Larry Benjamin's Blog: Larry Benjamin's blog - This Writer's Life - Posts Tagged "grief"

Two years ago today, we had to let go of our precious girl, Coco. She was fighting heart disease and the effects of old age. We knew it was time and she let us know she was ready. Still, it was hard. She wasn’t the first dog we’ve lost—but in the intervening years, grief had lost its edge.

We’d had to put down my first dog, Channing, after an attack by a neighborhood pit bull. For a decade he’d been my most constant and cherished companion, predating Stanley. I was, to put it mildly, devastated. It wasn’t until we adopted Coco that Stanley stopped looking at me with anxiety and inexpressible sorrow. Weeks after we got her, I was talking to my mother on the phone and something she said made me laugh. She paused and said, “You know, after Channing died I didn’t think I’d ever hear you laugh again.”

It was only then that I realized how deep and visible my grief had been. Coco’s ashes sit on a shelf in the library beside those of Channing.

I made an appointment for that Saturday at 3. Stanley left work early and met us there. I’d spent the entire day holding Coco, loving her, but he hadn’t seen her since early that morning. He walked into the exam room where we waited and said “I thought I was ready for this, but I’m not,” and dissolved into tears. I sat opposite holding Coco and watched this handsome, strong man, my rock, falling apart before my eyes. I thought, not for the first time, there is nothing harder to watch than another’s grief. Especially when it is someone you love who is grieving.

“She’s gone,” the vet said quietly then discreetly withdrew. I left the room shortly after knowing that if they came for her while I was there, I would fall to my knees, clutching her, still warm, body to my chest and refuse to let go. Instead, I went outside, lay on the pavement, cured into a ball with our other dog, Toby wrapped tight and cried like I would never stop.

Stanley stayed with her in that bright, clean room, the saddest place on earth, until they came for her because he d-said he didn’t want to leave her there alone.

And now two years later, there remains an empty corner in my heart, where she used to sit. And now two years after her loss, and ten years after we first brought her home, I remain unsure: Did I rescue her? Or did she rescue me?

Read my original post about losing Coco here.

Friday, January 20, 2017 was a dark day for many in our nation. For me it was even darker. Our beloved Aunt died Friday. So while for many it was “The Inauguration of the Nation’s 45th President,” for me it will always be the day Aunt Terpe died.

Beloved aunt. Those words beggar description. She was so much more than that. She was a force of nature; she was unconditional love; she was a staunch advocate for those lucky enough to be loved by her.

Euterpe Cleopha Richardson was one-of a kind, as unique as her name.

Though, I never formally came out to her, she always knew; she was the first person in my family to implicitly acknowledge and support my gayness. She made me feel it was ok to be myself. She gave me advice, “Never move in with a man; he can move in with you, or you can move someplace together but never move into his place; that way he can never tell you to leave.” And this,” Never give a man a second chance; if he hurt you once, he will hurt you again.”

Whenever I showed up with a new boyfriend, she simply treated him as another nephew.

She read my books. And told her friends about them. I remember I kept ignoring her when she said she wanted to read “Unbroken.” It revealed too much about me, and there was sex in it. I was afraid she’d be appalled. But as I said she was a force of nature so I relented and sent her the book.

Then I waited anxiously. She called me up one day in tears. I panicked. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “I never knew,” she said, “how hard you had it growing up. I am so sorry.”

In truth, I hadn’t thought I’d had it any harder than any other gay kid growing up when I did. And I’d certainly never expected anyone to apologize for my experience. Like I said, she was one of a kind.

She told me a story of two gay guys she became friendly with in the early 50s. They were a couple and lived together, most unusual at the time. To keep themselves, and their friends, safe, they often threw parties at their apartment. Aunt Terpe was a frequent guest, the only woman in attendance, the only straight person they felt they could trust. One day she answered the door and the gay guys on the other side quickly stammered, “Oh sorry we have the wrong apartment!”

“No you don’t,” her friend called out from inside the apartment. “It’s Terpe. She’s ok. Come on in.”

A part of me—I won’t lie—a big part of me worries that that fear and need to hide will return under a Trump administration.

When we got married, Aunt Terpe called me up and she congratulated me, and repeated what she always told me, “Live your life Lawrence, live your life.” Then she asked to speak to Stanley. When he hung up he had tears in his eyes. “What happened?” I asked him. Aunt Terpe had congratulated him and told him we needed to make sure we took care of each other—the same thing she had told. Then she had added, “If you hurt my nephew,” I will hunt you down.”

Yep, that was Aunt Terpe—a staunch advocate for those lucky enough to be loved by her.

I went to visit her in the hospital the Sunday before she died. When she saw me she said, “You came. I knew you’d find me!” I knew she was worried about the hospice we were transferring her to so, before I left, I promised I would come back as soon as she got moved to make sure it was ok. Thursday morning I woke up and made the drive to New York. All that separated us was 117 miles. In my head was one goal: shorten that distance as quickly as possible; on my lips one prayer: Please don’t let me be too late.

I pulled into the parking lot at 2 minutes to 11 and sprinted to the building. She was awake but couldn’t talk. “Aunt Terpe, I’m here. I’m here.” She looked me in the eyes and squeezed my hand to let me know she heard me, knew I’d come as I promised I would.

Later when she fell asleep, I sat crying quietly by her bedside. She must have awakened at some point and seen me crying because she reached out and took my hand and squeezed it with what little strength she had left. And I realized that even as she lay dying, she had tried to comfort me, as she had comforted me, and my brothers, her whole life.

We used to talk on the phone a lot. Still, I worried that I didn’t visit her enough but she insisted I had my own life and my own responsibilities. “I have done everything I wanted to do, went everywhere I wanted to go. Now I can’t do these things. But I have my TV and as long as you boys call once a week, I am content.”

I am content. And that was the other thing about Aunt Terpe. She was always content, always happy with what she had.

Lord, you but lent her to be our happiness.
You reclaim her, and we return her to you
without murmuring, but with a broken heart.
—St. Jerome

Today at 10:31 a.m., my dad closed his eyes for the last time. When he did, a part of me died with him.

I’ll accept your condolences but please check your religion at the door. And don’t talk to me of your God and His wisdom and mercy. Not today. Not today. I believe in God, I do. But not today. Not today. Today, I feel He abandoned me and my father when all I could do was hold his hand and rub his head and tell him I loved him; when all his doctors could do was increase his pain medicine and escalate the frequency with which he received them, and swab his mouth with plain gelatin to make up for the water he could no longer drink, the food he could no longer eat.

The first time I, went, alone, to visit dad in the hospital, I arrived in his room while he was still downstairs in radiation. A nurse walked in and asked who I was.

“I’m Larry, his middle son.”

“Oh, you’re the one who lives in Philadelphia!”

“Yes, how did you know that?”

“Your dad talks about you. He talks about all of his sons.”

My dad talked about me. He owned me as his son. He owned me as I own myself, in my imperfection, in my boisterousness, in my rowdy affection, in my gayness. That meant the world to me.

I stayed at the hospital in his room on more than one occasion. One morning when they brought him his breakfast, I got up and added cream & sugar to his coffee and opened the packet containing knife and fork and napkin. Having done that, I speared a section of omelet and moved the fork to his mouth. “I can feed myself,” he said sharply. I handed him the fork and picked up my overnight bag. Dad would need help feeding himself. But not today. Not today.

As I walked away, he asked, “Are you going home?”

“No,” I called over my shoulder. “I’m going to shower and change. Holler if you need anything.”

A few weeks later, I got caught in traffic and missed having lunch with him. When I arrived he was eating ice cream. Judging by how melted it was, he’d been at the ice cream eating for a while. And he was wearing more ice cream that he could possibly have eaten. I watched him struggle to bring spoon to mouth but did not offer any assistance. When he finally, accidentally, upended the container of ice cream, I said, “You’re all finished,” and quietly cleaned up the mess he’d made.

Saturday as I was on my way to New York to visit, Dad’s doctor called to say Dad had begun his “transition,” and we’d better come at once. I called my brothers and getting on the New Jersey Turnpike, I settled in the left lane, and depressed the accelerator until the speedometer read “90.” I was the last to arrive at dad’s bedside. It was my younger brother’s birthday. Dad, unmoving, eyes closed, unable to speak, slept on peacefully, his breathing strong. Dad was dying. But not today. Not today.

My dad died today, four days after he began his “transition.” Instead of crying, I’m remembering all the conversations we had in that hospital room; I’m remembering what he told me about his funeral and that he assumed I’d write his obituary. Instead of crying, I’m focusing on the myriad things that need to happen now, on all the things that remain to be done. I know I’ll cry—Daddy deserves tears, and my bruised heart needs the release of tears.

Yes, I’ll cry. But, not today. Not today.

I haven’t been able to write.

If you’re not a writer, that probably sounds melodramatic. If you’re a writer, you probably d understand how upsetting it is to write those words, to be unable to write.

Like a lot of writers, I would imagine, I sometimes go long stretches without writing, because I don’t have anything to say. This dry period feels different though. I want to write, know what I want to say but somehow the words aren’t coming. Work on my next book stalled after the first paragraph. I tried to be patient, gentle with myself, solicitous of my fragile talent. I’m just tired, I told myself. There’s been a lot going on, I reminded myself: our dad died, I started a new job, there were the holidays …

I dreamt of Daddy the other night. I was walking through a crowded train station, carrying a heavy box in my hands, close to my chest. I have no idea what was in the box, but it was heavy. Everything was in black and white; the hard, white light falling from the skylight above made everything gleam like metal. Then I saw him, walking in the crowd towards me. Everything was in black and white, except him. He was all sepia tones: brown suede jacket, khaki pants, sharply creased, highly shined brown shoes; his brown face and terra cotta lips shone. Dad. As he passed me without speaking, he smiled. As I continued walking in the opposite direction—I knew, somehow, I couldn’t turn around and follow him—I slowed my pace. I remembered when I first moved back to NY after college, I was working at Macys. Occasionally, I’d end up on the same train as my dad going home at the end of the day. He walked fast and always seemed to be ahead of me as he got off the train. Knowing I couldn’t yell out to him, I usually just trailed in his wake catching up to him in our building’s lobby as he waited for the elevator.

Though Dad’s smile had acknowledged me, his look had also warmed me, made it clear I couldn’t follow him, that I had to continue on my path as he continued on his. I started to walk faster and when I looked down at my hands, I realized they were empty, my heavy box gone.

When I woke up, I pondered the dream. Dad seemed to be telling me he had to go on his journey and I had to continue on mine. It was time to let him go. Oddly, I’d thought I had but maybe not. Maybe my own unacknowledged grief was what was holding me back, stealing my words.

That day, I made flight and hotel reservations for the 2018 AWP Conference & Bookfair where I will be joining fellow writers, Alan Lessik and Kathy Anderson, in presenting a workshop on Writing LGBTQ Fiction Based on Real People. I used some of the money Dad left me to pay for the trip. That night I was unable to sleep. I was effectively alone. Stanley, exhausted from the marriage of Prozac and Vodka, had plunged headlong into sleep an hour earlier, Riley curled at his side. Toby dogged my steps as I walked into the library and began to look for a book to read. I hadn’t read a book in I don’t know how long. It made sense that I hadn’t read. And not reading seemed related to my not writing. For, if I couldn’t lose myself in the words, the story of another, how could I lose myself in the story I needed to tell? I pulled Graham Green’s “Travels With My Aunt,” off a shelf and began to read. The first line was “I met my Aunt Augusta for the first time in more than half a century at my mother’s funeral.” My new book opens with a funeral so my pulling Green’s book off the shelf seemed more fortuitous than random.

After our dad died, our youngest brother Kenon, told us about the day mom and dad dropped him off at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh his freshman year. Kenon became unsure as they were getting ready to leave him and head back to the Bronx. My father pulled him aside and told him, “If I didn’t think you could do this, I wouldn’t leave you here.”

Kenon had chosen his path and dad delivered him to the head of it. When he ‘d hesitated beginning his journey, dad had nudged him forward. Just as he seemed to be nudging me in my dream.

Dear D.:

I went for a walk today in the snow. As I stood waiting to cross the street, I looked up at the sky, the snow-covered roofs edging the snow-filled sky. I remembered standing on that same corner and looking up into a fall sky, the leaves on the trees red-orange-red, so that I had felt as if I had been staring into the heart of a fire. C. had been alive then, and I had felt warmed by his love, brilliant as that tree.

A childhood fancy captured me suddenly, and I lay down in the snow and, moving my arms and legs in a sweeping arc, made a “snow angel.” I tired quickly and lay still for a moment within that casket of snow and ice. A memory of C.—of C., naked and beautiful, holding a single yellow rose against his chest—reached up and tugged at my heart, pulling me to my feet, leading me away. I left grief behind, buried in a shallow grave.

I watched the snow fall. I watched a snowflake fall for each life that had been lost. I watched a snowflake fall for each tear that had been shed over a life that had been lost. I watched a king’s ransom in snowflakes, like diamonds and pearls, fall soundlessly to the ground.

Love,
S.

—Excerpt from “The Cross,” Damaged Angels

Even now, after all is said and done, after thirteen years together, after he is gone, I find it hard to explain Toby and me.

December 10, 2005. Princeton, New Jersey: The first time ever I saw his face.

There was snow on the ground. The air was frigid and dense with the hope of finding “the one,” and at the same time like a vacuum of held breath. Above the chaos, a leaden sky sagged, gray and heavy with inarticulate hope.

“Is that Toby?” I asked a woman walking by. “It is,” she said. He was as handsome as he was in his pictures online; I leaned down, breathless, and he, unexpectedly, jumped into my arms, landing on my chest. Our hearts collided, seemed to stop for a moment and continued to beat in synchrony; his next exhaled breath matched mine exactly. The next breath, drawn in surprise, also in synch.

We were Toby’s fourth home in less than two years. I spoke to his original owner once, just briefly. He explained that Toby had behavioral problems, which had prompted him to give Toby up for adoption. Their vet he added had “suggested neutering Toby would fix the problem, but I couldn’t do that—I just couldn’t do that to him,” he said. So, he gave him up for adoption. I have held that first owner in contempt from the moment those words fell from his lips.

Toby.

Toby accepted me as I was. My whole life, I’ve struggled with not being enough: I was never smart enough, or butch enough, or good-looking enough. For Toby, I was not only enough—I was everything. Perhaps that is what makes dogs so special to us; we are always enough and everything.

Once in the park, a stranger admired Toby’s good looks, “Tell me,” he said, “Is he a good dog?”

“He,” I responded, “Is the best dog he knows how to be.”

The stranger thought for a moment, nodded his head, and responded, “I like that. I really like that.”


March 20, 2018. Mathew J. Ryan Veterinary Hospital: The last time ever I saw his face.

Another winter day. The sky hung low, white with anger. From the flattened arc of the heavens, snow tumbled down, like dashed hope. Accumulating on the ground in piles and drifts, it lay there like an old mattress, too lumpy and itchy to offer comfort to the weary.

Toby licked my nose, then settled against me.

“He’s gone,” the vet said, moving the stethoscope from his chest.

Gone?

I looked down at Toby cradled in my arms, tight against me, his chest rising and falling in synch with mine. “Gone? But he’s still—”

“I thought that at first, too,” she said,” But, it’s your breathing that makes it look like he is…”

I nodded. I kissed the top of his head one last time, and gently surrendered him to her.

And now, now, I keep looking around for him, even as I stare at the stack of vet bills on my desk amounting to many thousands of dollars, and realize, I would have generated many thousands more if it would have bought me more time with him.

I seek refuge in the knowledge that I did my best for him, that it was his time to leave, that he was ready. I lean into my trust that he would not have left me if he wasn’t sure I was ready to let him go.

Recently my brothers and I attended a veteran's memorial service at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center (Bronx, NY). In a way it was like telling our dad goodbye again, but in another way we found a community. I wrote an article about the experience for Philadelphia Gay News that explores not just the day and my feelings but grief in general. Hope you'll give it a read.