March 2019
“How did I end up here?” he said as we looked out over the mountains of dirty snow covering the train tracks draping industrial Chicago. From the 7th floor of Rush hospital that day, everything felt bleak. Six months to live. A death sentence delivered with the flatness of a menu item. Suddenly, all of the resentment, anger, dug in heels—didn’t matter anymore. My dad would be dead soon.
“So what’s up with all the loser boyfriends?” he said as he lay on a palette of pillows I had set up on the living room floor. He said the bed was uncomfortable, so we moved him. Hospice was kind like that, unlike the cancer ward where they fed pancakes and syrup to sick people who also had diabetes.
“So, what’s up with all the loser boyfriends?”
He was talking about the drug addict, the narcissist, and the drug addict narcissist. It was a fair question. I didn’t think he’d been paying attention. But he was, quietly letting me make my own choices. Now the calculus had shifted. The suggestion box would be carried away soon. There were things he wanted me to hear.
“Will you spoon me?” he asked. Seeing my dad reduced to an infant—swaddled in blankets eating from a straw—there was nothing I wouldn’t do for him. So I laid down on the pillows behind him and we talked for hours.
“When did you first know you were gay?”
“What was it like working with big opera names like Beverly Sills and Luciano Pavarotti?”
“Why haven’t you and Jennifer talked for 10 years?”
A door had opened in our relationship that hadn’t been possible before. In those last days, our stubborn stone walls could only yield to forgiveness and the desire to understand, “Who were you?”
April 2020
I was one of 10 people on the plane that day from San Francisco to San Antonio, Texas. As we gained altitude over the Bay, hundreds of cargo ships sat idle below—spaced out like chess pieces waiting for their next move. I took a photo and fired one last WhatsApp message to the Radical Sex Witches, “Even the ships are social distancing” I wrote – an attempt at humor to mask what I was really feeling, the void of being a newly minted orphan.
“Tell me, what are you doing for work?” My mom had never before asked me about my career—but Covid gave us ample time to talk. We talked twice a week for hours.
“Did you always know Dad was gay?”
“What was it like living with Janis Joplin in college?”
“Did you ever try to search for the baby you gave up for adoption in Mexico City?”
“Tell me, what are you doing for work?” Her question took me by surprise. I didn’t waste the opportunity to show off. I told her that since Covid hit, I had moved my business online. Things were going well—revenue was up 40%. And then I told her how much I made the month before. Now she was listening.
She kept asking questions. Her voice felt softer than usual—a little raspy, tired. She barely left the house now. Watched more TV. Didn’t walk the mall anymore. The quarantine stole a little more of her fire every day.
Before we hung up, she said, “Honey, I’m so proud of you.” It was exactly what I needed to hear from her—and it was the last thing I ever heard her say.
—
A funeral would have been tricky, so the family gathered at my aunt and uncle’s ranch instead.
Across the field you can just see grandpa’s farmhouse, now in ruins, overrun by deer, skunks, and snakes. We sometimes walk out there on Thanksgiving to peek inside. If the light is good, you can still see some of his cowboy boots sitting in the closet, covered in dust.
—
I’ve spent my whole career teaching people how to connect through words. The two most connected conversations of my life happened on a pile of pillows on my living room floor, and over the phone during a lockdown.
Both started with a question. Both happened because time was running out.
I think about that a lot.
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