Terry W. Sewright
1949 September 5 -- 1993 September 28
I knew Terry least well of the folks mentioned here. In fact I didn't even learn his last name until about a month before his death. We had been regular dance buddies at Hamburger Mary's in San Jose for more than a year. But like most of the folks I dance with regularly, I only chatted with him on the dance floor and had no further relationship. He still owes me a shadow dance, incidentally; I intend someday to collect on that debt!
Terry stands out among countless other dance partners because of one moment about two months before his death that touched my soul. During one of our customary slow dances (he sat out the faster dances as HIV sapped his strength), Terry leaned into me much more closely than usual, basically placing his entire weight into my arms--no mean feat, given his tall stature. During that three-minute dance, I felt his entire life-force flow thru my body, just as if our blood systems were linked and I could feel his blood flowing thru my veins. It was a powerful experience that I cannot do justice to in words.
Following that experience, I made a commitment to get to know him better. He agreed to begin to include me in his close circle of friends, but a rapid decline in his health prevented us from making good on that commitment. He entered the hospital shortly thereafter and, except for a short exploratory discharge, he remained in the hospital the rest of his life, about a month. I visited him about twice a week during that time, noting with alarm the steady deterioration of his body from visit to visit. On my last hospital visit, I arrived about three hours after his death. I joined his mother, sister, and two or three close friends at his bedside. As I had done on previous visits, I held him in my arms and prayed--unable to speak, wanting only to touch him. Some of the warmth of his body had already dissipated. Terry's corpse is the first and so far only one I have held.
Greg was one of the first people I met when I started to attend St. Francis Lutheran Church in 1990. He was a tall man, both a two-stepper and a square dancer. Greg only led on the country/western dance floor, so it was some months after I met him that both his health and my learning to follow enabled us to dance together.
About seven months before his death, we attended a country/western music concert during one of his all-to-few healthy periods. Greg was difficult to get to know; he chose to open himself to only a small circle of people. But that evening he shared with me his desire to seek "one last boyfriend" and then explained to me in detail the type of men he was attracted to. The subsequent month I re-met Meredith Karns at a hoedown. It struck me immediately that Meredith was Greg's "type". I introduced them to each other two days later; Meredith moved in with Greg later that week.
Greg and Meredith had an intense, but short, domestic partnership. Greg became gravely ill three months after their meeting and died just two months after that. Meredith helped Greg to come to terms with HIV and to die peacefully, a gift for which I am eternally grateful to Meredith.
Ric responded to a personal ad I placed in a local newspaper. Like me, he was seeking a snugglebuddy. Alas, he had miscalculated the severity of his HIV illness and was really unable to consummate an intimate relationship with me. Nonetheless, we dated a few times. Presumably I was the last man he ever dated. AIDS took him less than six months after we met.
Ric and I had numerous common interests, including two-stepping, square dancing (altho I wasn't a square dancer myself at the time), and music. Alas, Ric also was never well enough while I knew him to dance with me. Based on the stories at his wake, it seems I missed quite a treat. By the time my turn comes, I hope that my dancing proficiency approaches his. Stand clear, angels, Ric gets the first dance when I arrive in heaven!
Bryan is the first person I knew fairly well to have HIV disease. We met thru Lutherans Concerned (aka, LC). In fact, I remember the first LC/San Francisco meeting that he attended, which was obviously his first public coming-out event. Bryan was a seminarian at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, CA. While often too dogmatic for my tastes, he was nonetheless a tireless LC volunteer, dedicated to making the Lutheran church more hospitable toward lesbian and gay people. Upon his death, he honored LC/North America with their largest bequest to date.
In addition to seemingly endless academic discussions, Bryan expressed his spirituality in poetry and music. One of his hymns was sung at LC's biannual Assembly in 1990, just months after his death. To a person, the Assembly arose spontaneously to honor his memory. It was our final "group hug".
Bill was my first love, having met thru a matchmaker in March of 1979, just prior to my 28th birthday. Bill was also the first man with whom I was sexually intimate. Alas, while he enjoyed my company and we had many common interests (he was a classical musician by avocation, for example), his experience was significantly less intense than mine. This ultimately led to our decision after about four months not to pursue a boyfriendship. As it turns out, I was almost certainly the last man with whom he was sexually intimate--quite the alpha and omega experience, sexually speaking.
Bill took his own life the day after All Saints Sunday, just eight months after we first met. Since few of his friends and relatives knew of our relationship, I grieved for him basically in silence and outside the support of his inner circle. My grief was at times nearly unbearable. Like many survivors of people who commit suicide, I blamed myself for not realizing Bill had some terrible unfilled need and for not trying to help fill that need. In retrospective, it was clear to me Bill had lost his will to live even before he met me: When we snuggled, I often listened to his heart beat. I sensed that his heart did not want to beat, but it was only after his death that I understood what I had experienced.
No one knows why Bill overdosed himself. The most plausible explanation is that he had been diagnosed with some terminal disease. (He lived in San Francisco, but kept a doctor in New York City, whom he visited every three or four months.) His mother had died from some wasting disease only a few years before, which effected him strongly, and he told his closest friend that he would take his own life rather than subject himself and others to a death like his mother's. He died listening to his favorite opera, Wagner's Parsifal.
While I doubt I would even recognize Bill if he were alive and walked thru the door today (I have no pictures of him), I still think about him often, especially around All Saints Day. I can truly say that I have experienced first-hand the biblical statement that "love never ends".