Posted by:
GayLayAle
(
)
Date: January 22, 2011 08:02PM
At the beginning of 2001, I lost my best friend.
My twentieth year was an interesting one. As the fights between my parents and me began escalating, I knew I needed to be on my own again. A good friend of mine from Wyoming was looking to move to Salt Lake, so I suggested she and I get an apartment together. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to move out of my parents’ house.
We found an apartment in Murray, Utah, about ten miles from downtown Salt Lake. Well, instead of changing the pattern of my life, I continued my love affair with alcohol. Every night was a party. And I never had trouble finding sex either. The job I had at the time gave me plenty of people to choose from, and boy did I ever.
I still wanted to find a steady relationship. Eventually, I met Dan through a friend of mine. Dan was everything I was looking for. He was heart-meltingly handsome, funny, had a good job and his own apartment…and he was smitten with me. We began spending nearly every night together. He worked a swing shift, so we generally spent the entire night drinking, watching movies and talking. Things were so easy with Dan. I fell hard and fast for him. He treated me like a king.
Toward the end of 2000, my mom’s health went into a tailspin. Her asthma had gotten so bad, she was on oxygen 24 hours a day. Walking was almost out of the question. She spent most of her time sleeping on the couch in the family room. My dad was faithfully by her side.
On the afternoon of January 20, I received a phone call from my dad. My mom was in the hospital. She had been watching TV with my dad and my little brother and had abruptly stopped breathing. She fell over on her side, but somehow they were able to get her breathing again. They called 911 and they tool my mom to the hospital. Everyone assumed she had accidentally overdosed (there they went with the drugs again). She was having her stomach pumped and was given a charcoal solution to absorb what was in her stomach.
I got in my car and drove to the hospital. When I arrived in the trauma unit, I could see through the window of the room she was in and she was hysterical. She was sobbing and the nurse kept forcing the charcoal solution down her throat.
I went into the room, and sat by her bed. She held my hand and she just kept saying over and over that she didn’t try to commit suicide, she didn’t try to commit suicide, she didn’t try to commit suicide. I believed her.
They wanted to keep her in the hospital, but she insisted on going home. They released her after one day.
The next two days, she was in and out of consciousness. She would wake up periodically, look at the clock and just say, “it’s been 5:00 three times today already…. what’s going on?” She had stopped making much sense.
Periodically, I would get together with a good friend of mine and just spend the evening singing. It was a good way to blow off steam, and usually we sang at my parents’ house. My mom loved hearing us sing. Sometimes she would come into the room we were singing in, and sit with her eyes closed and just listen. Her favorite song we would sing was “The Rose” by Bette Midler. The lyrics really touched her. I remember each time we would sing it tears would roll down her cheeks.
It had been a very long time since Christine and I had gotten together to sing. Out of the blue after months, she called me and asked if I wanted to get together and sing for old time’s sake. She asked if we could go to my parents’ house. I agreed to meet her there that evening.
We sang for a long time that night. My mom was sleeping on the other side of the wall, but I knew she heard everything. The last song we sang that night was “The Rose”. I had made plans to meet Dan at his apartment after he was off work. As the time rolled around where I needed to leave, I went in and kissed my mom goodnight. She held me for a moment and told me she loved me with all her heart.
I arrived at Dan’s house around midnight. It was the same routine. We drank whiskey and Coke, watched movies, made love and went to sleep.
Early the next morning, there was a fierce banging at Dan’s front door. This wasn’t unusual. Dan frequently had friends drop by unannounced. I got up, put on Dan’s bathrobe and went to answer the door.
Standing there was one of my brother’s best friends. A million thoughts flooded my head. First, no one close to my family knew about Dan, let alone knew where he lived. Second, I thought, oh shit, they’ve found out I’m gay. It’s amazing in hindsight how quickly the brain can move. About a hundred of these similar thoughts passed through in the space of about a second and a half.
Brandon looked grim and serious. He said, “Michael, you need to come home, there’s been a family emergency. Your mom’s dead.”