One year later...

Originally written Thursday, December 22, 2011...

Exactly one year ago today, we buried one of the best friends I will ever have and one of the great loves of my life, Lionel Barrington Jaggers. The time since that cold, grey, December day has done absolutely nothing at all to lessen the pain of losing him. The seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months -- just as empty now, as my tiny apartment in Adams-Morgan where he lived with me for over twenty years and where, for much of that time, he was my constant companion.

I still remember the very first time I ever saw him. Not the day, or the date, which have faded with the decades…but the moment. Remember it, as clearly, to employ a timeworn but apt cliché’, as if it was only yesterday.

The non-profit where I work still had its offices downtown back then. I spent many lunch hours and late afternoons at the main, Martin Luther King, Jr. public library. I had just collected a stack of magazines that I couldn’t afford to buy and settled in at a table in the first floor main reading room. I’m not sure how long I had been there, when I glanced up and noticed, seated a couple of tables in front of me, one of the most handsome brothers I had ever seen. Now, even towards the end of his life, when we were both old men, Lionel was still very good looking. But, in the heyday of his youth, he was breathtaking.

I glanced around the busy, bustling room to see if anyone else was as struck as I, by this vision in our midst, but all seemed oblivious. Not I. An inveterate people watcher from an early age, I was transfixed. I found myself glancing up every few minutes to see if I had imagined him…but each time, he was still there. The ideal physical personification of all of my fantasies.

Those quick, furtive glances became long gazes, as I examined him for any humanizing physical flaws. Despite my most penetrating inventory, none were apparent. I began to stare openly, hoping to attract his attention, but he took no notice. Didn’t even look in my direction. He was dressed casually in jeans and a plain short-sleeved shirt that displayed a lean, but hard and impressively muscled physique. I later learned that he was an avid tennis player.

I haven’t the faintest idea how much time had passed before he finally began gathering the books in front of him and stood slowly up to leave – revealing that he was tall and lanky, an inch or two over six feet…and also that he had one of the largest erections I had ever seen. More about that later, but for now I’ll just say that I was, at that time, in my early thirties…and had seen enough to know what I am talking about.

Needless to say, I was back at the library at that exact same table, at the exact same time, the next day, and again at the same time and on the same day, the following week. But he did not reappear. Nor did he turn up again over the next several weeks as I continued to stake out the library. I was about to give up all hope of ever seeing him again, when he finally appeared again, as abruptly as he had disappeared, and a pattern began that repeated itself several times throughout the summer and fall. Me staring, as enamored as he was preoccupied and oblivious, before he disappeared again until the next sighting.

As avidly as I was stalking him, it never occurred to me to try to approach him, or even sit any closer. And I certainly wasn’t cruising him. I was too intimidated. For one thing, when he was alone, he frequently seemed to be scowling, in a foul, or at least serious mood. For another, the longer I observed him the more I began to notice that I was not the only one watching him, after all.

He was frequently the object of equally intense attention from a bevy of girls and women of all ages, who positioned themselves strategically at the tables surrounding his. Many of them flirted openly with him, and he flirted back. He seemed to have a magnetic effect on women. They had an equally magnetic effect on him, which I eventually realized was the reason for his frequent and impressive erections.

I wasn’t going to mention that again, in order not to appear to trivialize this recollection. But my love for Lionel compels me to keep it real about the initial nature of my interest, which was both superficial and visceral. The depth of my more profound feelings came later -- after I got to know him and he let his wary and formidable guard down.

I also hesitate to mention it because, ultimately, it had absolutely nothing to do with the circumstances under which we finally did meet and become something more than the best of friends.

Holding On/Letting Go

It’s almost ten p.m. By this time last year, almost exactly, Lionel had been in the ICU for nearly two months. Although the rest of his body was frighteningly frail, his grotesquely swollen legs and feet were weighed down by inflatable boots that he found hot and uncomfortable. Both hands tied to the side rails of his hospital bed to prevent him from attempting, In his delirium and claustrophobic panic, to remove the tubes down his throat, mask over his nose and the 4-5 IVs (frequently including Propofol) attached to his neck. His liver, kidneys, and lungs continued failing…but his heart clung on, tenaciously. I sat by his bed all evening, each evening, holding his hand…gently stroking his arm, both of us listening to the beeping monitors.

This particular night, he began to get agitated and squirm, as he sometimes did, from frantic discomfort and from the delusions and hallucinations common after weeks in the ICU. I talked to him trying to soothe him, but he only grew more and more agitated. I leaned over him, trying to guess what he needed: The nurse? The bed adjusted? Pain medicine? The bed pan? Too hot – take the sheet off? Too cold – pull it up around him? With each guess, he would only frown and shake his head in frustration. He stared into my eyes intently, his own eyes blinking back tears. His rail-thin arms strained as he struggled against restraints that had already dug in and left scars on his wrists from his weeks of stubborn escape attempts.

Totally stumped by what he was so desperately trying to communicate, my own eyes began to fill with hot tears of despair.

“I’m so sorry, man. I know you want something, Lionel. But I can’t tell what it is. I know you hate being tied down and that old tube down your throat that keeps you from communicating.” I leaned over him more closely, even though I knew he couldn’t speak. “What is it, dear heart? I’m sorry. I just don’t know what it is you are trying to tell me. ” He continued to stare into my eyes, but the strain of trying to communicate had exhausted him, and he sank back into the pillow, despondent and resigned. He closed his eyes, but his brow remained furrowed. I knew he was not at peace.

Helpless, with nothing else to do, and mindful of the tubes and straps and monitors and IVs…I leaned over and barely hugged him -- very, very gently. Immediately, he opened his eyes, smiled, and nodded his head, “Yes.” Somehow I had stumbled upon it. That’s all he had been trying to tell me. That’s all he wanted to do. He wanted to give me a hug. To cheer me up. He smiled again. I hugged him again. He nodded “Yes” again, then lay back, gradually drifting off to an uneasy sleep.

Sitting by his bed, once again holding his hand, I tried not to let him hear me crying. It would be ten more days, before his family agreed to take him off of life support on December 12, 2010 and he immediately passed away.