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Have you heard the story? Russ has a great post on this story as well which you should check out, but for what it's worth, here's my two cents... It's a simple, tragic tale, one that puts to rest the tired arguments of the right-wing Americans who claim that all we need to do ("we" being same-sex partners) is fill out the legal paperwork, spend the hundreds of dollars to ensure our wills and our estates are made out to one another, jump through the hoops and be good little gays and stay away from that word of "marriage" because that's "sacred" and only for straight couples...
So that's what Harold and Clay did:
Clay and his partner of 20 years, Harold, lived in California. Clay and Harold made diligent efforts to protect their legal rights, and had their legal paperwork in place--wills, powers of attorney, and medical directives, all naming each other. Harold was 88 years old and in frail medical condition, but still living at home with Clay, 77, who was in good health.
You see, they lived together in California--you remember the fiasco that happened in California, do you not, dear reader? Prop 8? Ring a bell? Prop 8 repealed the right of same-sex couples to get married in the state of California under the guise of "majority rule" (i.e. Mob rule). The Mormon church, Tony Perkins of the "Family Research Council," and a whole host of other right-wing lobbyists spent billions of dollars to make sure their right to marriage remained special and separate, and repeated, quite often, that the gays just needed to do their paperwork and leave that word alone, and we'd all be just hunky-dory. In fact, just a few days ago, Tony sent out an email which said the following:
Let me be clear--I agree that patients should be free to authorize anyone they want to visit them in the hospital and make decisions for them if they are unable to. In fact, they can already do so--through advance directives, such as a health care proxy or power of attorney. These are private contractual arrangements that do not require redefining "family" or "marriage." And they don't require the President of the United States to make himself "hospital-administrator-in-chief."
(Well, Tony, you're full of SHIT.) You see, Harold and Clay had done all of those things, but in the state of California, which just rescinded the rights of gay couples to have a marriage license... Well, this is what occurred next:
One evening, Harold fell down the front steps of their home and was taken to the hospital. Based on their medical directives alone, Clay should have been consulted in Harold's care from the first moment. Tragically, county and health care workers instead refused to allow Clay to see Harold in the hospital. The county then ultimately went one step further by isolating the couple from each other, placing the men in separate nursing homes.
Ignoring Clay's significant role in Harold's life, the county continued to treat Harold like he had no family and went to court seeking the power to make financial decisions on his behalf. Outrageously, the county represented to the judge that Clay was merely Harold's "roommate." The court denied their efforts, but did grant the county limited access to one of Harold's bank accounts to pay for his care.
Oh, it doesn't stop there, dear reader. Oh no, what happened next was beyond the pale. The fact that this can happen in America today, that this very well could have been Rich and I just a few short weeks ago--it terrifies me. The legal paperwork is only as good as the government issuing it, and if the government stance is "Gay relationships are nowhere near as special and important as straight marriage", well, this is what happens:
Without authority, without determining the value of Clay and Harold's possessions accumulated over the course of their 20 years together or making any effort to determine which items belonged to whom, the county took everything Harold and Clay owned and auctioned off all of their belongings. Adding further insult to grave injury, the county removed Clay from his home and confined him to a nursing home against his will. The county workers then terminated Clay and Harold's lease and surrendered the home they had shared for many years to the landlord.
Three months after he was hospitalized, Harold died in the nursing home. Because of the county's actions, Clay missed the final months he should have had with his partner of 20 years. Compounding this tragedy, Clay has literally nothing left of the home he had shared with Harold or the life he was living up until the day that Harold fell, because he has been unable to recover any of his property. The only memento Clay has is a photo album that Harold painstakingly put together for Clay during the last three months of his life.
Their possessions--sold. They were separated against their will, both physical and legal paperwork notwithstanding. Harold died alone. All Clay has left to remember his partner, his lover, his HUSBAND, is a book of pictures. Pictures. A 20-year life together auctioned off like junk, two men torn apart because, according to the "law," they were just "roommates." ROOMMATES?!
I lay this at your feet, Tony. You and the Mormon church and the rest of your ilk. Harold died alone because their relationship wasn't "worthy" of a marriage license, because all they had to do was "fill out the paperwork." All Clay has left from the last 20 years of his life, of their lives, is a photo album. Of course, maybe you don't care, and that is your right. But imagine if it were you, and your loved one, your partner, the last twenty years of your life. Knowing you were barred from seeing them? That they died alone? You weren't there to say that last good-bye, for that last kiss, that last whispered "I love you" gently into the ear that lay by your side for the last twenty years. And all you had left to show for those twenty years--is a photo album. Not the house you both shared, or the yard you both tended, or that special something you both fell in love with at that yard sale... Nothing.
I hope Clay makes them pay through the nose. Even though money can't bring back his husband, I hope he makes them pay until it hurts, until those people responsible feel just a little bit of the pain they inflicted on these two, the pain they inflicted on Harold in the last moments of his life, and the pain and suffering Clay still goes through having been robbed of what should have been their final moments together...
This terrifies me, that this can and apparently does happen. And, dear reader? If it doesn't scare the shit out of you? Then you haven't actually thought about it...
Thanks to the Bilerico Project for bringing this story to light, when even the local papers weren't covering this tragic piece of news.
Near the Beginning: Custom Ordered
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Random Christian: "All things are possible with God!"
Of course, the hard part is keeping a straight face...
It's actually very easy to disprove an all-powerful god--the hard part is convincing the believer that this is exactly what you have done. "Can god create a rock too heavy for himself to lift?" Either way, YES or NO, we've proven he isn't all-powerful...
Of course, many a believer will dismiss this as ridiculous logic (as if the belief in god itself weren't so much...)
ROGER RABBIT: Well, Mr. Smarty-Pants Detective, your logic is specious. What prevented Mr. Acme from putting the will back in the safe before they killed him?
VALIANT: Because he's not forty feet tall. The safe was up on the ceiling, remember?
Careful! Don't make too much sense, you may end up looking logical! Indeed, it should not be necessary for an all-powerful, all-knowing god to hide behind a Wizard of Oz curtain (complete with flames). It also shouldn't take a disconnect from fantasy to realize a foolish position about life, the universe, and everything... But for some reason, it does...
Blanche [to her daughter Janet, who doubts God's existence]: Oh honey, of course He exists. Just look at the beautiful sky, the majestic trees. God created man, and gave him a heart, and a mind, and thighs that could crack walnuts.
The really big catch is this: If it is such an impossibility that we evolved (but not such an impossibility that someone living in the clouds just got lonely and needed someone to punish), who created god? Apparently he's so much more designed than we are... God must therefore have a creator himself! (again, the pooh-poohing from the fundie without any type of explanation for using their own logic against them...)
Apparently we're all supposed to play scarecrow, abandoning all logic, thought, and reason in order to go to church on Sundays and praise a non-created creator because we're just too darn pretty to have been related to chimps...
Cowardly Lion: Oh, I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do, I do, I do, I DO believe in spooks!
Sigh. What do you think it will take to get everyone to realize that god isn't the creator, but that he is the created? That we aren't made "in his image," but he in ours?
They like to say that all it takes is faith... So what is it that leads some to accept blind faith, and others to recognize it for what it is?
Grace: Oh, he's very popular Ed. The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude.
Well, at least we know one thing--once you know it's only a man behind the curtain, there isn't much left to hold you back from recognizing the rest of the untruths a lot of us hold so dear...
Dorothy: Oh come on, Ma, that's superstitious nonsense. You know, step on a crack, break your mother's back, it doesn't work. — I know.
We should all know by now... Yet we seem to be stuck in some never-ending loop, the only thing changing is the outfit we place on our magnetic refrigerator Jesus... In the year zero, we liked him this way... In the Dark Ages, we liked him this way, unless you were on that part of the globe, and you liked him that way and called him Ganesha...
Some reruns are worth watching, but most? And with the same-old, same-old plot? Yawn.
We should all know by now... Yet we don't. We pull the curtains a bit tighter, we wipe away any fingerprints, we tell each other not to believe our senses, but to see whatever we want to see, just to keep that faith, that intangible, unproven, ill-thought-out, blinder-than-Stevie-Wonder faith...
And why? We like to feel special, I suppose...
GIRLS: Oh, he's special all right... Especially ugly...
OLIVE OYL: He's tall... Good-lookin'... And he's large... And he's mine...
GIRLS: She can have him...
Should we let them keep him? Much like we let the Amish? (but only mostly because the Amish aren't trying to tell everyone else what to do, how to act, what to wear, or who to sleep with...?)
Everyone should know better...
I'm not Martin Luther King, mind you. I don't have a dream--well, not per se. Not that there's anything wrong with having a dream. In fact, they can be quite wonderful things, these "dreams" everyone seems to hold so close and so dear...
Then again, not all dreams can change the lives of millions. Take, for example, the other night when I kicked the bedroom wall because, as it was explained to me by Richard when I woke up the next morning, who then explained to me what I had explained to him in the dead of night, apparently someone was going to hit me with a baseball bat:
Me: So... I kicked the wall?
Rich: Loudly! I'm just glad you were facing the wall and not my broken leg!
Me: And I said it was because someone was going to hit me with a baseball bat...?
Rich: Yep.
Me: Why would kicking someone prevent them from hitting me with a baseball bat?
Rich: As if I'm the one that lives between those ears.
Me: Was he cute, at least? My attacker? I'd like to think that only the most attractive people would dare to harm my person.
Rich: Hmm... You didn't say...
Me: Huh. My foot doesn't hurt.
Rich: I just know what I know, and that means that around 4:00 a.m., you decided someone needed kicked before they smashed your face in with a baseball bat. I'm assuming it worked because you seemed very satisfied that your short-lived Karate Kid attack was quite successful.
Me: Oh...
I have no idea, ask my subconscious. All I know is, that example alone proves how dangerous and ineffective some dreams can be...
And about three weeks ago, he woke up to see me standing at the end of the hallway, staring around the corner and up the stairs toward the partially renovated attic. When he called to me to ask what I was doing, I replied that obviously I was waiting for the bum to come downstairs from his hiding place in the attic so I could arrest him.
I'm assuming that in my dream, I had real handcuffs and not the plastic ones I keep in the... Oh, wait. Probably T.M.I.
Of course, Rich is fascinated by all this. He claims it alleviates the boredom of being trapped in the house while his leg repairs itself, knowing that any night he may be given a glimpse into the strange and wonderful happenings of my inner brain.
But--back to me not being Martin Luther King--when I'm not being done in by an aluminum Louisville Slugger or capturing lurking bums in my rafters (Note to self: Stop watching the news in doctor's offices...), I'm making plans in order to make dreams come true! Just not on, you know, an international scale or anything. I mean, it's not like I work for the Make a Wish foundation or anything. Local stuff, involving Post-it notes, a calendar, and "Before:" and "After:" photos...
I take it you get the picture. And speaking of, this gorgeous pic of Keanu is purely gratuitous. Nothing to do with today's post except as a great segue into the fact that on April 15 I will be a featured author over at Indie Ink, a fantastic site where a new and different author and photographer are featured daily, and where I just happened to mention this beautiful specimen of a man! So go check it out!
Now!
Near the Beginning: Adam and Steve
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Daffodils are in bloom, the Japanese cherry is busting at the seams with buds, hyacinths are spreading fragrance throughout the neighborhood...
No, I have no deep thoughts at this moment, no pearls of wisdom to pass on, no witty anecdotes to share... Just a photo, and a very big love for this moment, this exact present second, in my life...
Sappy, I know. I haven't gone off the deep end, no worries. But after the snow storms, the fights, the hospital visits, and... other... issues... At this very moment, everything is perfect. Peaceful, beautiful, calm, serene...
At this very moment, life is good.
If only it were always this considerate... :)
Near the Beginning: Holy Mother of...
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Do you remember first love, dear reader? The way your heart flopped around in convulsions on sight? Your eyes dilated, your brow began to sweat, your heart would race, butterflies scrambling about in the depths of your stomach? Among other bodily functions, as I'm sure you know...
Sigh...
First love... And when you see them again, twelve years later...? Well, let's just say your heart starts all over again, but because it's twelve years later, you wonder if it might be a stroke or a heart attack and not first love bursting forth from the corner where it's been hiding...
Now understand, dear reader--this is not the "How I broke up with Richard" story. Far from it! While first love is powerful, occasionally forgotten but just as potent, second love? Well, that's the keeper, isn't it? While first love teaches you about whirlwinds and tides and pain and lust and sex--oh, GAWD, the SEX!--second love is about maturity, love by choice, commitment--I know, I know, boring adult stuff, but sweeter yet in many other ways. The companionable silences... The automatic knowledge of the other's thoughts... The twenty minute conversation conveyed in a glance... Little things like coming home and realizing he bought your favorite brand of potato chips, or cooked your favorite meal, or even just that smile when you walk through the door and feel at home... And the sex?--oh, GAWD, the SEX!--can be just as good... :)
I didn't realize how powerfully first love would come back--I never expected to hear or see from him again. It doesn't hurt that he's only gotten hotter in the missing years either! (This is what we like to call "motivation" for our own waist lines...) But it does--as it should--remind you of how good you have it when you have it. Who knows where first love would have led? A romance like the one I have now? Disaster and heartache worse then the original loss of said love? No one knows, and perhaps that's part of the tight-fisted grip of first love--the "What ifs...?" The not knowing if you could have made first love work if only you hadn't been so young, so head-over-heels, if the distance hadn't been so great, if the sex hadn't been so----oh, GAWD, the SEX!-- Sigh... First love...
I know the flame will always burn bright and hot for him. It's just a fact. But I also know the flame I have now far outshines "What if...", even if "what if" does flare up occasionally...
To my first love, you will always have that piece of my heart, and I'll cherish it always. But to my second love? You hold the flame...
Sorry folks, this is just a test...
He stood from the recliner and grasped the rails of the walker and began the slow process of moving toward the bathroom. More from fear of pain than actual pain--clunk, swoosh, hop; clunk, swoosh, hop--across the tiles to where the wall paper was too flowery and too cheerful, the commode that awful shade of seventies marble, the decor screaming for an update. As he did his business, he looked toward me in the hallway and said "Thank you" with his eyes...
I simply nodded in return, knowing spoken word would ruin--not the moment, but the depth of it. Words fail even in the best of times. As I helped him up and followed him back on that slow march, he eased himself back down into the plush fabric. A sigh escaped, and the sweat beaded faintly on the forehead. I patted his arm and he gripped my wrist. I squeezed back.
As the undecided weather fell in various forms of liquid, we walked down the long drive, rutted and puddle-ridden. The cold wind bit through all of our jackets and the crunching snow tried to give away the quiet, somber-mixed-with-camaraderie air we exuded.
As we left what was once a decent driveway and started through the fields, our eyes drifted toward the once-familiar landscape: the creek, certain trees, where there once was a bank... Not that the battered white pick-up near the beginning was new (only in the sense of not having been there when we last were), there was a mixture of peace and apprehension in this midnight excursion. When we did come upon the old tree, half dead and mostly withered, surrounded by a field that had been as forgotten as the vows which brought us here, we began digging.
Into the hole went a box of mementos, treasures, keepsakes and memories. The paper which was supposed to have kept the promises; the photos which kept testimony to the better times; a few scraps of this and that which were private now only for the company of one box. Solemn silence interspersed with jokes only the Hughes boys could truly appreciate on such an occasion. (Yes, we are the ones who find joy even at the funeral...) As we joined hands under the snowy drizzle ("Is it gay to hold hands?" "No, it isn't..." "Dude, your hands are warm!" "Um, okay, that was kind of gay...") and held a moment of peace, of prayer, of sharing, it was more than a box that will forever be embraced under the dying roots. The passage of time here had stayed its hand for the most part, and perhaps the hope was that this place would also heal, or freeze even, the changing aspects of life that were at the very least uncomfortable... Only time will tell if childhood places can heal adult wounds, but there was the faith, buried with the box, and hope would spring forth...
As I slid beneath the blankets and breathed deeply the still air only a lived-in house can share, Beaux curled up onto the small of my back and Hawthorne gently sidled up beside my legs. They sang to me a lullaby of purrs and whimpers, their very happiness at my presence a gift. The weeks have been long, some of the nights too short, some of the days too dreary. A rough pink tongue lapped at my fingers, and two tiny paws began to knead. As I drifted off into that dreamless sleep, content that things were taking a positive direction in quite a few lives despite the obvious hurts--physical, mental, and emotional--I vowed to remember this moment. Things had changed for a lot of people lately, but there was also peace to be found in the midst of the turbulence.
We are learning to lean. And it was still good...
