After my partner, Lee, died from his long battle with AIDS, I found that I was drawn to those other gay widowers, men, like myself, who had lost their beloved and were now casting around for some way to make sense of it, some way to figure out how to think of the future as something other than eternal mourning. One man, Jon, whom I had only casually known at the gym, searched me out on the work-out floor to express his condolences, and then we spent half an hour sharing our experiences of being gay widowers--his lover had died from Hepatitis a few years earlier. There was a gentleness in our interactions from that time on, each encounter at the gym or on the street a surprisingly honest moment. I would marvel at how easy it had become to describe how I was adjusting to life without Lee, sharing my inner life, with an acquaintance. I was surprised by how hungry I was for the comfort of this connection and others that similarly were forged in the aftermath of Lee's death. My family, my friends, my therapist and even Lee's family were not enough to hold me through the pain of losing my lover, but those gay widowers who had walked the path before me were my indispensable guides and wise teachers.
Jon was the first of what became an informal network of gay widowers who offered their stories and sympathy to me during that hard first year of being without Lee. As I fumbled through life as a middle-aged, grief-stricken gay man, the gay widowers who made themselves available to me asked me questions and shared practical advice to help me move on in a positive way, without blocking out what the years with Lee had meant to me. We talked about when it might feel right to remove the wedding band, when would it be wise to start dating again, even having sex again, what kind of ongoing relationship, if any, was possible with Lee's family, legal questions about the estate and clearing out his closets.
After a decade of the AIDS epidemic and overwhelming, unspeakable losses in the gay community, I assumed there would be a whole literature about the experience of being a gay widower--from etiquette to self-help. But the only writings I found that spoke from the perspective of being a gay widower were sections in memoirs like Mark Doty's Heaven's Coast, some of the Paul Monette's superb essays in Last Watch of the Night, and his powerfully raging poems Love Alone: Eighteen Elegies For Rog. A well meaning but rather superficial book on Surviving the Loss of a Loved One to AIDS was not geared specifically to the surviving partner. It was Monette who once again proved himself to be the contemporary gay bard, poignantly describing how he had survived the process I was just beginning, and I was deeply moved, validated and also terrified. In addition I was eternally grateful to him and his eloquence, vulnerability, and passion. I was desperate for information on what I needed to do to promote the healing I longed for.
I was astounded to find there was not a specific book by or about the process of gay men becoming widowers on the shelves. Thinking that either I had overlooked the book, or perhaps, with all the men in our community whose partners had recently died, they were out of stock, but this was not the case. There was no book for gay widowers. In fact there were few books written directly for men of any sexual orientation about becoming a widower. Most of the books were written by and for women who had outlived their husband or partner. I determined that I would obtain a book that would speak to me as a man, and a gay man who had lost his partner, one way or another, and so I now find myself editing this anthology, trying to fill in a gap that I, myself, experienced first-hand. My hope is that those souls who find themselves facing the yawning gulf of their grief, and wonder where to turn will be able to use this anthology of wise words from those who have walked the path before them, and will find useful information and soothing reassurance in its pages.
Over the years, I had savored the edited collections compiled by John Preston. I was particularly moved and touched by his anthologies Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong; A Member of The Family: Gay Men Write About Their Families, and Friends and Lovers: Gay Men Write About The Families They Create. Each provides a window into a variety of different aspects of gay mens' lives. They are not merely personal testimonies, (even if they were, they would be invaluable records of lives lived), but each is in fact an exhilarating social history. Preston's gift to us and to the writers in his books is that he provided vehicles for so many voices to be heard. These works have insured that any gay person, but certainly young gay men, can find reflections of themselves in print, an invaluable contribution at a time when we are still lacking positive mirroring in the media. Gay Widowers is modeled on the anthologies Preston so lovingly edited, and it is my belief that it is also a stunning social history, documenting what it means to lose a partner and begin life anew as a gay man in the 1990s. In compiling these essays, I invited the contributors to write something that they themselves would have wanted to read when they were in the midst of adapting to their new condition as widowers, suggesting they try to describe both the pain of this transition as well as what was helpful to them. I urged them to be as personal as possible, and regard the writing as both therapeutic and healing, as well as a gift they were offering to our community.
It's important for this book to transcend the AIDS epidemic. The epidemic has defined our community for so long that many people forget that gay men have always, and continue to die from causes other than AIDS. At the same time, the experience of men who have lost a partner to AIDS is very much part of this book, with a particular emphasis on how the surviving partner can cope, and eventually thrive again in a vastly changed world. Many of the essays describe surviving a partner's death from AIDS, but there are also stories by men whose partners died suddenly of natural causes and other illnesses. George Seabold begins the collection with a harrowing tale of how mourning the death of his long time lover was complicated by his not being publically identified as a gay man. This story that takes place decades before the onset of AIDS is a window into a time in the not so distant past that remains the reality even today for who knows how many thousands of people who do not have the privilege or ability to publically declare themselves as gay people and avail themselves of a community and support. Eric Gutierrez's interview with Don Bachardy describes how Bachardy transformed himself after the death of his partner of several decades, Christopher Isherwood died. In his interview with Eric Gutierrez, Bacardy describes how he experienced a complete role reversal in the relationship that followed the one he cherished with Christopher. It is also fitting that Paul Monette's partner, Winston Wilde, tells part of his story of recreating himself from Mrs. Paul Monette to Mr. Winston Wilde. In talking with Winston during the preparation of this book, he told me that Paul had told him "Winnie, tell people our story, tell them how we loved each other in the midst of this plague." I believe that Paul would have been pleased to have the story of how the love he and Winston shared fueled Winston's evolution following his death. After all Paul was one of the best loved and most well respected authors of "our tribe," as he so often referred to gay people in his writings. There are essays by and about relationships with well known and prominent gay men as well as by and about relationships with ordinary men, all of whom share the dubious distinction of having loved greatly and lost the person they adored.
This book contains a widely diverse cross section of our community. Thus, men of different ages and racial, ethnic, religious, geographic and economic backgrounds are all included. My hope is that if your lover is currently dying, this book will provide you with some hope for a meaningful life after he has gone, while beginning to prepare you for the realities of just how difficult a transition awaits you. If you are a recent or even a not-so-recent widower, I expect that you will find some of your experiences reflected in the stories, and discover an additional source of comfort in recognizing some of what you are currently going through, or have gone through. If, by some chance, you are not gay and are reading this book, I sincerely hope that you will come to understand the universality of the human experience as told by the men who have shared their experiences in the following pages. If you are a member of one of the helping professions my hope is that the stories told in the following pages will help you in your work with all clients, but specifically gay men who are about to or who have already become widowers. I hope that you will find this book to be a useful and friendly companion as you navigate these uncharted waters
Key Words: gay men, gay men, gay men, gay men, widowers, widowers, widowers, widowers,
grieving, grieving, grieving, grieving, bereavement, bereavement, bereavement, bereavement