Sad news

Last night I came home to an e-mail from Seph, a former lover from 20 years ago, a man who I had re-connected with and had become a "friend" with through Facebook a year ago. Though he had accepted my request to be Facebook friends, he had repeatedly ignored my inquiries about his current life since then, so I was surprised to see a message asking me to call him as soon as I could. We hadn't spoken since my visit to Toronto in January 2001. There was much I wanted to ask him and news to catch up on, but his message mentioned he had sad news to tell me. I have lost so many friends in T.O. to AIDS in the 80s and 90s so I braced myself to hear of the loss of one more acquaintance.

His voice rang through like a beautiful scent connected to distant memories, totally recognizable in spite of the passage of time. I savoured every syllable he spoke. But he quickly got to the point of his call, which was that my lover five years before him, Matt, had dropped dead of a heart attack at the finish line of the Wasaga Beach Triathlon last Saturday, having just won first place in his age category. He would have been 52 in two months.

Seph forwarded me a link to Matt's obituary, which noted most of his remarkable accomplishments over the past 30 years. He had played football and had made it to the Ontario championships in wrestling in his teens; he graduated with a degree in Food Sciences from the University of Guelph; he was an ardent gardener and horticultural society award winner; he grew his own hops and brewed his own beer; his hobbies included photography, kite making, kite flying and kite fighting, and stamp collecting; he composed, played and recorded his own music; he traveled extensively from Machu Picchu to Iceland to India, skied most of the best destinations in western Canada with his brothers each year, and had hiked the West Coast Trail. He was Masters World Champion triathlete and had successfully defended his title in Copenhagen earlier this year. He had also become a highly respected professional in the North American bakery industry over the past 25 years.

Most of this I knew, at least that which had become true by the early 90s. Matt was my second serious lover. We met in May 1983 and were lovers that summer until he left to cycle through Europe and Asia for 21 months, a trip he had been planning for months before we met. I was overwhelmed by his beauty and physical abilities, often feeling like I was an unworthy match, but he was first to confess his love for me. His confession came as a surprise to me because I had few clues about how he felt about me or anything else, as he kept his emotions tightly bottled up. When he left his closest friends told me I had made such a huge difference in his life, even though he had difficulty expressing it.

I felt so adrift after he left on his travels. I wrote to him every week but got very few replies. I was confused and frightened, but I couldn't think of dating any other men while he was foremost in my heart. We met in Athens the following April and traveled together for four weeks. It was a difficult time. He was hot and cold, pushing me away at times and begging me to still love him at other times. I never knew where I stood, but it was never as close to his heart as I wanted to be.

Once I was home again I only wrote in reply to his letters, which were sporadic at best, and mine were still longer and newsier. When he returned to Canada from India in 1985 he was cold to me, even cruel at times, but he burst into tears when I suggested that we stop trying to be friends. Within four months he met a new lover who was never comfortable in my presence, though even if he had remained single I doubt we would have ever settled into a comfortable friendship. As it was, we drifted further and further apart. On occasion I would invite him to meet me for a coffee or beer just to catch up but he usually didn't respond for a couple months just to keep me at a safe distance and prove that he didn't care too much for me.

I finally became exasperated by his attitude and stopped contacting him. That was around 1992. I moved to Vancouver in 1996 without telling him or seeing him again. When I visited Toronto in 2001, I phoned him but he was blasé. He was not interested in meeting me or staying in touch. I never tried again, though I thought of him often. Ours was the largest, unresolved relationship in my heart and I often wondered how I would react if our paths ever crossed again, and whether he would soften or be repulsed by my disability.

The news of his death was shocking, so much so that I wasn't sure how I felt for some time. In self defense, he had become a taboo subject, unlike any of my other past lovers. I have no memorabilia or photos of him anymore. Neither had I mentioned him to my friends. I had become accustomed to blocking memories and emotions related to him as soon as they arose. Suddenly the flood gates of memories were opened and I wasn't prepared.

Friends arrived a few minutes after I got the news and they kept me distracted for a couple hours, but my thoughts were tugging at my concentration. Once I was alone the walls began to slowly close in. Lying awake in bed in the middle of the night the weight of my memories piled up on my chest. I wanted to cry for his loss, and for his company, but I couldn't. I was breathing as deeply as I could to ease the pressure in my lungs, trying to keep my urge to panic at bay.

My muse came to my rescue, as he often does when I am troubled in the middle of the night. He is invisible but I feel his presence in the air above me. If you have never been a writer it is hard to explain. He was tossing words at me like a lifeline, enticing me to grab them. There's no getting back to sleep when he does this. The words made sense of my pain. I realized I need to describe what happened between us, to write down our history that has haunted me for the past two and a half decades.

The next few journal entries will record the most significant of these stories, and only that way will I be able to let go of them. If you are reading this they will show a part of my history I haven't shared in depth with anyone I know.