I’m writing a memoir about my too-brief relationship
with Rafael Martínez who provided me my first experience of falling deeply,
hopelessly in love. Part of my preparation has been to study what writing
teachers say about memoir and, just as important, to read several memoirs. I
read Frank McCourt’s ’Tis, Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind,
Mitch Albom’s Tuesdays with Morrie, several excerpts from other memoirs,
and am currently reading Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time.
I began the Rafael project years ago but realized I
was not yet ready to deal with organizing and writing about the experience of
love and loss. The grief was too keenly edged for me to be honest about myself
and fair to everyone else. The events took place fifteen years ago.
Two years ago I started readdressing the project. About
three weeks ago I started reading Monette’s AIDS memoir, a book I had read
years ago. I hoped I might learn a lot. A wealthy gay couple living in southern
California, Ivy League educated, driving around in a Jaguar, an attorney, a
Hollywood film writer living a rather high life seemed like a lot to take in. I
wondered if this story would even touch me.
By contrast, Rafael was HIV positive and poor, helped
a lot by Colorado AIDS Project. His doctors estimated he had about eight years
to go, but what they didn’t know was that he had full-term Hepatitis C. It was
diagnosed only three weeks before it killed him. Monette, while not my favorite
gay writer, skillfully took me to their home, clinic after clinic, test after
test, all experiences I knew too well for I went to such places with two friends
and with two lovers—just not in a Jaguar. Writing about Rafael while reading
this book opened my tear ducts, and I wondered: did I not cry enough fifteen
years ago? It seems likely.
My early weeks with Rafael showed how much we loved
one another and how practical and romantic we could be. I told him I would like
to meet his family before he ended up in the hospital. I was earnest though we
laughed. We thought we had time, but we were wrong. Too soon he was in the
hospital. There I met his younger brother, a very nice Mexican man who came north
on behalf of the family. The parents had learned that Rafael was gay and HIV
positive only six weeks before this hospitalization. The family’s life was in
crisis. Rafael got out of the hospital but then went back in with another
problem. Eventually more of the family arrived. I was caught between my lover
and his family; between Rafael’s insistence that they treat the two of us as a
family of our own, they being guests in our home, and what I saw so clearly in
his mother and father, the needs of shocked parents facing an illness they
didn’t understand and the possibility of losing their son altogether. In short,
I was pushed into an interpretive role of supporting both my lover and his
parents and siblings. I walked that tightrope, one that my ministerial experience
had so well prepared me to walk. And I was helpful. I cried but not much; there
were too many other people needing to be consoled and reasoned with and their
English was so poor and my Spanish functionally nonexistent.
We made it through. I helped them as Rafael was dying.
Still Rafael was strong and helpful and insistent. I was so proud of him. He
took care of his family. He reached out to nurses who were having difficulty.
He reached out to me. And of course, I cried, but not very much, not enough I now
am sure.
I’m carefully reading Monette’s scenes of bedsides,
hospital corridors, tests, last minute trips to favorite places, accommodation
to losses. I read; tears gather and fall.
I’m crying now.
© 16 Oct 2017
About the Author
Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his
time writing, painting, and socializing. In general, he keeps busy with groups
of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen
in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He
volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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