At 6:15, I called Tommy at the hospital. He spoke in short breaths, and we spoke for perhaps ten minutes; he told me that the fluid in his belly was pressing up against his lungs, and it was hard to breathe. My mother later informed me that Tommy looked "pregnant," and had a stomach the size of a basketball. I can only imagine how much it hurt, even with the morphine drip.

After a little bit, he wheezed that he was too winded to talk, and wanted to get off the phone.

"Can I call you later?" I asked. "Maybe you'll be feeling better?"

"You can try," he said, and he sounded so bad that I burst into hysterical, braying tears the moment I hung up the phone. I had never heard Tommy that weak, and the pain in his voice cut deep furrows in my gut. I tried to bump up my plane flight, then vowed to drive out there for Saturday since none of the flights arrived early enough.

I considered not calling, just letting Tommy rest, but then I realized that he might think that I had forgotten him - and I didn't want that. I called at 8:15, and got Tommy. I asked him if he was feeling better, and he said yes.

"I don't have much to talk about, Billy," he said, gasping and wheezing. "I've been in the hospital all day, and the doctors haven't told me much, and I'm sorry I don't have much to say."

"Well, do you want me to talk to you? "

"If you want," he said.

So I did, for about five minutes. I told him about the wonderful friends I had made in town, and how my pal Melissa was really nice and how Kat was flirting with me to make me feel better and that we really had something cool going at the Thursday coffee klatch. I said that it felt really good to have these people coming together just to talk and hold conversations, because it felt sort of... Well...

"Like a book club," he said, and I could hear his smile.

"Exactly," I said, and I was amazed because he knew. The word I had been about to reach for was "literary," but I hadn't even mentioned books and yet he had plucked it from thin air.

I could hear him wheezing, and I knew it embarrassed him to have me hear him in so much effort, so I said, "Okay, well, I'll call you tomorrow," and I knew by how quickly he agreed that he liked hearing me, but he didn't want to have to do this.

"I'll be there on Saturday," I said. "And I'll call tomorrow, after your surgery, just to see how you're doing."

"Okay."

"I love you."

"Love you, too," he said.

It was casual. I mean, who knew? I didn't make a big fuss about it because I knew Tommy; he'd been through everything. He'd survived twenty years of HIV-positive status, lived through a car wreck when the doctors told my mother to prepare for him to die, and stayed alive through hepatitis and hemophilia. He was a tough old bastard. If he'd wanted to stay until I got there, he damned well would have. It would have ripped him to shreds, but he would have.

If there was one thing Tommy's life had taught him to handle, it was pain.

But he passed away at 9:00, forty-five minutes later. I was the last person he spoke to.

I take that as a great honor. If we'd had anything outstanding, he would have stayed. But he talked to me one last time, and then slipped away quietly; my mother said he looked more peaceful than she'd seen him in months, and she wouldn't lie about that.

I wish I had told Tommy more about Gini. I wish I had called more in May, when the depression hit. I wish that during the worst hours of my marriage back in Anchorage, I had called every week. And I wish that I had apologized for him for a few choice things that I said back when he was thinking about checking into a nursing home, but he was a stubborn cuss and he knew that what I said was true.

But Tommy's passing tells me that those didn't matter. Yeah, maybe there were a few items left on the table, but the bill of sale was long closed. He knew I loved him. He didn't need to see my face; he just needed to hear my voice, to get that one last call in the hospital to know that yes, he was in my thoughts and I still wanted to share my life with him.

And he went.

Current Mood: crying hysterically

(Tell me I'm full of it)