The Loss of a Life Partner by Carolyn Ambler Walter

Author:Carolyn Ambler Walter [Walter, Carolyn Ambler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Family & Relationships, Death; Grief; Bereavement
ISBN: 9780231119689
Google: RihTw_DIUasC
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2003-01-15T05:28:33+00:00

Jim

Jim had just turned forty-seven when his partner, Matt, died at thirty-eight of an HIV-related illness. Jim and Matt had lived together for more than eight years at the time of Matt’s death. Matt had been married, with two children, and was divorced two years before Jim met him. Matt was an architect and Jim is a counselor.

Jim was raised as a Catholic and was able to “deny being gay the whole time—it really didn’t come out until I was twenty-six.” Jim met Matt when he was in his early thirties. Jim said coming out at this time was “the worst time in the world, but I did it with a vengeance. These were the days that you weren’t being tested and there wasn’t a whole lot you could do even if you had been exposed to the HIV virus.” Just before his relationship with Matt, Jim had ended a relationship with David, who died within a year of the time Matt and Jim started being together. “Denial, work, love—we were able to pretty much deny it the whole time until Matt got ill.” Jim first noticed things weren’t right when he and Matt were on vacation in Canada. Matt had always had a lot of energy, but on this trip “he just wasn’t right. There were times when he just wasn’t there and I was just beginning to see something. So we got home from vacation and I told him that he needed to do something for me—and that was going to see my doctor.”

Jim reported that Matt’s HIV-related illness “was a very unusual cancer of the brain that was really very devastating, but very fluid. There were times when he literally didn’t know who I was, who he was. With some minor adjustments with meds, he would be clear and overworked for another two months and then it would return. The end stages were completely debilitating. It was very difficult for a while. I had to keep him at home and work with him and be able to maintain a job. I did have some health aides come in. There wasn’t a lot known at that time in terms of how to treat that particular kind of brain cancer. There were never answers. I remember at least two or three times when I was told, ‘He’s not going to make it through the night,’ and the next day he was fine and two weeks later he was back to work. It was about a nine-month period of time that was very hellish, like a roller coaster—numbing, numbing, numbing.”

At the same time that Matt was dying, Jim was experiencing the loss of many other friends. “Within a three-year time there was a group of about twelve of us, my peers, my friends, not former lovers, but close friends. During that time a vast majority of everyone had died—this was all AIDS related. At the same point Matt was dying, my closest friend, Larry, was also dying. In terms of surviving a loss, this is certainly the larger picture.

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