Vince had said that he wanted his ashes scattered off of the Marin Headlands, and then some time after we bought the house, he asked what I thought about scattering them in the back yard. That didn’t seem grand enough to me, especially considering that someday I would no longer be in that house. I told him that my vision was to take his ashes back to Schenectady, so that I could share that ritual with his family.
They had a summer camp on Great Sacandaga Lake, in the Adirondack Park Preserve, and some of his fondest childhood memories were of the good times there. He had no comment about that suggestion, and I took that to mean it was up to me. Which it was, actually, as he had already given me his Durable Power of Attorney for Healthcare, etc. Those were not easy decisions, none had been.
His mother had died eleven days before he did, and she was buried in her family’s old plot up in Maine. His father, needless to say devastated at that point, wanted the ashes to be buried with the mother. With Cheryl as the go-between, I rejected that idea. Then Lou suggested that we take a portion of the ashes to Maine.
When Cheryl passed that suggestion on to me, I asked, “If Vince was not cremated, would you want to chop off one of his arms and take it to Maine?” Maybe I was being a hard-ass; perhaps I could have been more flexible. Collectively the family had lost a son, a brother, a brother-in-law, an uncle, a nephew, a cousin, but it was my life that had been and was torn asunder. The ashes went to the lake.
A special certificate was required for me to bring the “human remains” on the plane, not that anyone questioned the contents of my carry-on, and once on-board I popped a pill and slept all the way to New York. Cheryl met me at the airport. My niece Jayna was coming to Schenectady also, and I had arranged for Mal to go with her. He took the train from Rhode Island to New Haven, and she picked him up there.
Cheryl had arranged for a nice memorial ceremony at their church, where I was surprised by the arrival of Priscilla Magee (AKA Prizilla), an old acquaintance from the Sigourney Street days in Hartford. Actually, I wasn’t surprised. Prizilla had called Jayna beforehand and, knowing Prizilla’s reputation, Jayna had warned me. Leave it to Prizilla though, even at Vince’s service she tried to make herself the centre of attention by staging a surprise grand entrance.
After the service we were a four car caravan to the lake. The plan was to go out in the two family boats, but they had not been launched yet, so we walked to a small rocky peninsula near the family camp. It was a lovely spot. Jayna did a Bible reading, and I read a poem. My vision had been to scatter the ashes from a boat, just shake them from the box as we moved along, but now I was confronted with a box full of ashes, wondering what to do.
After walking out over the water on a few rocks, it didn’t seem right to just dump them all in, so I stuck my hand into the box, grabbed a handful, and threw it out across the water. Then I scattered the rest of them one handful at a time. After a few I asked Cheryl if she wanted to scatter some, but she said, “No! No, you do it.” No doubt she was as freaked out about it as I was at first, but it became cathartic. Next everyone took a turn throwing a red rose into the water, from the bouquets that had been at the church. Vince loved roses.
As we walked back to the cars I approached Vince’s father, I needed to say something to him. All I could say was, “I loved him, Lou.” And he said, “Thank you for taking care of my son.” Naturally there was a big gathering and buffet back at Cheryl’s afterward, those who had attended the church and/or the scattering, as well as many more family and friends and neighbours.
Mal and I were staying in the finished basement, Nick’s room, which he had graciously given over to our used, he bunked with his brother. I had Nick’s waterbed, and Mal was on the pull-out sofa. To save us schlepping upstairs to the loo during the night, I had placed a bucket by the door to the furnace room. When we went to bed I took a pill, so I was very groggy when Mal called to me in the middle of the night.
The room was pitch-black, he needed to use the bucket badly, but couldn’t see a thing. So I reached for the cigarette lighter that was on the bedside table, and lit it for him, but I was so muzzy that I couldn’t stay awake. Mal had to keep yelling at me to wake me up, so that he could finish and find his way back to his bed. It is probably one of those you-had-to-be-there stories, but we were both laughing our asses off … a much needed comic relief.
Sam had done a beautiful job with the obituary, and we placed it along with a photograph in the “Chronicle” and the “Bay Area Reporter” etc. While I was in New York he made plans for the memorial service in San Francisco. The obituary was printed and used as invitations, including the photograph, one that Jayna had taken during her 1989 visit. The service would be held in the Comfort Garden at General Hospital, a large and lovely garden created on the grounds of the building where Vince had worked, in memory of all those who had passed on.
A few years earlier I had received a letter from my long-lost double-cousin Lois (Edwards) Sprague, twelve years my senior. We are ‘double-cousins’ because our mothers were sisters, and our fathers were brothers. Her letter was prompted by having read my traditional year-end letter, which she had seen at her father’s. My childhood memories of Lois (named after her mother and our grandmother), were of a compact young woman, frequently in the uniform of the Rhode Island National Guard, and always heading off somewhere on her motor scooter.
As memory serves, I knew that Lois had gone to the Barrington Bible College, where she met George Sprague, whom she would marry. George had been born and raised on Block Island, the island about twelve miles south of Rhode Island’s coast. Visible from our beach house, except when it was foggy, it was the destination of our aborted cruise the day before Hurricane Carol in 1954. George’s parents had been born on the island as well, had never left it, and had no intention of ever doing so. A little strange, as the island is just under ten square miles, roughly two and one half miles wide and four miles long.
The 2000 census put the island’s population at about one-thousand, no doubt much less a half century earlier. As a result of the groom’s parental travel restrictions, the wedding was held on the island. Consequently, the bride’s family and friends had to take the ferry to the island, which they did (although we didn‘t go), including my grandmother and Uncle Bud, for whom it was quite an escapade. Year round ferry service is available from Galilee, right across the harbour from our summer enclave of Jerusalem. During the summer ferries also run from Newport, Rhode Island; New London, Connecticut; and Montauk, New York, at the tip of Long Island.
Over the years I knew that Lois had had two children, two boys, the eldest named ‘Freeman’ after our maternal grandfather – but by the time her first letter arrived at Sacramento Street, we had had no contact since the early sixties. She filled me in on her life, sons, divorce, etc., and then – apropos of nothing – she mentioned that the minister of the MCC in New Haven, Connecticut, was a man, and the minister of the MCC in Hartford was a woman, or vice versa; the MCC being the Metropolitan Community Church, the so-called ‘gay’ church.
When responding to that letter I made no mention of the MCC, nor did she mention it again in her second letter to me. But before writing to her a second time, I reread both of her letters, and then wrote, “You may be interested to know that I was baptized at the San Francisco MCC on Easter Sunday 1983.” Her next letter started with, “I’m so happy that you picked up on the MCC.” And then she went on to share that she is a lesbian, and had had a twenty-three year secret love affair with the wife of the couple with whom she and George had been best friends.
Sometime early 1992, Lois talked of paying a visit to San Francisco spring of 1993. As events with Vince unfolded, I kept Lois posted. She was welcome to visit no matter what, but I told her that I hoped she was a good independent sightseer, as I may have been confined to the house during her stay. As it happened, her long anticipated arrival was a few days before Vince’s memorial service, which was scheduled for what would have been Vince’s 41st birthday, June 3rd. We had a joyful reunion, and it was truly a blessing to have my dear cousin with me at that time.
During our years together Vince would frequently wake me up by kissing me on the forehead, and on the morning of his memorial service I was awoken by the sensation of being kissed on the forehead. I had no recollection of having been in a dream prior to waking. The sensation was definitely physical, not ethereal. Remembering Vince’s reaction to the movie “Ghost” which we had seen a couple of years earlier, there has never been any question in my mind … it wasn’t a dream.
The memorial service went very well. We planted honeysuckles on each side of a path, where an arbour would be constructed later for them to climb over. Sam sang “Amazing Grace” which he introduced as “Vince’s favourite song.” Scott, whose strongest bond with Vince was music, was sitting next to me and groused, “I’m sure that wasn’t Vince’s favourite song!” Which it wasn’t, it was his favourite hymn.
After some initial reluctance I had decided to participate. To read a poem actually, one that Pamela Belknap (a long-time client and dear friend) sent me. As I had learned years earlier, when speaking in public it always helped me to start off with some humour. It relaxed me, and warmed up the audience. So before the poem, I shared an amusing anecdote.
David Arajo was a loving, caring, supportive and helpful presence during the entirety of Vince’s challenges (Lynda Bunn was living in Key West during those last couple of years), and I very much appreciated the time he spent with Vince. They too had the connection of music, and when David was around he was always talking to Vince, even when Vince was probably not actually tuned-in, so to speak.
That made me think that I should probably talk with Vince more, when I was busy with the tasks required in caring for him, even though he might not necessarily be tuned-in. I shared this when I spoke at the service, and went on to say that I became Chatty Cathy Caregiver, until one day when Vince came out of his dementia long enough to ask, “Don’t you ever shut up?!“ I did then.
There must have been well over fifty people in attendance at the service (I wasn‘t counting), which was followed by a reception upstairs in the building. One of those in attendance was Brownie Mary, with whom Vince had been very close. Born Mary Jane Rathbun in 1923 (“Mary Jane“ that‘s funny), she was a hospital volunteer who became internationally known as a medical cannabis activist. She was famous for baking “Alice B Toklas brownies” (‘pot’ brownies), hence her nickname, which she distributed to patients while volunteering in Ward 86 (the AIDS ward) at General Hospital.
Brownie Mary was active in efforts to legalize cannabis use for people with AIDS, cancer, glaucoma, and other diseases, and helped Dennis Peron establish San Francisco’s Cannabis Buyers Club, the city’s first medical cannabis dispensary. In 1986 General's Ward 86 honoured her with a "Volunteer of The Year" award, and in 1992 the San Francisco Board of Supervisors declared August 23rd “Brownie Mary Day”. Mary died of a heart attack at a Laguna Honda nursing home for the poor in 1999 at age 76.
The time I spent with Lois was very heart-warming indeed. Being her tour guide gave me the opportunity to revisit many of the places that I had seen during my first visits to San Francisco as a tourist, and it helped to renew my love for the city. One evening we were going for Mexican food at Leticia’s on Market Street in the Castro, and while sitting outside on a bench waiting for a table I was a tad flabbergasted. If anyone had ever told me that one day I would be sitting in San Francisco’s Castro district with my cousin Lois, checking out the men while she checked out the women, I would have thought they were nuts.
Lois and I also went to church services at the MCC, which served to reintroduce me to that comfortable venue, and I continued going after she left. Although it was a big step for me, I decided to march with the MCC contingent in the Gay Freedom Day Parade the end of June. Except for the time that Mr Harris and I had stumbled onto the parade by accident, I don’t recall ever having attended a Freedom Day Parade; I have never been much for crowds.
Yet there I was, walking down the middle of Market Street, in the midst of over a half million people, most of whom were my ‘gay’ brothers and sisters, feeling painfully alone and desolate. The only other time that I recall ever having felt so lonesome, was over a decade earlier during my cross-country trip with Daffy – as we traversed the moonscape-like Arizona desert, one solitary truck a hundred miles from nowhere in every direction.
In July the church was having a weekend men’s retreat in Aptos, a small town on the coast south of Santa Cruz. At the time I was very iffy about going, but Linda J was very encouraging, so I signed up. The retreat centre was a bucolic facility, nestled in the trees at the edge of the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park.
There were lots of rustic bunkhouses, with rustic bunk beds. I had arrived early and was able to snag a lower bunk, in a far corner, in one of the smaller cabins that only accommodated eight. There I curled up and hibernated much of the time. Many activities were available, hikes and walks, seminars and workshops, typical retreat offerings I imagine … this was my first (and last). That Saturday afternoon I participated in an intimacy workshop, or some such. It was interesting, but mostly served to demonstrate that I was still numb.
For the occasional “attitude adjustment” I had brought a few joints with me, and when I could I would wander off on my own in the woods and catch a buzz, as I did before dinner that evening. Every time I walked into the dining room it was pretty much a fright, a sea of picnic tables each seating eight, all full of strangers. But this time one of the fellows that I had met in the workshop called to me, he had saved me a seat.
He seemed to be a bit keen on me. And as I slowly melded into the gathering, one of the other fellows who had also been at that workshop asked me what I thought of it, and I said, “Well, it was better than a hand job!” I have absolutely no idea where that came from. Needless to say, seven jaws dropped in unison. Then the keen fellow put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Well, honey, there’s not much that is!”
Scott was not much of a presence during the latter months of Vince’s life, although maybe he was there in a physical since, just not particularly supportive in any way. When he first visited the house after Vince died, he made a beeline for the refrigerator in search of the morphine. He was enraged when he couldn’t find it and demanded to know where it was. I told him that practically the first thing the medical examiner did was to measure the contents, no doubt to assure that the death was of “natural” causes, and then they confiscated it.
Later I discovered that on subsequent visits Scott had been gulping some of Vince’s leftover prescription cough medicine, so I made that disappear. When interrogated I told him that Linda J had been helping me clean house, she must have thrown it out. He was enraged once again.
Slowly it was sinking in that Scott’s substance abuse issues went way beyond anything I had ever imagined. We had been having weekly get togethers, more or less, and one evening while watching a movie he could tell that I was in a major funk. Thinking it was about Vince, he attempted to mollify my mood by patting me on the knee and sharing some trite platitudes. But it wasn‘t about Vince, I was pissed off that Scott was in my house once again.
At this point he had one foot in the door and the other on a banana peel, and I was ready to push. He was phased out rather quickly after that. The last I heard from him was a couple of years later, he called to tell me that he was in a recovery program in Los Angeles. Good for him, I wish him all the best.
After being summarily booted from the caregiver support group – I don’t remember whether or not I was allowed one last farewell meeting – I was directed to grief support. The facilitator was a wonderful older woman by the name of Ann Grant, affectionately known as The Doctor Ruth of Grief. The weekly sessions were not easy at all. It was a difficult and painful process, but a very necessary one.
Despite being a charter member of the Death a Decade Club, this was the first time that I was ever encouraged to feel the pain and work through it. Previously it was always: “Life must go on.” “Throw yourself into work.” “Don‘t dwell on it.” “Keep yourself busy.“ The mental health equivalent of telling someone who had just been hit by a bus, to deny their broken limbs and crushed body, and go run a marathon.
In Grief Support I learned the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance – and I struggled through each and every one of them. Understanding the process was helpful, at least I knew what was happening to me, and I was in fact making progress. After sharing how difficult it was with Linda Pavia one evening, she said, “Maybe it is too soon for you to be doing this.” And I told her, “One of the men in the group lost his partner about three years ago, and it is a lot more difficult for him to be working through that now, so long after the fact. I don’t want to be doing this three years from now.”
During Vince’s illness I had frequently heard people say things like: “AIDS has brought so much to my life.” “I have learned so much from AIDS.” And so on. My first reaction was to whack them across the face with a two by four. I was livid. As time went on though, as I worked on recovery, and thanks in part to the grief support group, I began to recognize what I too had learned from AIDS.
I learned lessons about intimacy and love that transcended anything that I had ever imagined. I learned to quickly evaluate what was truly important and what wasn’t, and to not rent the trivialities any space in my head. Most importantly, I think, not only did I learn to ask for help when I needed it, but I also learned to accept help gratefully when it was offered. So AIDS did have, in a way, a positive impact on my life … not that I wouldn’t have preferred to learn those lessons a different way, or been happy not to learn them at all had I been given a choice, but learn them I did.
There was a lot more to the mending process than the grief support group, and that included the support of family and friends, near and far. My niece Jayna arrived from Connecticut the first of July for ten days, and we had a great time, albeit laidback. By then she had been to San Francisco so many times that there wasn’t anything new for her to see, so we shopped and ate and shopped and she got a new hairdo.
The grief support group ended mid-August, and a few days later Mal arrived from Rhode Island for two weeks. We took a seven hour boat trip that went across the bay, then up the delta and river and canal to Sacramento. We roamed around Old Sacramento, had dinner and stayed overnight on the Delta King, an authentic 285-foot stern-wheel riverboat. The King and her identical twin, the Delta Queen, were christened on May 20, 1927.
With daily river voyages between San Francisco and Sacramento, the ‘Twins’ reigned supreme on the Sacramento River until 1940. During World War II both of the ‘Twins’ were drafted into the US Navy to serve on San Francisco Bay as net tenders, floating barracks, troop transports and hospital ships. At the conclusion of the War, The Queen was purchased and taken via the Panama Canal to the Mississippi River where she still serves.
The King, however, fell on hard times until it was finally rescued in 1984, after being sunk for 18 months in San Francisco Bay. It was towed to Old Sacramento, where it underwent five painstaking years of restoration, after which it reopened as one of Sacramento’s premier (and only floating) hotels, with fine dining at The Pilothouse restaurant, which is where Mal and I had our dinner.
The next day we took the train back to Oakland, a much faster but no less interesting excursion, and then a bus back to San Francisco. After resting a couple of days we left on another adventure, a drive down the coast in my brand new Plymouth Voyager mini-van, which I had recently purchased, trading in both the Buick station wagon and the Dodge utility mini-van.
We did the aquarium, spent a night in Monterey, and after some effort managed to find what the only ‘gay’ bar in town was probably. The place was pretty much deserted, except for one self-proclaimed “Indian forest-fire-fighter” who was a tad obnoxious. Especially when he said that Mal (who is 18 years my senior) looked about forty-five, and that I looked ten years older. I was forth-eight! No doubt testament to the fact that I still looked like I had been through hell … I had! The next day we drove to Morro Bay, and then backtracked to San Simeon where we spent the night. After a Hearst Castle tour in the morning, we went back to San Francisco through the Salinas Valley.
Spending time with Mal was good therapy, he got me out of the house and out of myself for a while. After he left I started a ten week one-on-one counselling program, offered by the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) AIDS Health Project (AHP). My counsellor was an endearing older fellow named Phil, who had been a priest, left the priesthood to get married and have children, then came out as a ‘gay’ man. Phil was truly a godsend. A kind and sensitive man with whom I quickly bonded, and my ten week program kept getting extended again and again, until it finally ended in August of 1994.
The beginning of September I actually took hammer and saw to my house again, after a ten month lapse, trying to accomplish something on the interior of what would become my new bedroom; indulging a little bit of “old” therapy I guess … keeping busy. At the end of that month I spent a week at the exclusive Palm Springs Tennis Club, thanks to a timeshare exchange. I took a jeep trek into the high desert, spent time at the pool, had a massage, hit a few bars, and for the most part had an absolutely grim and dismal time.
One evening while there I went to the movies and saw “The Wedding Banquet” which is a delightful Taiwanese film by Ang Lee, which tells the storey of Simon and Wei-Tung, a ‘gay’ couple living in Manhattan. Wei-Tung owns the building where they live, and in order to appease his parents about the marriage thing, Simon suggests a marriage of convenience between Wei-Tung and his tenant, Wei-Wei, an immigrant in need of a green card.
It was Simon and Wei-Tung’s intention to keep the “wedding” low-key, but when Wei-Tung’s family arrived from Taiwan things changed. They had dinner one evening at a Chinese restaurant that was coincidentally owed by an old family friend. When he heard of the wedding he insisted on giving the wedding banquet, at which time “low-key” became a major event. One of the funniest scenes in the movie is when Wei-Tung and Wei-Wei are confronted with the “martial bed!” This movie is enchanting from beginning to end and full of many funny and touching scenes, as the truth of Simon and Wei-Tung’s relationship is gradually revealed.
During all of this it is believed that Wei-Tung’s father did not speak or understand English, but on the morning of the family’s departure for Taiwan, he and Simon took a walk, and the father starts speaking with him in English. They have a poignant conversation, at the end of which the father says to Simon, “Thank you for taking care of my son.” Exactly, word for word, exactly what Vince’s father said to me after the scattering of the ashes. I lost it completely, and was not able to get myself composed enough to leave, until the theatre was almost full of people there for the next showing. Little did I know then, in a way this movie was also a prognostication of my future.
Back home I spent the next week crying, but the following week I joined the City Athletic Club in the Castro, and started working out again; an activity that had been a very important part of my life during my first few years in San Francisco. It got me out of the house, gave me a routine around which I could restructure my life, and it pumped up those endorphins that help combat depression.
Spotting an announcement in the “Bar Area Reporter” seeking participants for a “safe sex group counselling research study” I inquired further, and found that it was a program in development by the University of Washington. It required a twelve week commitment, one two-hour session a week with seven other men and two research psychologist facilitators. Participants also had to commit to follow-up interviews at six months, twelve months, and twenty-four months. Interestingly enough, all of the sessions took place via a conference call.
Other participants were from Seattle, Phoenix, Florida, Alabama, and I forget the rest, but I was the only one from San Francisco. Needless to say, one two-hour session was more than enough time to cover anything and everything that one would need to know about (not “safe” sex, that is a misnomer) safer sex or protected sex. The rest of the sessions were pretty much a Psychology 101 intensive.
The program dealt with positive self-esteem, evaluating risk, setting limits and boundaries, communication and negotiation skills (re those limits and boundaries), socializing, relationships, and so on. The whole process was very effective. At first I was skeptical about telephone sessions, but for me that format actually provided a greater sense of privacy and intimacy, allowing me to go deeper than I would have sitting in a room with nine other people. In addition, taking physicality out of the mix, it was easier to be more open and honest, because one wasn’t as reluctant to reveal sensitive personal issues, for fear of turning off the hot blond or the cute redhead.
For my birthday week in November I booked a timeshare in Las Vegas, where I met Mal at the airport, he flew in from Rhode Island. The next day we were joined by Vince’s sister Cheryl, Tony, their two boys, Nick and Chris, and best friends, Rich and Sue, and their kids Michael and Dawn, as well as Aunt Ann. They all had their own accommodations at the Excalibur, and stayed for five days.
One day Mal and I took a long tour on a minibus to Death Valley via Pahrump, a small town sixty miles west of Las Vegas, where we had lunch at Nevada’s only winery. Another day Aunt Ann joined us on a bus tour to Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, stopping at an out-of-the-way casino for lunch and gaming. At the dam we went way down to the bottom, over six-hundred feet down, and while outside by the gargantuan turbines we heard an explosion and the whole structure shook.
Our guide was very cool, saying that that was just part of routine maintenance. Then she herded us back inside quickly, where we had to wait until the emergency generators kicked in, before we could take the elevators back up to the top and safety. “Routine maintenance” my ass!
Partly because of the cost, Mal and I took a pass on seeing “Siegfried & Roy” with the rest of the gang, and went in search of ‘gay’ bars instead. The first we located reminded me of Elliot Ness and “The Untouchables”! We had to ring a bell at the door, and were then checked-out via a peephole before we were allowed entry. Just like a speakeasy, although no “Joe sent me” was required. Very strange.
The next club was more normal, but with few patrons. While sitting at the bar minding our own business, this flamboyant ‘queen’ came flouncing in, drunk-as-a-skunk. He came right over to the two of us screaming, “Old queens! Fucking old queens!” as he draped his arms over our shoulders and gave each of us a kiss on the cheek. Mal nodded toward the fellow’s car keys, which were dangling from his fingers, confirming that despite how drunk he was … he had been driving. For safety reasons, we left before that one got back on the road.
The next night, my birthday, they all treated me to a fantastic lobster dinner at Excalibur’s swankiest restaurant, and then we went to see the Riviera‘s renowned drag show, “An Evening at LaCage“ with Frank Marino; an exquisite production with a bevy of gorgeous men cum women, all equally talented, with fantastic costumes, clever writing, directing, and choreography. This show is famous the world over, a must see when in Vegas, where it had been a hit for twenty-five years. Cheryl said that she enjoyed it much more than “Siegfried & Roy”.
The next month I went back to Schenectady to have Christmas with Vince’s family, and then left for other visiting around Southern New England. After stopping off to see Prizilla in Winsted, Connecticut (she wasn’t home), I continued on to Rhode Island where I spent a few days with Mal. At the time Jayna’s beau of the moment (the one she had left her husband for) lived in Peacedale, so I got to spend some time with her as well. Next it was on to Swansea, Massachusetts, where I rang in the New Year with Bobby and Debbie, and stayed the weekend; more “old” therapy perhaps, spending time with loving and caring friends and family.
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