Recollections

Haunted wouldn't be the right word, but lately I have been remembering Jerry. Jerry (Jerome Heard) was someone I loved during my time in St. Louis and though he died 12 years ago I still carry a piece of him with me in my heart. Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about him. If I was superstitious I would say that his spirit has been trying to contact me but as neither he nor I believed in such things and as I have no actual evidence it exists I have to place these thoughts in the realm of my own psychology attempting to contact me. As I have sat and pondered on what it means pieces of it fall into place given certain current events and revelations about myself. So, for your edification, I tell you part of the story.

Jerry came out when he was 17 and six months later contracted HIV. When I met him after moving to St. Louis he had been living with the disease for a few years. We met during a dinner party before going to a play ("Pippin") and I noticed him whispering to one of his friends and glancing at me. Jerry was blond, thin but not yet skinny, and had the biggest smile I had ever seen. As we separated after the play he gave me his number and said "Call me". I did, we went out, went out more, and eventually found a place together in the suburbs (shudder) of Maryland Heights. Jerry was up front about his HIV status and extremely protective of me. While there was intimacy there was no sex. I still recall us sitting on the couch watching television, his head resting on my chest and his hands running over it saying how that if we lived in the time of the cavemen he would be envied by all of the cave women. Not a day went by for almost three years that he didn't tell me he was happy that he was with me or how much he loved me. And I felt the same towards him and told him so. When his health began to decline he told me he always wanted to be married, so I contacted my friend Patrick who was in seminary in Chicago and asked him if he would come perform the ceremony. Jerry and his mother planned something simple. We rented a small park and held the ceremony and reception there. I can still picture him... he couldn't stand for long periods of time so he was in a wheel chair. We said our own vows (damn I hate tears), kissed, and presented to the assembly as a couple (given that we had been one for two years at that point notwithstanding). The next day we were off to Orlando for the honeymoon (Jerry loved Disneyworld) and then over to New Orleans. It worn him down but he loved every second of it... and God bless my company, they gave me time off even though at the time there wasn't anything like domestic partnership at the time (Israelies have a very large and inclusive concept of what makes a family).

Fast forward.

Jerry's health declined despite my working with some of the best in the field, no expense spared, to find something... anything... that would help. He became blind, he couldn't walk from the car to the movie theatre (he loved movies). We had a nurse come in a couple of days a week and his mother was there all the time so I could work. And then one day the call came... his nurse said I needed to come home. I remember getting the call in my downtown office. Beth, the lady who was my mentor as a DBA was with me when it came. She grabbed my truck keys off the table, mashed them into my hand and said "Go". When I arrived the nurse and Jerry's mom were there. Jerry was in bed, drenched with sweat and unresponsive. We said very little as they both left the bedroom. I remember closing the door, telling him that I was there. He was laying on his side facing the wall, breathing shallow and extremely rapid. There was a small bowl with cool water and a sponge. I lightly covered his head and face with the water, then stripped down and put on my pajama bottoms and crawled into bed with him, snuggling up as close to him as possible, slipping my right arm under him neck, pressing my body up to his as much as I dared in the hopes of him knowing I was there. I talked to him, telling him how happy I had been and how selfish of me to want him to stay, but that it was time for him to go, that his work was done and that it was time for him to rest. He breathing seemed to slow and I could feel him sort of sink into my body. His left hand, which I had been cradling in my right hand, squeezed, and then he stopped breathing. There were medical directives in place for no extraordinary efforts so I didn't call for the nurse. I cried. We lay there for a couple of minutes. I checked for a pulse in his wrist and his neck and found none. I remember kissing his cheek, wiping the tears from my eyes on the bed sheet, getting out of bed, putting my clothes back on and going out to tell his mom and the nurse. We said very little. The nurse called the time of death, his mom started with the funeral preparations (they had been made even before I met Jerry). The next few days were a blur. I vaguely remember the funeral, speaking at the service, then completely breaking down and crying on the coffin after the people had left building. Again the company showed how it valued me by giving me bereavement leave (they told me I would have made a good "sabra" because I was tough and prickly on the outside but sweet and tender on the inside). Jerry was buried with his wedding band... I still have mine, along with the memories of his smile and his laugh. He was 25 when he died. Lately I have been looking at the small memorial at Doorways Memorial.

So many things to learn about myself. I was devastated, quite a broken man in fact. I read C. S. Lewis' "A Grief Observed" a few dozen times in the ensuing weeks and learned how it is alright to scream and yell at God. I did so often, both inside my head and out in the park where were we married.

I am by nature a caretaker and in this episode of my life I was shown for the first time that there are just some things that are beyond my own considerable abilities. This problem has plagued me to the present day and I think "Jerry" is trying to tell me to be careful. I'm lonely. It would be so easy to find a broken person that needed help and fall for them with the desire to help them (dangerously close to codependency... can anyone give me Melody Beattie's phone number?). I also, for one of the few times in my life, was given back as much as I gave. Not a day went by for as long as he was able that Jerry did not hug me, squeeze me, or at least tell me that he loved me.

Perhaps Nietzsche was right and time is circular (stolen from the Greeks of course... all good things are Greek *snicker*). I feel like this pattern keeps coming over and over again... but maybe it is time to take my Platonic view of things and sprinkle in a little Hinduism and start working off the "karmic debt" by learning from my past problems. That is what I am trying to do. I still make mistakes, I wield my newly acquired self-knowledge like a battle ax rather than a surgeon's scalpel. But time and opportunity to practice is what I need. Hopefully I will have both.