Death is an Impostor

During that first session with Dee, a multitude of messages came through, many of them unique to my situation and virtually all of them accurate. Some of the insights, however, unbounded by time, only later came to pass. In rapid fire, she reported images laden with meaning to me. Out of the blue, she asked “You drink soda, don’t you? You know, soda or pop?” “I guess so,” I replied, uncertain what she was getting at, “Why?” “Yeah, cause he’s showing me that. He said he was very thirsty at the end. Did you know this?”

Suddenly, I got it. She was referring to the Gatorade that was Scott’s beverage of choice. His last act, prior to dying, had been to pull himself up with great effort to the tray table I had set up by the bed to reach for the glass of Gatorade there. Just as his hand had grasped the glass his entire body had suddenly tremored, spilling the liquid all over himself. He had fallen flat backwards into bed, his head landing on a pillow, mouth open and eyes staring, and stopped breathing. That was when I started panicking.

Dee continued “I see he was thirsty. He wanted to, you know, drench himself. He says he was very warm. He says his thoughts were running rampart.” “Running what?,” I asked, and Dee impatiently spelled the word for me, “r-a-m-p-a-r-t.” “Hmm,” I thought, “maybe the word is his and not hers.” “He knew you were there,” she continued, “but somebody was there holding his hand. The hand I see was never a human hand. It’s an angelic hand. He was not alone. He’s saying that even when you went off that morning you didn’t leave him alone. He was never alone.”

Later, when Dee asked “Who is Anne?,” I answered “my mother.” My parents had been there for me throughout the ordeal of Scott’s illness, and after he died I had left his body to be held in their arms while I cried. A couple of years earlier, Scott and I had been forced to cancel a long-awaited weekend trip to Key West after he began coughing up blood in the early morning hours that Friday. I had called his doctor at home and made arrangements to check him into the hospital, and driven him there through the deserted predawn streets. As we watched the pale sunrise together from his hospital room window, both of us frightened and exhausted, I said quietly “Honey, we’ve got to hang on to life loosely.” Later, in his journal, I saw that he had written down the words.

That Friday morning, before being able to sleep, I had had to drive to yet another hospital, many miles south, to keep an appointment to have a will signed by one of my clients dying of AIDS-related lymphoma. He was in pain and disfigured by the ravages of disease, but had the grace to ask how Scott was doing, to ask if I was all right. Meanwhile, his life partner, who had been in our office only months before for estate planning, causing a sensation with his beauty and his gentle, sure manner, lay in the same hospital two doors down, also dying. No one was sure which would go first.

I finally got back home and called my mother, having no idea what I wanted to say. Words started pouring out of me. “We had to cancel our trip to Key West, and Scott’s in the hospital, and I just had to go do this will and this guy and his lover are both in the hospital dying, a couple doors from each other. This damn disease. I just…” I broke down crying. I had been pushed beyond my limit. It was all too much. My mother, sharing my pain, spoke soft words of comfort, knowing that there were no easy answers.

“I know, darling. I know.” She was just there for me as I cried, feeling as if I would never stop. Finally, she said “Darling, now get some rest and when you wake up why don’t you come by for some ice tea and a sandwich.” And I did, lost in darkness, and we had talked. She had been through it with me.

My Mom, Anne Howe O’Quinn Crockett

A woman whose loving nature had found expression in her Christianity, she had come to terms beautifully with the fact of her gay son, and later my HIV-positivity. Just days before, I had discussed with her my feelings that Scott’s love was still present. To her, the idea was the most natural one in the world. Is not the essential message of Christianity that death is not what it seems to be, and its core commandment an imperative to love beyond reason? She too had felt his presence, she told me. In fact, she had found herself having a conversation with him, “thinking to him” as she put it, before going to sleep just the night before.

Now, Dee was saying, “He said to give her his love.” Laughing at some private message, she asked “Does she believe in the after-life like that [as in communicating with the departed]? Cause I think he visits your mother. He does. He goes to see her.”
Wow, I was thinking, this guy is busy! Little did I know.

Finally, Dee wound up the session by offering a breathtaking new perspective on the relationship Scott and I had shared, and its future promise. “See, I believe that you two have really grown together. That’s why…that feeling of wanting to be with him [as in suicide], it can’t be. That would separate you if you did that. You can’t do that. But when the proper time comes, you’ll be with him, you see, then you start all over again. It’s beautiful.” I thought Dee was talking about reincarnation, but wasn’t sure. As I requested clarification, she responded. “Yeah, I believe in the last life you both lived you were the teacher. In this one, he was. That’s where you’ve grown together. There’s always one ahead of the other.”

“Yeah, he was the teacher in this life,” she said, “but in each lifetime, the two of you have left a legacy. Which is beautiful. There is a bond between you. Each life that you weave together is better than the last, although you forget…you forget, along life’s path. In other words, you two better yourselves. You better each other.”

“But he’s left plenty to keep you busy,” she said. “She’s got that right,” I thought to myself, thinking of the various creative endeavors we had begun together and which now awaited me. “He doesn’t want to see you dragging your feet, pining away to be with him. He says he’s left you the music, his writing, his poetry, the play, everything that’s built up around you, and there’s more than enough there to keep you busy.”

To  Chapter 13