![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Mar. 21st, 2006
Memorial services
Mar. 21st, 2006 10:27 pmSaturday is David's service.
I don't want to go.
In some ways I've been lucky - I was spared the rapid horrible die-off of friends during the early years of AIDS that many gay men of my age went through (which is why all my friends are younger or older - there aren't many my age still alive.) But I wasn't lucky, the first man I ever loved and made a life and a home with got sick and then sicker and sicker and sicker over more than a year and his death is still a sore point in my memory. Then there was Raul (whose house I now live in) and his illness and death (at least there was a funny story about how we took his ashes to spread at 120ft deep at Forest in Bonaire, and when we got there we found out that Bob had packed them through in his luggage which was lost.) And then my father who stroked out and died 5 years later. And then John S. And a few other people.
I don't believe that experiencing loss makes you more of anything but fucked up. Yeah I know how strong I am to get through that. So fucking what. I've traded perhaps a mild feeling of worry about what might come with a whole bucketload of horrible memories of cleaning up bloody shit and watching someone gasping for breath and sitting and sobbing and wanting them to just fucking die but not knowing if I could survive their dying. I've tried to console people while they were trying to console me. I am not stronger. I am more afraid, and sometimes I think it keeps me at a distance from the people I love. Preparing myself for losing them, too.
So Saturday. Dave was loved by so many people. There will be a lot of people there and I will be a crying mess. It will be like ripping off all the scars from all the wounds and rubbing sandpaper over them. What will I gain? "Closure"? What the fuck does that mean. He's dead. I know what that means. I won't feel any better after the service than before.
I'm so afraid of feeling that loss face-on again. It's almost unbearable.
I'm sort of a mess right now. I don't know what to do.
I don't want to go.
In some ways I've been lucky - I was spared the rapid horrible die-off of friends during the early years of AIDS that many gay men of my age went through (which is why all my friends are younger or older - there aren't many my age still alive.) But I wasn't lucky, the first man I ever loved and made a life and a home with got sick and then sicker and sicker and sicker over more than a year and his death is still a sore point in my memory. Then there was Raul (whose house I now live in) and his illness and death (at least there was a funny story about how we took his ashes to spread at 120ft deep at Forest in Bonaire, and when we got there we found out that Bob had packed them through in his luggage which was lost.) And then my father who stroked out and died 5 years later. And then John S. And a few other people.
I don't believe that experiencing loss makes you more of anything but fucked up. Yeah I know how strong I am to get through that. So fucking what. I've traded perhaps a mild feeling of worry about what might come with a whole bucketload of horrible memories of cleaning up bloody shit and watching someone gasping for breath and sitting and sobbing and wanting them to just fucking die but not knowing if I could survive their dying. I've tried to console people while they were trying to console me. I am not stronger. I am more afraid, and sometimes I think it keeps me at a distance from the people I love. Preparing myself for losing them, too.
So Saturday. Dave was loved by so many people. There will be a lot of people there and I will be a crying mess. It will be like ripping off all the scars from all the wounds and rubbing sandpaper over them. What will I gain? "Closure"? What the fuck does that mean. He's dead. I know what that means. I won't feel any better after the service than before.
I'm so afraid of feeling that loss face-on again. It's almost unbearable.
I'm sort of a mess right now. I don't know what to do.