Two Lucky

I am counting down the days. In 30 days I will leave this apartment, and in a few days after, this city. A part of me is happy I’m leaving. If I had left earlier, immediately after Rusty died, it would not have felt right. It would have been a form of escape, a dramatic gesture of “leaving everything behind,” starting anew.

In fact, that was what many people had suggested to me. “You need to move on. Have a normal life. Go back to work. It helps.”

Would it? I don’t think so. In a few days it will be six months since Rusty died. In these six months I have accomplished absolutely nothing professionally; in these six months I feel as if I have survived a war. I am cognizant it did take me this long to come to this feeling. And to that end, I am grateful to be given this time and opportunity to heal.

In my young life I never expected to become this closely acquainted with death. But in fact I have been inordinately lucky. To love, and to be loved so well; to experience this devastation without the forced abnormality of going back to work; in reality, death is pedestrian. Grieving spouses, parents and children often have no time to reflect before they are rushed into their daily deluge of appointments, bills and homework. Knowing what I now know of death, it seems impossibly callous, and unwise the way we identify busy-ness with normalcy.

When a person is injured in an accident with a broken arm or leg, he is given all the time he needs to recover. Why is it that when it comes to injuries of the heart, we are all so desperate to pretend everything’s okay?

I am not without war wounds, but to know that I have survived, to have somehow fumbled my way towards the light - I could not have done so without the support and understanding of my friends, my family, and my editors at the office. To my readers: In a way you have been the most intimate of all; for following my story with such dedication and care, I could not have asked for more compassionate travellers along this journey.

In the past few months, I have oscillated between the dead and the manic, swung from hope to despair, triumphed over and been trounced by so many episodes of grief. I can scarcely believe it, but now, I feel the pendulum reaching equilibrium; now, I find myself looking forward to leaving. My body feels ready. It’s time to go.

One important lesson I learned during this time: That it is possible to continue a relationship with a person who isn’t around anymore.

Anyone who has lost a loved one will understand this. I will never love Rusty any less than I did. Six months later I still wonder if he thinks I’ll look good in this or that T-shirt, or try and guess what he’ll order from the menu at the restaurant I’m eating. Some days I’ll remember a joke, or something funny he said, and add quietly, “Oh, Rusty.”

The truth is, I don’t feel quite so lost or abandoned anymore. Rusty is still very much alive in my mind. My sense of isolation, of wanting to be dead, or at least, dead-like, is waning. The eclipse is shifting. I am moving out of death’s shadow. That is what these six months have meant to me: To have the sun come out again, to have journeyed from death to light.

Tonight I had dinner with a good friend of mine, R. To be more specific, I made dinner for the both of us. In my head the night would play out flawlessly: a perfect five-course dinner, starting with a warm potato persillade (garlic and parsley), a seafood risotto, lamb stew with fennel, a simple salad, and chocolate mousse. We would eat and imbibe, laugh over drinks, and at the end of the night, fall asleep in each other’s arms. R is straight, so I knew the last chapter of my fantasy would be unwritten, but in fact, something worse happened. I burned my lamb stew.

I met R during my sophmore year in college. It was also the year I came out. I was 22. We were in the same first-year Japanese class, and even before we got to arigato, I was in the maws of a major crush. There is a reason why crushes are called so. And when you’re young and unskilled yet in the ways of seeing the forest for the trees, a crush is generally what you (and all your sympathetic friends in tow) feel under the weight of your magnificent melodrama. I couldn’t help myself. In the end, our friendship, which had been good and honest, turned into a right mess, a mess which I compounded one night after I chowed down some imported creminis and told him I loved him.

In the years to come, we would slowly find our way back into each other’s lives, and our friendship now is one of the most solid and good things that have come from letting time temper our emotions.

But the fact is I do love him. And even though he will never love me in the same way, it’s okay. I can honestly say I want nothing save for him to be healthy and happy. It may not be a tested love, or even a reciprocated love, but in that this feeling, like love, swells in my heart and brims to my tips - who am I to call it otherwise?

As I wondered about my feelings for R, it led me to think about my feelings for Rusty, and how others have persisted in de-valuing our love, doubting its validity, as if there were a threshold, or a specific mark it has to reach before it is legitimate - be it a certificate, a ceremony, or a child.

In the time Rusty and I were together, and even now, their voices continue to ring from the calamitous “All gays will rot in hell (see comment in previous post),” to the more perplexing, but no less injurious “But you were only together for three years…” Some others even refuse to acknowledge our relationship, and send me cards saying they are “so sorry for the loss of my friend.” Seeing that the words “husband” and “wife” are already rapidly losing currency in today’s world, you would think “partner” would not be quite so hard to utter.

“To have and to hold, for better or worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”

Where have I been found wanting?

There are so, so many ways I can defend my love, but the true test is a simple one: I feel it. I know it. I trust it. This is what love feels like. In the aftermath of Rusty’s death, while he is no longer here to fill my heart, I need only to look at his photograph, to feel this ache inside, to know again what love feels like.

Many people have asked me if I would, or could love again. My first reaction is that I haven’t stopped. My second reaction, more to the point of the question, is yes. Could I love again? Yes. Could I love anyone more than I loved Rusty? I don’t know. That would have to depend on so many other factors, factors which I really have very little control over. I am not even sure if I care.

All I know for sure is this: That one cannot truly live without love. That love is vital to life as oxygen; it is its muse. And that if one day I should be so lucky to find another man who loves me, I would definitely take care to keep an eye on him, and on my lamb stew.

The fact of the matter is that I’m alone now. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been bad or good - that I’ve slept around, spent excessive amounts of money, or that I’ve quit smoking, or started a book - no matter what I choose to do, where I go with my life, I will never see Rusty again. Hear his voice. Feel his touch. Why is this so hard?

It is such a rhetorical question to ask. Is this what it feels like to have the answer and still feel so far from understanding?

The fact of the matter is I miss him so much. I think of him every day. While watching an episode of The Office tonight, I instinctively turned to Rusty’s chair and yelled “Michael’s crazy!” to no one. The Office was Rusty’s favorite TV show. It was an excellent episode. I laughed, and then I cried.

This avalanche of emotions - when will it finally settle? I feel like I’m playing a game of thumb war with grief. You think you have a grip on the enemy, and in one quick swipe you’re the one pinned under instead. Just like that.

Do I feel better. Yes. Am I coping well with everything. Yes. Are you OK. Yes. Yes has no power to authenticate what, or how I am feeling. Neither does No. What will people say if I say No. Or do. Friends are no good for moments like this. If I am the only person to help myself, then I am as clueless as you are. That amorphous, distant ally, Time - am I simply to trust that one day will come when I stop grieving? Yes.

It has been a little over five months since Rusty died. He died on May 4, on the cusp of summertime.

In October, there comes a time when every New Yorker steps outside and knows irrevocably that fall is here. Tonight was such a night for me. At 5am I went out to buy a pack of cigarettes and had to come back in to put on my coat. The air felt ice cold. It is the first time I am wearing a coat since the fact. Even though he is not here to remind me, I take care to button up before I leave the apartment.

Outside the wind is wet and the streets black with rain. A few hardworking college kids stand next to the Leows on 11th and 3rd carrying 40s. I buy a pack of Parliament Lights. On my way back, like a drunk man, I tear off my nicotine patch and stick it on a street lamp. I am home. I light up.