Personal Rememberance
This is another one of those personal posts, having nothing to do with current events, except in motivation. So if you take umbrage at me being selfish enough to write about my own stuff, my own reverberations, and not the catastrophe...you might want to navigate away from this one.
Today is a weighted day for me. It would have been my eighteenth wedding anniversary. Future Preacherman would have been grayer and balder, and perhaps just preached the same sermon for the 300th time. I might very well still have been his wife, too.
But some combination of chance, and big business decisions regarding how to make the clotting factor he used for hemophillia meant that he would not be here.
Before Katrina, before 9/11, before protease inhibitors, he and six thousand like him in the US, and many more abroad, were exposed to HIV, developed AIDS and died of the ilness. We were counting our lost while the twin towers had yet to be bombed the first time, let alone the second.
I had some luck, and then I made wise choices (though not abstinence. Ours was to be a real marriage ) and remained HIV negative.
( a disability snark and an aside *Why* was it so difficult for strangers all during our marriage to realize it was real and not just two impaired people, PLAYING HOUSE! Ok, rant off.)
The events in New Orleans and the mounting toll of the dead made me do something I don't normally do on this day. Besides just remembering Future Preacherman the best I can, I pulled out the wedding video. Because after eighteen years, no matter the love, the bond, the committment...you forget what they sounded like. What they moved like. The timbre and tone of their voice. (True to medicine that tells us scent is the strongest memory, I still remember how it felt to have him hug me, a crisp new shirt, just showered and aftershaved, the good smell.).
So I heard his voice again. Saw us kiss as though we were the only people in a roomfull of guests. Watched him automatically assume a role as caretaker of my uneven gait, as the gourgeous wedding dress sometimes proved a problem to walk in.
I also had the joy of remembering other faces lost, young and full of silly life on the tape. A single shot of my cousin and friend helping out in the kitchen. My father, looking impressive and even calm in his light grey tux. The college friend who has simply dropped out of sight, looking wonderful and happy in the very royal blue bridesmaids dress. A quick shot of a friend I see very little. We were all younger, and thinner and pretty happy that day.
I heard our friend the retired minister marry us again, a shock of silver hair straight from Central Casting, and a bass voice from Boston, like a tolling bell.
And as he listed the good characteristics of marriage, the diplomacy, the give and take, kindness gentleness compassion and compromise, I couldn't help but be astonished at how much we had failed to live up to those pieces of marriage. We each fought for little bits of our own ground weekly, and when things got worse, daily. Instead of doing the work that was needed to each convince the other, sometimes we both shrugged in frustration and gave up, or yelled the point into oblivion. It was the Honeymooners, the Eighties edition.
But, there are other parts of marriage. The love that is strong enough to have one another finishing each other's sentences at the end of the marriage as well as the beginning. The loyalty, so deep and certain that we never worried about infidelity. Ever. (He even hurried home to fess up that a stranger at a convention had had dinner with him, and that she had pressed for more, and that he had asked her what about the wedding ring on his finger, and upon being advised that it meant nothing to her, he said, "Well, I'm taken.") Having the spouse's back through interminable difficulty. Arguing with doctors or staff so that they get the care they must. Sitting up all night listening for the next breath, wondering if it will be the last one. Giving the spouse your presence even when your anger cannot give him the absolution he needs. The knowledge that whatever the fight's about, I'm still here. Him, when my hospitalization for Hodgkins came holding my hand through a spinal tap. I would have killed the doctors by strangling them and destroyed the bed and the tools without him.
And dammit, I'm *still* luckier than those folk in New Orleans. Because I have *the tape.* I don't have to rely on memory alone to show the way it was.
I remember you, Future Preacherman. I love you. I miss you. After I'm done bitching and grousing my way through life, I'll be with you again.
Today is a weighted day for me. It would have been my eighteenth wedding anniversary. Future Preacherman would have been grayer and balder, and perhaps just preached the same sermon for the 300th time. I might very well still have been his wife, too.
But some combination of chance, and big business decisions regarding how to make the clotting factor he used for hemophillia meant that he would not be here.
Before Katrina, before 9/11, before protease inhibitors, he and six thousand like him in the US, and many more abroad, were exposed to HIV, developed AIDS and died of the ilness. We were counting our lost while the twin towers had yet to be bombed the first time, let alone the second.
I had some luck, and then I made wise choices (though not abstinence. Ours was to be a real marriage ) and remained HIV negative.
( a disability snark and an aside *Why* was it so difficult for strangers all during our marriage to realize it was real and not just two impaired people, PLAYING HOUSE! Ok, rant off.)
The events in New Orleans and the mounting toll of the dead made me do something I don't normally do on this day. Besides just remembering Future Preacherman the best I can, I pulled out the wedding video. Because after eighteen years, no matter the love, the bond, the committment...you forget what they sounded like. What they moved like. The timbre and tone of their voice. (True to medicine that tells us scent is the strongest memory, I still remember how it felt to have him hug me, a crisp new shirt, just showered and aftershaved, the good smell.).
So I heard his voice again. Saw us kiss as though we were the only people in a roomfull of guests. Watched him automatically assume a role as caretaker of my uneven gait, as the gourgeous wedding dress sometimes proved a problem to walk in.
I also had the joy of remembering other faces lost, young and full of silly life on the tape. A single shot of my cousin and friend helping out in the kitchen. My father, looking impressive and even calm in his light grey tux. The college friend who has simply dropped out of sight, looking wonderful and happy in the very royal blue bridesmaids dress. A quick shot of a friend I see very little. We were all younger, and thinner and pretty happy that day.
I heard our friend the retired minister marry us again, a shock of silver hair straight from Central Casting, and a bass voice from Boston, like a tolling bell.
And as he listed the good characteristics of marriage, the diplomacy, the give and take, kindness gentleness compassion and compromise, I couldn't help but be astonished at how much we had failed to live up to those pieces of marriage. We each fought for little bits of our own ground weekly, and when things got worse, daily. Instead of doing the work that was needed to each convince the other, sometimes we both shrugged in frustration and gave up, or yelled the point into oblivion. It was the Honeymooners, the Eighties edition.
But, there are other parts of marriage. The love that is strong enough to have one another finishing each other's sentences at the end of the marriage as well as the beginning. The loyalty, so deep and certain that we never worried about infidelity. Ever. (He even hurried home to fess up that a stranger at a convention had had dinner with him, and that she had pressed for more, and that he had asked her what about the wedding ring on his finger, and upon being advised that it meant nothing to her, he said, "Well, I'm taken.") Having the spouse's back through interminable difficulty. Arguing with doctors or staff so that they get the care they must. Sitting up all night listening for the next breath, wondering if it will be the last one. Giving the spouse your presence even when your anger cannot give him the absolution he needs. The knowledge that whatever the fight's about, I'm still here. Him, when my hospitalization for Hodgkins came holding my hand through a spinal tap. I would have killed the doctors by strangling them and destroyed the bed and the tools without him.
And dammit, I'm *still* luckier than those folk in New Orleans. Because I have *the tape.* I don't have to rely on memory alone to show the way it was.
I remember you, Future Preacherman. I love you. I miss you. After I'm done bitching and grousing my way through life, I'll be with you again.
Labels: AIDS, Anecdotes, Autobiography, Disability, HIV
posted by imfunnytoo at 12:39 PM
12 Comments:
Happy Anniversary -- we all looked good, didn't we? (You know, of course, that I picked our wedding blues-- in which you looked ravishing) -- as an homage to your wedding. Besides, you can't let pretty blue eyes go to waste.)
Don't apologize for writing the truth of your life. Your personal is the essential engine of your political.
The things I remember most about you on that day is the fixing of my train, and heading off trouble, and well, the off the shoulder move of the bridesmaids dress.
And, yes I remember and appreciated the hommage of the blue...I woulda done the purple too...but blue is just...blue :)
Heh. I probably looked like, well, me. But, yes, feels like forever ago.
Do you still smile when he marries himself? I do, just thinking about it...
--lovelander
I still looked at the tape, smiled and said, "You're so busted." Cracked me up then and cracks me up now.
And to continue my own comment since I hit send too early...what cracked me up the most is he wouldn't believe he screwed the names up until confronted with the videotaped evidence...silly man. :)
Ditto what Bridget says about personal and political, Imfunnytoo. Especially when it comes to the politics of disability; we're responding to our own experience.
I read this yesterday and was really very moved. It made me look at and appreciate my love relationship the more and life in general.
Anything else I could say would sound corny or twee - if that isn't. But what you wrote there was very beautiful and thanks for sharing it with us.
Oh, yes, forgot one thing:
"Good of you to come, Susan."
:-)
--lovelander
Good old Dad...once in every seven years or so he said the right thing. I think the actuall quote might have been:
"Nice of you to make it,"
Heh
Hi Goldfish... Thanks so much...I suppose I can say that it is a good thing that others who weren't a part of the experience were moved by it. And, since Future Preacherman was *the worlds biggest travel geek* he would get a real kick out of knowing that someone across the pond saw our story and found it worthy of positive feedback.
Saw some of your new bloglist yesterday and checked it out. I'm particularly fond of "Prorations..." myself.
Well, I don't know about anyone else, but that made me cry. It was beautiful--thank you.
I would say, "You're welcome," but that's not necessarily the best fit.
I'm sorry it made you cry...
It was just one of those things that said, You Must Write This Now, so I did.
No, don't feel sorry it made me cry. It was a cry from a melted heart. For that, I thank you and am very glad you shared that part of your heart/life. It still moves me when reading it for the second time.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home