the hospital, had decided he wanted to stay well, and wanted me to move in with him right away. I also found out he was college educated, creative, funny, sweet, and made my heart pound extra fast whenever he showed up—always late. I was hopelessly in love with this guy in a way I had never experienced before. He said he was in love with me as well.

The storm brought many trips to the hospital and clinic for tests, imaging appointments, surgical procedures, examinations of new symptoms, introductions of new medications, and more. Fortunately the intensity of these problems was matched by the intensity of our enthusiasm for one another. Our days provided new revelations of our pasts, experiments of intimacy, delight in giving ourselves to each other through conversation, touch, laughter, dance, and food. Our storm was not a fight but rather an accommodation to delights that we hoped would have a long future. But as the weeks went on the specter of failure kept trying to get through the door that had been left ajar in spite of our love. We watched the building intensity of the storm, the complications of treatments, the appearance of symptom after symptom, the confusion of diagnoses. We were both wearing down, not in our love or commitment, but in our imagination of a future. And there were other challenges: work, exhaustion, and fear. Fear was my largest challenge. I had lost too many people from my life in the prior six years: parents, my marriage, a good friend, and the too-recent death of another lover. My grief over that loss had not sufficiently subsided. Still I was not thinking of running away. We were tight Rafael and I. But I wished I weren’t going through all this again, especially when I had never had such feelings of love with another human being.

My lover’s parents lived in Mexico. They had little English; I had little Spanish. I had wanted to meet them before another hospitalization. That didn’t happen. I met them as my lover’s condition complicated, as his death neared. The storm ended then, at least the main part of it. Yet a storm lingers in me. Fifteen years later it still roars on occasion.

The ancient Etruscans believed that once grief visits it never goes away. I have many joys, and in my old age can list grief after grief. Now I work hard to welcome grief as a friend, even when my losses do not feel particularly friendly. I keep looking for the eyes in new storms I encounter and appreciate the ways their calm equips me to live with acceptance and supports my overall joy in life.

© 9 July 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Away from Home, by Lewis Thompson

I have shared here before my story about my first summer camp experience when I was about eleven years old and, after about four days of utter misery and homesickness, wrote a letter to my parents saying, “If you love me, you’ll come and get me.” Well, that experiment didn’t work out as I had hoped so I adapted and learned that being away from home wasn’t as bad as it first appeared.

After high school and two years of community college, I was actually eager to go away to university and leave my parents to fend for themselves. I suspect that they were as relieved as I was…or, at least, that was likely true for my mother. I remember that it was at about this time that my dad first started giving me a hug at home-comings and -goings.

After graduation, with engineering degree in hand, I began applying for work. I had only two interviews in my home state–one with Kansas Power and Light and the other with General Electric in Kansas City. My other interviews were with corporations in Ohio or Michigan. When I told my parents that I was accepting a job at Ford, I was pretty certain that Dad would be proud, as he had always been a “Ford Man”. But I also knew that he would be sorry to see me move so far away. I was his only child. (My mother had a son and daughter from an earlier marriage who lived in nearby Pratt, Kansas.)

My parents were both pleased when I married and became a father in my own right. They both liked my wife, Jan, and she them. When Jan and I married and bought our first house, I approached my parents about a loan for the down-payment. My mother nixed the idea. It wasn’t a lot of money, only $1200, with a promise to pay it off within a year. (The year was 1972. The mortgage was only $24,000. In those days, you could buy a lot of house in Detroit for that money.) We ended up borrowing the money from Jan’s parents, interest-free. I never quite forgave my mother for that slight.

My parents and I exchanged visits back-and-forth as often as we could and even took vacations to Colorado together with Jan’s parents. My mother, always reserved, seemed to look down her nose a bit at my in-laws, neither of whom was college-educated. Mom did not have a diploma, either, mostly due to the inability to pay for it as her parents thought that sending a daughter to college was a waste of good money. Perhaps that fact sheds some light on why she was so reluctant to help Jan and me out financially. (This thought just occurs to me as I write this. See what writing one’s memoirs can do to shed light into long-darkened corners!)

I have attended every high school reunion for the Hutch High Class of 1964 since graduation. On one such occasion, after both of my parents had died, I parked my car across the street from the house I had lived in until I was of kindergarten age. As I sat in the car alone, I was overcome by a wave of grief that left me sobbing uncontrollably–no particular memories, simply gut-wrenching emotion. It was as if a part of me were still there, trapped in that house, and could only be redeemed by getting away from home and never going back.

[P.S. Nothing in this story is intended to be, can be construed to be, or has even the slightest relation to anything “experimental”.]

© 3 August 2015

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Lonely Places, by Lewis

I don’t know where to
begin writing about the subject of “lonely places” without first
distinguishing them from “places of solitude”.  There’s a distinct difference.  People often deliberately seek out places of
solitude for purposes of restoration, deliberation, and soul-searching.  They are places of respite and
retrospection.  They are for clearing the
mind of clutter, connecting with feelings–sometimes painful–that cry out for
exploration.  They are like a shower for
the soul.
In contrast, “lonely
places” are more like a pity-party for the poor-in-spirit.  In the real world, there are places where
solitude-seekers can be alone.  They
offer peace and quiet and are a place to get one’s head together and sort
things out.  They are far from being
“lonely places” unless made to be so by the individual occupying them.  In this entire vast and endlessly varied
world, there is not a single space that is inherently “lonely”, for
“loneliness” is not a physical condition but a state of mind.  If I so desired, I could be lonely on a
crowded city bus or at a fair or concert. 
Sometimes, feeling lonely
can feel safer than reaching out to someone. 
Loneliness is a trust issue.  If I
trust that others can respond to pain with love, there is no need to be lonely.  I suspect that people sometimes get stuck in
loneliness because they are afraid of risking rejection should they attempt to
make some kind of human connection.  If
one is so needy that they scare people away for fear of saying or doing the
wrong thing, they might well feel that they have been rejected.  The solution to this dilemma is to break out
of the loneliness sooner rather than later. 
One way to do that is not to pout but to pucker, not to slump or slink
but to sidle up to someone.
When Laurin died in late
2012, I lost my constant companion and lover. 
The pain was almost unbearable.  I
could have withdrawn into self-pity and made myself lonely.  I am not an extrovert; I’m rather shy,
actually.  I do not particularly like
parties or being in large crowds.  But I
do crave human connection.  I like doing
things for other people.  It’s difficult
for me to allow others to do for me.  But
that’s exactly what I did.  I attended a
grief support group here at The Center and a wellness support group at my
church.  I made a concerted effort to
make new friends and freshen older friendships. 
I had plenty of time to be alone, especially at night.  But I found that simply by being open to the
love and caring of others I had no time or predilection for loneliness.
Social media of the
electronic variety has made connecting with others easier than ever.  I would attribute the nearly pervasive
persistence with which both young and old today text, tweet, and instant
message to a desperate need to circumvent loneliness.  I hope its working.  But when it comes to feeling truly part of
the human community, there’s nothing like a warm hug–perhaps even topped with
a big, wet kiss.
© 11 Aug 2014 

About
the Author 
I came to the
beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the
state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my
native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two
children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married
to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was
passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were
basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very
attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that
time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I
retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13
blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to
fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE
Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.
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Pets, by Lewis

After initially thinking I would describe a litany of the pets I have owned over my lifetime–from a dog to a hog-nosed snake to a squirrel to a parakeet–I soon became aware that I had tapped into a very deep well of sadness. More than a moment of grief, it felt as if I had broken the seal on a bottle of “despair Drambuie” that had been corked for sixty years.

Of all my pets, my most dear was the only dog I have ever owned, a mixed fox terrier puppy named Skippy. He was a gift from my maternal grandfather–the only grandparent I have ever known–on a day in May of 1955 that was totally unremarkable. There was no “occasion”. I simply arrived home from another day in the 3rd grade at Morgan Elementary to find a puppy running around the kitchen. I was told by my mother that the puppy was a gift from Granddad Homer, who was living with us but at the time nowhere to be seen.

This was not unusual for my grandfather. Although extremely generous with his money, he was a five-star miser when it came to communication. I do not remember a time when we shared a conversation, laugh, or tender touch. When he gave gifts, he always did it through a surrogate– our first TV magically appeared in our living room, my first bike was delivered by a Sears van as I sat on the front lawn, my first gun–a .410 gauge shotgun–was handed down from him through the hands of my father. When he died, approximately six months after bringing Skippy into my life, I was not allowed to attend his funeral. Since when does a 9-year-old need closure?

At first, I resented the duties that came with owning a dog. When still a puppy, I attached a leash to his halter and swung him around in the back yard as if he were on a merry-go-round. But soon, Skippy became my trusted and loyal buddy.

On Columbus Day, 1961, I was sitting at my desk doing homework after school in my bedroom. I was 15 and a high school sophomore. Mom was the TV Editor for the Hutchinson [KS] News and hadn’t yet come home. I heard Dad come in the front door and could tell something was wrong. Dad had found Skippy lying in the street dead, apparently hit by a car. His body was unmarked except for a tiny tear in his skin.

I could tell Dad was sorry for my pain. I asked him what we should do. He said we should find a spot to bury Skippy in the back yard.

Dad grabbed a shovel and I carried my dog as gently as my shaking arms would allow. We looked around for an appropriate place of internment. Somewhat baffled, Dad–who could have been the prototype for Jimmy Olsen of Superman fame–said, “Where can we bury that damn dog, anyway?” I had already steeled myself against showing one whit of emotion and his comment only steadied my resolve. We did agree on a final resting place and I placed Skippy into it, along with a piece of my heart.

I never owned another dog as long as I have lived. The pets I have had have not been of the type that one would describe as “cuddly”. They were either reptiles or amphibians, except for one brief turn with a wounded baby squirrel.

Lately, as I have been giving more thought to the notion of once again being “in relationship”, I ask myself, “What kind of person would I be happiest with?” It seems to me that the process is a lot more like selecting a breed of dog to purchase as a pet that some people might think. Am I looking for a guard dog, a lap dog, or a dog to play “fetch” with? Why, I ask myself, are most of my friends women? Why do the men I know mostly seem to be narcissists who talk only about themselves and NEVER ask a question about my life?

At the suggestion of a newly-acquired male friend, I took the online Enneagram Personality Test. I found out that I am a Type 2–The Helper. I am told “people of this type essentially feel that they are worthy insofar as they are helpful to others. Love is their highest ideal. Selflessness is their duty. Giving to others is their reason for being. Involved, socially aware, usually extroverted, Twos are the type of people who…go the extra mile to help out a co-worker, spouse or friend in need.”

Not too bad an assessment, I would say. The description of a Type 2 goes on to say, “Two’s often develop a sense of entitlement when it comes to the people closest to them. Because they have extended themselves for others, they begin to feel that gratitude is owed to them. They can become intrusive and demanding if their often unacknowledged emotional needs go unmet.”

I recoiled from this accusation upon first reading. The idea that I could become “intrusive and demanding” seemed like a ridiculous fantasy. But upon further contemplation, I had to admit that I do have “unmet emotional needs which go largely unacknowledged”. The suddenness of this realization flooded over me like a loss every bit as painful as the death of a beloved pet.

Still, some men I know do engender a powerful resentment in me. These are the ones I labeled a bit ago as “narcissistic”. The conversation is all about them with never a thought about me. This trait among the men I know is so pervasive as to explain why it is that I much prefer the company of women. It’s not that I feel that “gratitude is owed to me” as much as I feel that I am an interesting person who deserves equal time. I don’t think that is too much to ask of a friendship. If all I cared about was caring for and pampering the other, I would go out and buy a cat. Alternatively, I’ll just have to learn how to extend myself less or be more open about verbalizing my own need for caring. Anybody know any Type 2’s out there?

© 18 August 2014

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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Preparation for Grief, by Phillip Hoyle

There is no prep work for grief. Still we can discover resources to assist us in adapting to and recovering from grief. For instance, ritual, conceptual, and relational props of congregational life surrounded me as I grew up. Of course, my perception of them changed greatly over the years of my life. I knew something about death due to losing pets and finding dead animals. These we buried beneath the forsythia bush in the backyard. I don’t remember ceremonies, but we kids may have said something. Because my dad was a church organist I grew up hearing of many funeral services and had attended those of my grandfathers and a grandmother. Emotionally our family was not very demonstrative, so scenes from movies in which people let loose to sob and scream, seemed terribly over-played and somehow inappropriate. I didn’t understand it but did accept that some people made a show of their emotions. Then, in what seemed like a few short years, (I was twenty) I was leading those services but with little personal perception of grief’s dimensions.

Being aware of the dynamics of dying, of doctrines that may comfort, of meanings attached to rites and rituals prepared this minister for dealing with a parishioner’s death, but that preparation did not serve so well when I myself faced grief. Around age fifty I really came to know the feelings that accompany deep loss. In short order I lost a long-time friend to HIV; then I lost my father to an automobile accident that also left my mother bedfast. I realized I was going to leave my marriage to a fine woman and leave my ministry in a fine church. My mother died. My father-in-law died. I did separate from my wife and then left my career. I was learning about the personal dimensions of grief quickly, too quickly.

In Denver I learned even more when I gave massages at a free AIDS clinic. There I learned a new grief related to when a client no longer showed up for appointments, a grief of uncertainty. Had the client moved away or died from the disease or found another, better therapist? I tried to find out information but the protocols of the organization did not allow the release of such facts to volunteers in the program. I also realized that the organization didn’t always know as much as I did. In churches, by comparison, there was always a supporting community, always access, always information in the organization even if its responses were sometimes inept. I had to imagine my way into experiencing grief without ceremony or formal community.

With clients in the clinic I was only an occasional touch point in what was still widely perceived as a death sentence. The realization that these persons were sometimes alone grew as I heard too often that I was the only person who touched them. I did my work but knew the important touch of massage couldn’t relieve their fears of dying or do much or even anything at the end. I wasn’t there to touch and love and reassure. I was neither called nor available. Such is life, but I had to learn to deal with my grief in new ways.

Grief changed again with my lover Michael. At least I had the dying person with me and got to trace his whole dying process, right to his last breaths. Then too soon it happened again. Within two and a half years I had lost two partners, two men I tended to as their bodies betrayed them. I touched, caressed, cleaned up after, talked, kissed, and otherwise loved them throughout their final months. Then I wept, wrote, and weathered my own losses.

In the process I saw the truth of so much that Kuebler-Ross analyzed in her clinical theory of dying and grief. I already knew so much theory but got even more insight thorough my direct experiences. The doing was most helpful for me, serving my lovers in myriad ways. But still there was the being over, being alone, just being itself, being myself.

Live. I heard the word, its challenge, and believed its possibility.

Yes. I am alive. Now I must forgive myself for not always understanding. I must continue on: laughing at death’s often ugly face, laughing into life, getting back into life’s dance. But getting back into the light fantastic is never easy, not even for one like me who is sometimes perceived as somewhat light in the loafers. I know I will again and again face grief, yes unprepared and often unanticipated. But life and the music go on whether one feels prepared or not!

Denver © 17 August 2015

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

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Sad but True, by Gillian

It is undeniably true, and equally undeniably sad, that selfish, inconsiderate, people keep insisting upon dying; often at very inconvenient times and in equally inconvenient places. Often they don’t even bother giving me any warning; which actually is of no consequence because, when I do have some presentiment of bad behavior on their part and sternly insist that they mend their ways, do they pay attention? No! They just pop their clogs, topple off their perches, in total disregard of my needs and wants.

Now, most of these people are old enough to know better. They must know that I, at a similar age, am too old to deal with emotional upheavals. Bad things just keep getting harder to deal with. So, do they cease and desist from such things? Far from it. In fact old friends insist on dying with ever-increasing frequency.

Take just last week. Nancy, the chef from Betsy’s cross-country bike trip, died unexpectedly. She was not only cook and bottle-washer, but she also rode her bike, along with the others. So her death was almost a double whammy: the loss of Nan the cook, and Nancy, the co-rider. She was also the first of the group to die, so that hit everyone very hard. I mean, just how inconsiderate is that? She was a perfectionist, and very competitive, so I guess she just had to be #1. (Actually, that whole group was made up of some very competitive people, so in a way it would not have been surprising if they’d chased each other right into the arms of that old Grim Reaper, like lemmings going over the cliffs.) But no, in the event, Nancy had to be first.

On top of that she was only 68, abandoning ship early, leaving old souls like Betsy to pedal on.

In a final act of selfishness, she had to go and die in some remote half-a-horse Wyoming town in the middle of winter. Whoa! How’s that for heaping it on? Just because she fell in love with this Wyoming rancher, just because she wanted to live on his remote ranch, just because she adored the midst of nowhere, we had to traverse the sleet and snow of Windy Wyoming on bitterly cold February days. Huh!

—————–

With that, I guess my attempt at some kind of dark humor has fizzled out. I suppose I had to try it as the only way, at this particular moment, to deal with the sad but true fact that as we age we lose so many friends; faster and faster they fall. All the tired old platitudes, such as death is just a part of life, offer me nothing, though I do try to remind myself constantly that in fact I am very fortunate: in order to lose so many friends you first have to have so many friends. Still, I hate that feeling of always waiting for another shoe to drop, dreading who will be next. Then, one day, I shall be the one who is next. Sad but true.

© February 2016

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Grief, by Pat Gourley

“By meditating on death, we paradoxically become conscious of life”.
Stephen Batchelor – from Buddhism Without Beliefs. 1997

This is one of those Story Telling Topics that really brings home to me what a lazy undisciplined writer I am. My life certainly dating from the death of my father in August of 1980 up until my most recent shift in Urgent Care, which was yesterday, has been chock-full of experience after experience of life’s impermanence and the personal grief that causes. I should be writing at least several chapters on grief if I were ever to get off my ass and write a memoir. The reality though is that the topic of Grief is going to get less than a thousand words as usual.

If I were in a really self-indulgent mood I suppose I could conjure up reams on grief around my own HIV infection and that of many, many friends and clients and their suffering and too often deaths over the past 35 years. An issue of self-exploration here for me would perhaps be how much of my own grief over the decades has really just been self-indulgent wallowing in the pool of “poor pitiful me”. How unfair that I am “forced” to face my own mortality every day when I swallow my HIV meds. And even worse how come I have witnessed so much suffering and death of others? I really need to watch this tendency in myself carefully and continually realize that no one gets out alive and many through the ages up until this minute have it so much worse than I do or ever will.

Nevertheless, that all said let me delve self-indulgently just a bit into my own grief issues, as they seem to come into focus for me especially this time of year. Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s death. The Grateful Dead were an integral part my life for decades. During the darkest years of the AIDS epidemic, from the late 1980’s until 1995 when I was not only looking down the barrel of my own infection I was also the nursing manger in the AIDS clinic at Denver Health and living with the love of my life who was dying in front of me. The music of the Grateful Dead was a great solace in those years and remains so today actually. I was at the last two shows Garcia and the Dead performed at Soldier’s Field in Chicago July. 1995.

Those shows were not particularly memorable at the time in large part because Garcia was not well but it never occurred to me that he would be gone himself in a few short weeks. The memory of hearing the news of his death on August 9th, 1995 is indelibly etched in my mind but not for the reason you may think.

Minutes after the news exploded across the world of Garcia’s death of a heart attack in a rehab center in Marin County my life partner David Woodyard, who was battling several major HIIV related issues of his own at the time, was on the phone deeply concerned about me and how I was taking the news.

This was and still is for me the real lesson on how to handle the feeling of grief in my own life. I need to always take a moment or several no matter what the circumstances and look around, outside my own little puddle and attempt to be “conscious of life’ and what an amazing trip it is to get to experience that at all, even when filled with grief.

David was teaching me that lesson right up until his own death five weeks later at 9 AM on September 17th, 1995. That was when my own real grieving began in earnest with no Grateful Dead song able to console me. Not even the beautiful lyrics of Brokedown Palace, which we played at his memorial.

Fare you well my honey
Fare you well my only true one
All the birds that were singing
Have flown except you alone

Going to leave this broke-down palace
On my hands and my knees I will roll roll roll
Make myself a bed by the waterside
In my time, in my time, I will roll roll roll
In a bed, in a bed


By the waterside I will lay my head
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul
River gonna take me

Sing me sweet and sleepy
Sing me sweet and sleepy
All the way back home

It’s a far-gone lullaby
Sung many years ago
Mama, Mama, many worlds I’ve come
Since I first left home


Going home, going home
By the waterside I will rest my bones
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Going to plant a weeping willow
On the banks green edge it will grow grow grow
Sing a lullaby beside the water


Lovers come and go, the river roll roll roll
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs

To rock my soul

Songwriters: GARCIA, JERRY / HUNTER, ROBERT

Brokedown Palace lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., Universal Music Publishing Group

© August 2015

About the Author

I was born in La Porte, Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver, Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco, California.
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Hinterland, part two, by Gillian

Grief

A few days after my time-travel to Aberystwyth, I returned to Episode One of Hinterland only to find Matthias dashing off to Devil’s Bridge. Well, duh, that was the title of the episode. I just hadn’t noticed.

Devil’s Bridge is a little village up in the mountains about ten miles inland from Aberystwyth and it was a very, very, special place to my parents. My mother wrote in her photo album in 1930 that it was the most beautiful place she had ever been. You can’t tell from the faded old sepia photograph but it is a pretty spot, though I suspect Mum’s enthusiasm for it was more because it was where she and Dad spent their honeymoon. Several years later, we went there quite frequently on our day trips to Aberystwyth, always stopping there for tea and a walk down to the waterfall no matter how hard it was raining. It is the only place where the three of us ever stayed overnight, in the same hotel where they had honeymooned; inevitable as there was, at that time, only one hotel. (Now, I am astonished to find, Expedia lists eight right there, and a hundred and forty-six nearby!)

Now, I sit here in Colorado watching Matthias hurrying down to the falls, where of course he finds a dead body. I am amazed to see solid stone steps with handrails zig-zagging down the little gorge. No such thing in my day! We simply scrambled over wet muddy slippery rocks until, one way or another, we landed at the bottom. I am disappointed in this development, but have no time to dwell on it as Matthias is now entering the hotel. THE hotel. The one I stayed in with my parents, and where we used to go for tea. In the series they call it the Devil’s Bridge Hotel but I recognize it instantly as the old Hafod Hotel, as it is actually still called, they just changed the name for the TV series. It has been there since the 1700’s when it opened as a hunting lodge, and there was probably some kind of hostelry long before that, as there have been bridges across the gorge at Devil’s Bridge since the 1100’s.

Probably I was already sensitized by my Aberystwyth experience, but seeing the waterfalls, and the bridge, and following the path of the TV camera into that very hotel, overwhelmed me. I had an intensity of grief for my parents such as I have rarely felt, and certainly not for many years. As I have said before, I seem unable to come to grips with being an orphan, but this pain astonished me How can I possibly feel such sorrow after … what is it now? Thirty years. I guess real grief never leaves us, despite the healing qualities of time. We feel it less often, perhaps, but it is never gone. It sneaks up on us when we least expect it, and stops us in our tracks.

I turn off the TV.

Again.

I have decided that Hinterland Episode One is not for me.

Warily, a few days later, I did watch the other three episodes. All was well. Matthias trots his grim path around many places I recognize, but none that tear at my heart. I’m not sure if I will ever return to Episode One.

Who needs what the critics are calling ‘Welsh noir,’ anyway? At this moment I am grieving for a longtime friend who died last week. There’s enough ‘aging noir’ in real life these days, I don’t need to borrow grief from the television.

© 10 August 2015

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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Forever, by Ricky

In this life nothing is forever. Possessions rust, tarnish, are lost, stolen, or permanently misplaced. Some things we own just simply wear out or become broken. Pets live their allotted time span, if they are lucky, and then die. People do the same. No one wants to think about or dwell on “death”, but we all will face it during our lifetime.

When I was a child of 2, my beloved pet dog, Bonnie, died from canine distemper. I was too young to comprehend “death” but I knew that she was no longer around.

At 13-years old, I discovered my neighbor from across the street, dead. I had not seen him for almost two weeks but his livingroom light was on all day and night. I went over to investigate. Looking in the cabin livingroom window I could see him locked in the attitude of trying to get out of bed. His door was unlocked and I opened it to be sure he was dead. His medium size pet dog met me at the door. The dog was emaciated. I stepped in and could smell the man was really dead. I noticed that the dog had drank all the water in the toilet bowl so I flushed it so he would have some more. I then ran home and called the sheriff’s office and then took the dog some food. I wanted to keep the dog at least until he was back in good condition, but the deputy insisted that the animal shelter would care for him.

Next to go was my mother’s dad while I was in the Air Force stationed in Florida. I took leave to attend his funeral in Minnesota. I hesitated to go into the viewing room so my 3-year-older-than-me uncle gently pushed me into the room. I had hesitated to decide if I really wanted my last memory of my grandfather to be this one. My uncle unwittingly made the choice for me. A few weeks thereafter, my mother wrote to tell me my pet dog, Peewee, died. I cried a little for her.

While working as a deputy sheriff in Pima County, Arizona, I had the occasion to discover three fatal traffic accidents. One killed a migrant worker when the vehicle he was riding in rolled over. He was thrown out and the car came to a stop on his head. The second accident involved an Air Force enlisted man, his wife, and newborn child. It happened on Christmas day and killed all three of them. No other vehicle was involved. The third accident was also a vehicle rollover. In this case, the two youths in the vehicle had been at a party involving some alcohol. Their high school classmates at the party reported later that the passenger had not been drinking, but the driver had. The driver survived the rollover and walked away uninjured. The passenger was thrown half-way out the passenger door at the time the door shut on his abdomen. These are three memories I wish I did not have, and they do periodically haunt me.

My mother passed a few years later from liver cancer. I arrived from Arizona to speak to her the afternoon prior to her passing that night. I took the early morning phone call from the hospital and woke my step-father to tell him. Then I went in to my sister’s bedroom where I could hear her crying and comforted her. After she calmed down I woke my brother and stayed with him for a while. He didn’t cry in front of me. I didn’t cry at all, but I did feel a loss. No one comforted me.

While in the Air Force for the second time, this time as an officer, my cat, Charlie, caught feline distemper. I made a “bed” for him near the furnace in the laundry room with a supply of water. I awoke during the wee hours of the night and felt that I should go check on him. He was breathing irregularly when I arrived in the laundry room and he looked at me with his beautiful blue eyes. I sat down and picked him up and held him and stroked his head and back. He died in my arms about three minutes later. I shed precious few tears for him.

Soon thereafter, my father’s mother passed away followed by my mother’s mother. More trips to Minnesota to attend funerals followed. Still no tears. Then the day I was dreading came. My father had gall bladder removal surgery which was successful, but his kidneys shut down and never restarted. He died two weeks after the surgery. Yet another trip to Minnesota followed. Still no tears, just holes left in my heart where everyone had been.

Then in September, 2001, my best friend and lover passed away from complications of breast cancer. Although my mental blockage of negative emotions had begun to break down back in 1981, it was mostly still in place, thus, I didn’t cry, but all the joy of life left me and I became an empty shell of the person I used to be, that person is not what I am like today.

Three years ago my brother that I comforted when our mother died, passed away from advanced prostate cancer. I had stayed with him for three months while he lingered. I had been notified of needing to appear for jury duty but was able to reschedule it once for two months into the future. When my time to appear was approaching, he was still alive but I had to return home. He died the day after I arrived home. I had no funds to return for his funeral and I was not needed for a jury. I could have stayed there after all.

As if to rub-my-nose in all this past death experiences, last Friday, July 10th, one patron of the establishment where I work had a heart attack and died. I evaluated his pulse by feeling his neck and listened for his heartbeat by placing my ear on his chest. His eyes were open, dilated, and unresponsive to light. He was also very clammy. Thus, another memory I did not desire but I am stuck with was born.

The emotional blockage in my mind is crumbling fast and I am now flooded with emotion whenever the latest tragic news story is told about death at the hands of evil people and Mother Nature. These stories cause me to actually cry real tears for people I never knew and for those whom I did know.

There really is a 12-year old boy, who never matured mentally or emotionally, who still lives inside my head. We are both tired of all the death we have experienced and the killings that bombard us in the news. We both remember the fear of nuclear attack from the duck-and-cover days of school drills and fear of the bomb was always present in the back recesses of our shared thoughts. I know how alone he feels now that all our “ancestors” have passed because he is me and I am him, but we are not integrated into one complete and whole person. We are tired and we want our mother and father to hold and comfort us and help us navigate the ever increasing chaos of our society. But they are gone. Where are peace and love now? Where can we find them?

© 13 July 2015

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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The Facts, by Lewis

The late Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, is famously quoted for saying, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts”.

Thomas Jefferson has written, ““Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.”

It seems to me that there are two means by which people at various times arrive at an understanding of their world. One is to reason to a conclusion via the assimilation of all the facts that one can gather and so putting them together as to minimize dissonance. The other is to begin with the conclusion that one wishes to draw, whether in the service of faith or mere prejudice, and sifting and sorting through the facts, picking and choosing so as to not disturb the forgone conclusion.

If I were to paint with a broad enough brush, I could slather one political party with the hue of the former and the other party with the latter. I won’t tell you which is which because that would be to deny me the opportunity to put my theory of how people arrive at their understanding of the world to the test. But allow me, rather, to tell you why I feel that the fact-based means of rationalization is far the better one.

There are two kinds of truth. There is absolute truth and there is revealed truth. If we are to assume that truth matters, then it is important how one arrives at the truth. Our society is almost equally fond of both means. Congressional hearings, legal proceedings, the scientific method, and child-rearing are all based upon finding out what is true and workable and following that path. It requires setting aside preconceived notions of how things work in order to find the truth. If something is revealed which belies what I believed to be true yesterday, then I must reject my old conceptions and accept the new—at least, until it, too, is shown to be erroneous.

On the other hand, if I have been taught to believe that there are certain truths which are forever unchanging, eternal, unequivocal, then what do I do when presented with powerful evidence of their falsehood? I must either claim that the new evidence is a lie from someone who is not to be trusted; admit that I have been fooled for, lo, these many years, at the risk of losing face; or ignore the contrary evidence and hope that it goes away. This is, admittedly, a very uncomfortable position to be in. In part, I blame fundamentalist religion, in all its varied forms, for putting people in this predicament.

When you have been reared to believe that even to question “divine truth” is to risk eternal hellfire, it tends to put a damper on open-mindedness. The problem I have with these folk is when their mindset is brought to bear upon the political realm, which, at least in the United States, is constitutionally designed to be free from such influences.

All this said, I do not wish to give the impression that I am devoid of any tendency to eschew truths revealed through mystical events. Though I am a “non-believer”, in the traditional sense of that term, I have recently been starkly reminded that there are events in our lives that I have a great deal of trouble getting my mind around.

A few weeks after my husband, Laurin, died, the minister at my church, First Unitarian Society of Denver, gave a sermon on mysticism. It was about being open to the idea of things going on in the world around us that simply have no logical explanation and how that sensibility can make life easier to deal with, if not more interesting or joyful. That very night, I awoke around 2 AM, as I often did, needing to take relieve myself. Once back in bed, my mind, as it often did, began mulling over myriad things going on in my life. Still awake at 3:30, I realized that I needed to pee again. I got up, walked to the bathroom, and sat on the commode. From that vantage point, I can see my bed silhouetted against the east window. I noticed nothing peculiar. Upon returning to bed, I saw, lying on the bottom sheet where the covers had been thrown back, two facial tissues lying perfectly folded and flat, one slightly overlapping the other. They looked as if they had been carefully pressed, not as if I had lain on them during the night. I was certain that they were not there the previous morning when I made the bed. I had not been crying during the night nor had any other use for a tissue.

I spent the next two hours agonizing over how those tissues got there. I did not believe in life after death. I did not believe in ghosts or spirits. Yet, there was no “factual” explanation for what I had discovered. My sobs were so loud, I’m almost sure my neighbor must have heard them. It took Shari and Michelle from the SAGE Caregiver Support group to help me realize that what I witnessed might have been a sign from Laurin that, after so many years of my taking care of him, now it was his turn.

Even now, five months to the day after Laurin’s passing, I cannot write these words without breaking down. I now can admit, without flinching, that, yes, there are facts–and facts matter. But there are also phantoms and shadows that invite us to become their friends. Suddenly, the world has become a place of true wonder.

© 23 March 2013

About the Author

I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth. Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.