Читать книгу As If Death Summoned - Alan E. Rose - Страница 10

Chapter Three

On the Art of Dying

(Instructions included)

[Portland, Oregon, February 1994]

I can pinpoint precisely when this epidemic started for me.

There’s talk of a gay cancer back home.

A gay cancer? You mean, like we have our own?

Yeah, seems only queers are getting it. In New York City and San Francisco.

It’s September 1981, in a restaurant in the Shibuya district of Tokyo, talking with Peter who has just returned from visiting family and friends in the States. A gay cancer? We both think it sounds suspicious. We joke that the Moral Majority is probably behind it, coating Barbra Streisand records with carcinogens, and we move on to other, more relevant topics— like the beating the dollar is taking against the yen, or Reagan’s deep compassion for the wealthy, or Peter’s latest infatuation. I won’t give his comment another thought for many months. There’s nothing about a gay cancer in the English-language Tokyo Times or Mainichi Daily. Indeed, I’ll learn there’s no mention of it in most newspapers back home either, so how serious can it be? It will be almost a year— well into 1982— before I begin hearing of friends in Portland becoming ill, and no one knows why; and besides other queers, it seems no one cares.

Fast-forward to February 1994. I return home where over a half million Americans have been infected with HIV; more than 300,000 have already died, most of them gay men, though not, it turns out, from Barbra Streisand records.

• • •

I had been with Columbia AIDS Project two weeks before I met its executive director, Caleb Stern. He missed a lot of time, Sandy told me. Cal Stern had end-stage AIDS. We were in the conference room as people gathered for the monthly staff meeting. He sat next to Steve at the head of the large table, a waxy sheen to his skin as if he were the latest addition to Madame Tussaud’s museum, representing the AIDS epidemic of the late twentieth century for some future generation to stare at. Emaciated, with sunken eyes appearing too big for his face, he had the look of one not long for this earth.

“What’s he doing here?” I whispered to Sandy. “Shouldn’t he be home in bed?”

“He should be dead,” she whispered back. I was always struck by her bluntness. Sandy said what others only thought. “Besides, there’s nothing for him at home. His partner died three years ago. His family’s back in Oklahoma.”

It was like having death sitting in our midst. And yet, as if to dispel that image, when he looked at me, his eyes had a luminous quality I’d seen in the faces of others who had come to this point. Maybe it was their steadiness. Rather than darting about, looking here, looking there, as most of us do, his eyes seemed to linger on whatever they were seeing at that moment, taking it in, as if this might be the last time they would ever see this slant of light, or that person laugh, or this group of friends. When our eyes met, he smiled, nodded, his gaze slowly moving on.

I was drawn back to the other people in the conference room. With few exceptions, they were all young, most in their twenties, a rambunctious, boisterous group filling the space with much laughter and joking. This was the first time I had seen the full staff together. It was divided about half and half, men and women, with quite a few lesbians. God bless the lesbians. They were there from the beginning, in those early days in New York City and San Francisco and Los Angeles and Melbourne, when the hospitals were refusing to take gay men for fear of the uncertain contagion. These brave women, our sisters, joined our care teams, stayed with our friends in their homes, wiped up their vomit and diarrhea, held their hands as they died. I have often wondered, if it had been reversed, say, if there had been some strange little virus targeting lesbians, would we gay men have been there for them as they have been for us? Would I? In shame, I doubt it.

The meeting began with various introductions and updates. Next to Steve and Cal Stern sat Franklin Young son III, the finance director, a tall, thin man in his thirties, blond and not unattractive, but with pinched, narrow features suggesting less a physical disease than some spiritual malaise too deep for any drugs to cure. He held his head aloft, his thin, pointed beak of a nose turning here, turning there, like a hawk condescending to be among all these lowly sparrows. He and Charles, the volunteer coordinator, were the only ones wearing ties.

Steve chaired the meeting. Although it was only February, they were already planning this year’s staff and volunteer picnic in June and the AIDS Walk in September. A heated discussion was underway about the picnic. Most of the gay men wanted to organize an afternoon of Earth Games, noncompetitive group activities requiring cooperation where everyone wins and there are no losers, while the lesbians pressed for a down and dirty softball game, wanting to kick some serious butt. As problematic as stereotypes are, they usually contain an embarrassing kernel of truth.

It looked like it was coming down to a vote. Lionel raised his hand, and all faces turned toward him. A big, Black brawny bruiser of a man with smooth shaved head, he easily stood six foot two, with biceps larger than my thighs. He was on the HIV prevention team, coordinating the bar outreach program. “I vote for a softball game,” he announced in his deep baritone voice.

“Wait a minute,” said Chad, also on the prevention team. “Before the meeting, you agreed to vote for Earth Games.”

“Yeah, but Annie said she’d buy me a beer if I voted for softball.”

There was laughter. Annie sat next to him, petite, maybe one hundred pounds at most, very cute with elfin features as she blushed and whispered, “You weren’t supposed to tell them that.”

Chad was clearly exasperated. “Where are your principles?”

“Hey, I’ve got principles,” said Lionel. “But I also have priorities.”

The exchanges became more and more raucous, the lesbians gleefully casting aspersions on the gay men’s masculinity, and the gay men likewise casting aspersions on the lesbians’ masculinity. Above it all, sitting there with his gray, ravaged eminence, Cal Stern watched the proceedings with a gentle smile not unlike, I thought, the detached, compassionate smile one sees on statues of the Buddha, as if he had already taken leave of this world. There is a lame-duck quality to the dying. You could almost see the thoughts on his face: I won’t be here for the AIDS Walk this year. I’ll never see that. I wonder if I’ll make it to June. He looked at peace. One more thing he wouldn’t have to worry about, thank God. Or maybe he was just relieved he wouldn’t have to participate in the softball game. He knew lesbians played for blood.

The room hooted and howled, everyone laughing except Franklin who looked upon the proceedings with a kind of disdain, like an older child watching the antics of his rowdy younger siblings wrestling in the dirt. He caught my eye, shaking his head in a kind of assumed camaraderie of the superior. I smiled back and shrugged. Cal, too, was laughing, his frail body rocking with laughter, his eyes alight, and I thought, This is why he comes to work. Here there is life and energy. Here there is connection. No, he needs this. To be part of the still living.

• • •

“He really should resign,” said Sandy. She, Steve and I were leaving to get lunch. “For the sake of the agency as much as for himself. It’s a burden on us managers, trying to do his job as well as our own.”

“Yes, but he’s kind of an icon here in Portland,” Steve explained to me as we went down the back stairwell.

“That may be,” said Sandy, “but we need an executive director more than we need an icon right now.”

“I know. Many things get dropped,” Steve admitted, “but I can’t think of anyone better to head this organization. He still goes out and talks to groups when he can, raising money for our programs. And he’s a living lesson in how to die with grace and dignity. It amazes me how he still does it. The pain, the continual nausea, the lack of energy, yet he plugs along. I just hope I can muster half the dignity and courage when my time comes.”

There was an abrupt shift in our mood, and Sandy said, “You’ve got nothing to worry about. They’ll find a cure long before you get to that point. So, face it: You’re going to grow old, fat, and ugly with the rest of us.”

Neither Steve nor I said anything as we descended the steps and went out onto the street. There used to be a lot of that kind of talk, in the early years, when we thought we could stop this epidemic. The rallying cry was “Be here for the cure.” For those uninfected, stay that way. Use condoms. Play safe. Remain healthy. For those infected, hang in there, take care of yourself, eat right, exercise, remain positive (a bit of gallows humor), it’s only a matter of time before they find a cure or an antidote. Many of our friends had lived with that hope. Many had died, abandoned by hope. And too many simply ran out of time. Over the years, it became more and more difficult to sustain that optimism, until now one rarely hears people say it anymore. I think we no longer believe.

• • •

It was later that day Cal invited me to his office. He was standing behind his desk as I came to the door. He must have once been six feet. Now he looked shrunken, bent, and fragile, his body appearing two sizes too small for his clothes; they hung on him as he moved slowly, like an old man. Yet he welcomed me with a surprisingly firm handshake.

“I know of the Victorian AIDS Council,” he said. “The Australians have done some very innovative prevention work down there. I want us to do some here as well.”

“I hope my experience can be useful.”

He motioned me to a chair and sat down at his desk. “My staff is excited to have you here. They speak highly of you.”

“They speak highly of you, too. This organization is a testament to your work.”

He shrugged. “It’s always been a cooperative effort.”

I noticed his uncapped fountain pen, lying atop several blank sheets of paper. “Is this a convenient time? I could come back later.”

“No, no, this is fine. I was having a mental block anyway.” He looked down at the pen and paper. “Another eulogy. I’m to deliver it on Saturday.” He turned back to me. “After so many, you’d think it would get easier.”

“I can’t imagine it getting easier.”

His eyes fell away. “No, it doesn’t.” He capped the pen, laying it aside. “After I attended my one-hundredth funeral, I vowed I’d never attend another. Except my own, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be present for that one. No one should have to go to that many funerals, except maybe ministers and undertakers. Each one seemed to siphon off a part of my soul. So I promised myself: no more funerals, no more memorial services, no more wakes. I’d had enough for one lifetime.”

“I understand. On the flight back from Australia, I made the same vow. After a while, they all blur together. It’s not the way I’d like to honor a friend’s passing.”

He seemed interested. “Oh? And how would you like to honor a friend’s passing?”

I thought for a moment. “I think I’d rather go off by myself and climb some mountain. I’d sit up there alone, remembering this friend and recalling the times we shared together. I’d eat an orange in his honor, whisper his name to the wind, and say good-bye.”

He nodded. “That would be a fitting tribute to any friend.” Then he turned back to the task before him. “Of course, given my position, my resolution wasn’t realistic. There were board members, founders of this organization, wealthy donors— as well as good and dear friends— whose funerals required I be present.” He looked down again at the paper on his desk. “This will be number one hundred and forty-two.”

“I probably won’t be able to keep my vow either.”

“No.” He gave a great sigh. “At times, life calls us beyond our vows.”

Remembering Sandy’s comment, I said, “It must be hard carrying the weight of this agency, all that needs to be done.”

“No, that’s not so hard. I’ve got good managers. They bear the greatest share of the responsibility now, they and the board. Oh, they whine and moan about having to do my work for me, but it’s good for them.” He smiled. “It’s character-building.” Then he looked out the window at the Portland skyline. “And someday, someday soon, they’ll need to know how to run this agency. They’ll need to teach the new executive director what to do.” He turned back to me. “You see, there’s method to my madness.”

He reached for the glass of water on his desk and drank. I noticed his hand shaking.

“No, what’s hard now is trying to find the time for my own dying. The daily dying.” He looked at me with those sunken eyes. “You know how we workaholics get so caught up in our work we lose track of living?”

I nodded. I knew. Gray was forever reminding me.

“The same is true of our dying. At times I forget, and that’s not good. To live each day to the fullest now, I need to remember that I’m dying.”

It was one of the benefits I’d found from this epidemic: the lack of bullshit. We have no time for it. No time, that was a recurring theme. People cut to the chase.

Cal offered, “Samuel Johnson once observed that ‘when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight— ’”

“‘It concentrates his mind wonderfully.’”

He laughed. “It’s true. I think there’s an art to dying, just as there’s an art to living. What’s surprised me is to find they’re pretty much the same: Stay focused on the present, on the here and now, not the past or the future. Live each day as if it were your last. Be with each person as if this were the last time you would ever see him or her. Pretty basic stuff. I had expected something more profound. But that sums it up, I think. And I’ve found that if I’m living this moment fully, I don’t mind that it might be my last.”

“I’ve heard several staff say you are a model to them on how to live, and how to die.”

“Yes, I try to discourage that. People around here expect me to be some kind of saint. You know, to die by the book. Nobly, with dignity, grace and wisdom, at peace with God and the world. You’re familiar with Kübler-Ross’s stages of dying? People see me at the acceptance stage. All the other stages— the sadness and the anger, the depression and the denial— I go through alone each night by myself.”

He took another drink.

“My parents back in Oklahoma want me to come home. I tell them I have my work to finish. They say, come back just for a visit. But I fear if I went back, I’d never return.” He had a slight Midwest accent. “I left Tulsa over twenty years ago. To return now would seem a kind of failure, going home to die. And, believe me, the Bible Belt is a terrible place for a gay man to die.”

“There aren’t that many good places.”

He chuckled. “True. But the Midwest is rather thick with that brand of Christian who’s fond of saying they hate the sin, not the sinner. Though from my experience, it’s too fine a distinction for most of them to make. Father Paul reminds me we shouldn’t judge Jesus and Christianity by his groupies.” He smiled as if just remembering. “My father wrote me a letter last week. ‘Have you made your peace with God?’ he wanted to know. I wrote back, ‘We’ve never quarreled.’” He chuckled again to himself. I could detect no bitterness in him, no sadness, no self-pity, which given the circumstances, could have been forgiven.

“You appear to be at peace,” I said. I was feeling a kind of envy.

“I have my moments. This is one of them,” he said. “You have family around here?”

“Yes . . . We have our issues, too.” Then I added, “My partner died three months ago. I’m familiar with the routine: the nausea, the diarrhea, the medications. I know the drill. So, if I can be of help . . .”

“Thanks, but I have wonderful brothers and sisters here who are caring for me. Like many of us, I had to find a new family who would love and accept me for who I am. I feel very fortunate to have their support. Why would I want to go back to Tulsa? No,” he shook his head heavily, “they can have my ashes.”

I paused before speaking again. “I’m not sure I can be what people here need right now.”

“I know you have your issues to work through. Sandy told me. You should know there are no secrets among this staff.” He smiled. “Father Paul is always saying that we, each of us, is here for some reason. For some purpose. Do you believe in God?”

“ . . . I’m no longer sure.”

“I do. Now. I didn’t for much of my life. Being born in the Bible Belt, I naturally developed an early aversion to Christianity. But through this epidemic, through my work, I’ve rediscovered my faith. And, too, dying puts a different spin on things. Wait and see.”

I nodded. Sure, maybe I’ll wait and see.

Then he said something that surprised me. “We’re very fortunate, you know. To be here, to be part of this.”

I murmured noncommittally. Fortunate wasn’t exactly the word I would use to describe these past ten years.

“There are few jobs, I think, that take one into the very heart of life, that allow us to accompany people through their dying and put us in touch with our own spiritual depths.”

His eyes shone once again with that strange luminosity, as if already catching the light of some supernal realm they were about to enter.

“This epidemic has done wonderful things for our souls. I’ve had more and deeper experiences in the past thirteen years than most people would have in a lifetime. I’ve seen the best in a man rise up, surprising even himself. I’ve witnessed such bravery and courage, such acts of self-sacrifice and compassion that are usually only found on a battlefield. I’ve seen the soul pass out of a man with his last breath. I swear I did; it was a small puff of vapor and light. It sounds strange, I know, and I don’t always feel like this, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” He looked down at his shaking hand. “When all is considered, the body is a small price to pay, don’t you think?”

I smiled with some embarrassment. “Careful. You’re almost sounding like a saint.”

He sighed. “Yes, I’ve got to watch that.”

I could tell he was fatigued. His voice was hoarse, his breathing labored. I made movements to leave. “I should probably be going.”

“I’ve enjoyed our talk. I hope we’ll have more opportunities. Some people center me simply by being in their presence. You’re one of them. Father Paul is another.”

“I was thinking the same of you. Well, I’ll let you get back to writing your eulogy.”

As I stood to leave, he said, “A favor?”

“Name it.”

“When my time comes— or rather, when my time is up— I expect there’ll be many people attending my memorial service.”

“I expect there will.”

“I’d like you not to be there.”

I blinked.

“On that day, go off by yourself. Climb some mountain. Eat an orange in my honor and recall the times we’ll have shared together. Whisper my name to the wind, and say good-bye.”

Tears were welling up, and I said softly, “I promise,” then turned and left.

• • •

In the few months Cal had remaining, we spoke often, when he was in the office and feeling up to it. And when he no longer could make it into the office, I would visit him at home, and then in the hospital, and then in hospice. We shared a common philosophical bent and had great conversations, about life and death and the possibility of a human soul, about some kind of afterlife, or a cycle of incarnations, cycling, cycling, forever cycling toward perfection. Perhaps what made these discussions so special was that we knew one of us was very close to the end of his life, and that both of us were facing unknown futures.

Almost in spite of himself, Cal remained a saint to the end, playing his role on how to die fully conscious and with dignity. He had been right. His memorial service, held in the downtown Unitarian Church, had standing room only. Attending were his staff, his board of directors, the mayor and members of the city council; the governor had come up from Salem; hundreds of clients and volunteers and friends were there to say good-bye. He was forty-five years old.

On that day in early May, I climbed Table Mountain out in the Columbia Gorge. The day was especially clear, the wildflowers spreading across the hillsides like confetti following one’s going-away party. I reached the summit in the afternoon, grateful to have it to myself, and sat there, shirt off, feeling the sun on my back, the breeze murmuring in my ears like the faint whispers of distant ancestors. I peeled my orange, eating it slowly as I recalled Cal and this brief time our paths had come together— while remembering another farewell, not that long ago, staring up into a star-filled sky arcing over the Bogong High Plains. A different sky, a different hemisphere, the same grief. Immensity, whether a starry tapestry overhead or sitting atop some mountain, is a good antidote to sorrow and death.

I withdrew from my daypack an old battered collection of the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The cracked binding fell open to the page, as if the volume knew what the moment required. To me, the words had become an anthem for this modern plague.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave

Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;

Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.

I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

I sat there, watching the sun cross the sky, watching the great river flow, metaphorically like time, down to the sea of eternity, until day’s end nudged me with a chilling touch. I closed the book, replacing it in the pack, slipped on my shirt, and stood looking over the Gorge as the sun, like some fellow traveler, began taking its leave into the west. I whispered Cal’s name. Here we go our separate ways, my friend. Godspeed on yours. Then set off down the mountain to continue my own journey, alone.

His ashes were sent back to Oklahoma.