The Undiscover’d Country

(Lessons in Dying from Those Travelers Who Shall Not Return from Its Bourn)

It just wasn’t something people talked about openly in the South during the ’90s. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” seeped through the walls of the nearby military base and infiltrated our small town in middle Georgia . Decades of draconian Evangelical rule had laid a solid foundation of secrecy and bigotry, and the new policy set forth by the president acted as fresh mortar between the bricks. The words “AIDS” and “gay” were quietly hissed through back channels of gossip and hate.

He came to class one day with a cough that simply would not quit. It began on page twelve of The Crucible, and lasted through Giles Corey being crushed to death in an exquisite yet heartbreaking act of principle. I’ve always been grateful to break down that play with Mr. G, to turn it inside out, piece it back together, and bring it to life. It was a radical statement of art delivered to an audience full of modern-day witch hunters cloaked in their Sunday best.

(It isn’t until I write these words that I am gifted a James Joyce-type epiphany: choosing that as his last play to direct was his final, closing indictment to a community that willingly hurt him, that condemned him to hell behind his and yet smiled to his face, that thought he deserved this terrible, slow death because he was gay.)

There were other gifts he gave me in the short but tender time we spent in orbit together. He saw straight through the heavy armor I had built up around myself, which was comprised of necessary survival tools borne from growing up in a violent tempest of chaos and alcoholism: quietness so that I could melt into the background and not be seen, shyness out of fear of saying the wrong thing or being hated, shut down emotions that resulted from the overall unbearability of life. He cut right through it all, tapped deep into my creative heart, and divined the swiftly flowing current of imagination in my mind.

Age nine and at my audition with him to get into the fine arts school, he looked directly into my eyes and told me that he saw something in me, that he needed me in his class, that we would create stories and build worlds together, like castles out of sand. Age ten and accepted into the school, he jumped over hurdles to get me into his advanced high school level class (the gift of being chosen- isn’t that the deepest unsaid wish of every person?) I know now that it was because the hourglass of his life had been turned over, and the sand was swiftly running low.

And the final gift, the greatest- when someone allows you to walk with them through dying, to watch their bodies disintegrate while their spirits grow larger and spread out like the warm light of a winter sun across a cold, rocky terrain, to share space with them during their final days earthside- full-hearted, open-hearted space.

He came to class every day bundled up in a giant black puff coat that made him look like a tiny blanched bean inside a pod. I think he was cocooning himself not only to get through the horrific chills and to hide the lesions brought on by AIDS, but also to deflect the rumors and gossip hurled at him out there in that harsh, hypocritical world. In that school, however- especially in his classroom that was a tiny black box theatre- he was home and safe.

During class he would tuck himself into the fetal position on his foldaway cot, shaking and sweating as he imparted all he knew about Shakespeare, Meisner, Chekhov, Hagen, the heart, living truthfully under imaginary circumstances, that our bodies are just vessels for a power greater than ourselves, that the creative gift inside of us was not to be squandered, to use it (“I beg of you, use it’) for connection, for love, for truth-

“To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

I carry those lessons with me now, almost three decades later, as I walk with someone else through a different kind of dying.

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I recently found a Kodak photo taken at the opening of a new Piggly Wiggly in the early ’80s, the two of us with gleeful smiles as we met the store mascot- a giant, cherubic-faced pig wearing a chef’s hat. My grandfather’s shock of black hair and thick-rimmed glasses hide most of his face aside from the childlike grin. I’m in his strong farmer arms, probably about 3, my cheeks as round and plump as those on the giant plastic head of the Piggly Wiggly icon. I now wonder what it was like to be dressed up as a cartoon pig on that sweltering Georgia day. And I know it was hot, for in the photo my skin is flushed and glistening, my blonde bowl cut hair is pushed back with sweat, my sundress is pulled up to expose the little shorts I had to always wear underneath because, well, much to the chagrin of my grandmother I had a fondness for hiking up my dresses. His crisp white striped shirt and clean blue jeans tell me that Nana must have made him shower and change before our grocery store adventure. He was a nuclear physicist by trade, but forever a man of the soil in his heart; sweaty, dirty clothes from hours in his massive garden were his norm. They never went past the boundaries of our property, though, not even for a run to the grocery.

They were young for grandparents when I was born- he was 50, she was 45- and my Grandy had effortlessly stepped into the void left by an absent father. The connection I had with him can be felt through that photo. It was one of those bonds that transgresses the limitations of time and space, the kind that eviscerates the laws of physics.

There’s a collection of similar photos of the two of us across the years. I’m always leaning toward him like a tree bowing to sunshine: our heads together sharing secrets about the universe or where I hid contraband chocolate for him in his tool shed; our heads together as he taught me how to assemble my red wagon or how to do calculus using a slide rule; our heads together as we held a baby turtle we came across on our walk along the river; our heads together when I was very little as he taught me how to gently touch a puppy or when he would help me blow out my birthday candles.

There are also the snapshots I have of us in my mind: Getting close as he put my hands to the earth to tenderly feel for what it had to teach me (answer: everything); him cradling me as a teenager when the violence at home got too hard and then again whenever he would find me sobbing in the fetal position on the bathroom floor; him driving straight through from Georgia to NYC and arriving at my dorm’s door to hug me close through the tears and heartache after I contracted a near-fatal illness and had to drop out of conservatory; him holding me like the giant-hearted man that he is even though I’ve been taller than him since 10th grade; me crawling into his lap when life gets too life-y, just as I did when I was little.

And now we have entered a newness I do not want to be in, a terrain with no map, for how do you chart out a such a swiftly changing place? It’s heartbreak and fear I feel at first, for I know the beautiful, brilliant mind inside of him is evaporating. But by this point in my life, my relationship with death and dying has changed- and I do not fear either. It is the most precious and profound of gifts to bear witness to a being’s transition from this life. I do not shrink from it; I turn towards it. For what we really fear is the grief afterwards, when we are left earthside and they are gone.

I recall the lessons from my dying teacher many years ago, of how his body fell apart but his spirit grew large and radiant. As a child, I would delight as the bright yellow, fluffy chicks burst out of their eggs, their shells too small to contain them any longer. That’s what I now understand about dying. As the physical self edges towards those final moments, final breaths, and final heartbeats, the spirit can flourish without boundaries.

And it is his spirit that has been the water for my roots and the sunlight for my leaves. I remind myself over and over that we have always communicated with our hearts first. When I saw him a few months ago, I was surprised and gladdened when he joined me for a swim one hot Georgia night as a storm rolled in. We huddled together under the diving board as the rain poured down, both of us giggling like children. His long term memory is intact in areas, and I asked him to tell me the stories he has told me for many years: about his time at the Savannah River Nuclear Site and how he was trained to pick out spies (he laughs when I ask him about top security clearance secrets, and says they will die with him), about his mom whom he loved very much (she was 14 when she had him- a child raising a child), about growing up destitutte in the lime valleys and farms in Pennsylvania (he said it was his favorite time of his life, farming in those fields), about first dates with my Nana (to the beach with friends, as they met at the Atomic Club dance at the beginning of the summer), about the thing that always brings a smile to his face (the Albuquerque Balloon Festival- he always tried to arrange his trips for the government to align with it), about what it felt like when I was born (“You made me a grandfather”, he said with a smile bigger than the one he gave for the hot air balloons, and I dunked my head under water so that he wouldn’t see me cry.)

Whenever we now lean in to touch our foreheads, I silently promise him that I am here and will remain here through all of it, even when his mind and memory completely slip away, even when I am grieving for someone who is still physically here, even when it gets gut-wrenchingly, heartbreakingly hard, as I know it will. I promise him that the sacred space between us will be a place for his spirit to grow, and I will find him there again and again for the rest of my days, just as I do my teacher, just as I do all others whom I must now love in a place beyond physical limitations.