Making up her memories

"Many people wander up the hills from all around you,
Making up your memories and thinking they have found you.
They cover you with veils of wonder as if you were a bride.
Young men holding violets are curious to know if you have cried,
And tell you why and ask you why
Any way you answer.
Lace around the collars of the blouses of the ladies,
Flowers from a Spanish friend of the family.
The embroidery of your life holds you in and keeps you out but you survive,
Imprisoned in your bones behind the isinglass windows of your eyes.
And in the night the iron wheels rolling through the rain
Down the hills through the long grass to the sea.
And in the dark the hard bells ringing with pain.
Come away alone...

Come away alone...with me." -Albatross (Judy Collins)

I started dating my best friend on May 9th, 2009. Starting a relationship with her was the most terrifying experience of my life, up to that point, and it was by far the most exciting experience I've ever had, before or since. 

I was 20 years old when I started dating her. I had graduated from college the day before. She was 21, and had just finished her junior year at the Baptist college we attended. Yes, that's right--the Baptist college we attended. Like I said, it was the most terrifying experience of my life, up to that point. Of course, I didn't want to tell her the day that we started dating, but I loved her. I loved her. And there was nothing left to do but love her more. It was simple enough, yet our hesitation made even that quite a challenge. Was I allowed to love her? Did God love me anymore or had He stopped because I was gay? Was I gay because God had never loved me in the first place and because He had withdrawn His presence from my Hell-bound soul? In an attempt to "compromise" until we had sorted out our sexuality and theology, we decided that we would date for one year, and that we would still date other people, specifically male ones. Even though I agreed to these "terms and conditions", I had no intent to end our relationship on May 9th, 2010, and I had no intent of falling in love with anyone else. 

May 9th, 2010, rolled around rather quickly. In the words of Frank Sinatra, "When I was 21, it was a very good year." It was also an intense year. It was a year of αρσενοκοιται and μαλακοι, dating guys to hide our relationship, sneaking out on long drives into Angeles National Forest to make out, silent lovemaking that wouldn't wake my grandparents over Christmas break, coming out to friends and family, and building a home and a life of our own. And so we broke our contract. We didn't break up. How could we? We were absolutely bound to each other now.

We were in it for life. We made plans for the formalities of a proposal and a wedding ceremony, even though we'd probably never be legally married. And so began our life as partners rather than girlfriends, real wives rather than "facebook wives".

We put down payments on diamond rings for each other. I anxiously awaited her proposal, which I would respond to, not only with a "YES!", but with a surprise proposal of my own. We chose wedding colors, bridesmaids and bridesmen, a first dance, and a honeymoon. We started fertility clinic research and chose prospective names for our children, which we would have five to seven years down the road. We talked about the paperwork and the attorney that we would need in order to protect ourselves from the unequal rights we'd have to settle for as wife and wife instead of husband and wife. And we started to save tiny bits of money from my modest wages. 

But we never quite saved enough for an attorney to do the paperwork for us. Actually, I don't really know exactly how much it was supposed to cost; she was in charge of that mess. But, we never got it done, either because we lacked money or because we lacked time. It doesn't really matter now.

What matters is that when she died, I was helpless. I was too stunned and broken to stand, much less walk, much much less speak, much much much less stop her mother. 

After she died, I was taken back to see her body. I held her and kissed her and stroked her soft brown hair. I knew that her mother would be arriving any moment. I had called her myself, telling her that I was worried, and that I would need help taking care of Marie should she need another surgery. But she hadn't survived surgery, and now the chaplain was waiting for her mother to arrive, to inform her that her daughter was gone. They told her mother, and walked her back to see Marie's body. She grabbed her face saying "I'm going to take you back to Texas." 

She was going to take her away from me. There was nothing I could do. Her parents had bought grave plots for themselves, for their handicapped grandson, and for my Marie, assuming that she would never be independent enough to have her own burial wishes. There would be no cremation and splitting of ashes, no discussion of a middle-ground burial place. 

I took her mother to our home, which I had never allowed before. This woman had spent 23 years abusing my wife and I had refused to have her under our roof, but I figured that things had changed; we would bond over our common grief and our common love of Marie. But we didn't have a common love. Her mother loved the Marie circa 2006, while I loved the Marie of May 23rd, 2011. Her mother hated the person that she had become and so pretended that she was no such person. In her mother's mind, she not only still a high school girl, but was her parents' fantasy version of her, content to live and die in Texas, to marry a man from her town and to raise her home-schooled children to love the Republican party and to hate "liberals", "queers", and "lazy welfare-dependents". She had no guilt over how she had treated her daughter, and she had no respect for her daughter's life or her passionate love for her Savior, the Episcopal church, E. E. Cummings, Judy Collins, or me. 

Since she did not respect her daughter's life, decisions, or relationship with me, she took away her body. And while I laid crying in our bed, she packed up our life. She left Marie's Bible, a few strands of beads, a couple of her jackets, the pajamas she had worn in the hospital, and the piano I bought her for our anniversary/her graduation (which her parents, in anger, had refused to attend or celebrate). She had the nerve to text message me and ask me to send her Marie's pearl ring, the "thing she cared about most". 

They wrote an obituary for her that did not describe her. It described a little girl of about seventeen, the "approved" Marie. They invented a life to present to the people of her hometown. They read "approved" poetry that she had written and played CDs of her singing "approved" hymns. They told "approved" stories of her life with her "approved" friends and how they participated in "approved" activities. 

Oh, God, they took away her body. I know that it's only a body, that it's no longer Marie because her spirit is not there. I also know that she hated the body that had caused her such pain and discomfort all her life. Still, her face and her vocal cords were how I recognized her, her body was the thing that I held and kissed, and pressed against in dark movie theatres. It was what I wanted to see standing at the end of the aisle at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, her ears waiting to hear, "You may kiss the bride". And she's gone. I was not there when they laid her to rest, and I am not there to lay on top of her grave, my tears wetting her earthen blanket. I am not there to protect her the way I have for the past five years, even though she no longer needs me to.

To be continued...