Yesterday I was accused by an OS blogger of being nice. heheheh. This makes me giggle. I am so not nice. My friends and family use euphemisms like “very sensitive,” and “creative,” and “intense” and often more direct words like “moody” and “impatient” and “demanding.” So, don’t read this story and think I’m being nice! It’s about finding something you’re good at, that you can do, that has value… without emotional strain.

On Christmas day I’m going to sit with a friend, J, who is dying. He is 75 and has fourth stage prostate cancer. He is now bedridden. He is still at home in his loft in SOMA -- the place he has lived, and squatted, for more than 20 years. The studio is not insulated and the windows rattle in their casings and it can get cold in there, even here in the Bay Area. I have to use the general public restroom out in the hallway because none of these spaces has a real bathroom. Everything is juryrigged and the walls are just plasterboard. So, I’ll go wrapped in 85 layers and bring a book and just be there.

I have been invited to several places for the holidays (my immediate family all live in other states) – and I like being asked. I want to be asked. I want to have a choice. But I just don’t like this holiday. I have been unable to find a way to celebrate it in its original spirit. Now, maybe I have.

I think this piece is about finding what you can do, and what you can’t. I seem able to “just be” and at times this feels easier than talking.

Here’s how I discovered I was good at this… “The Quiet Gift.” It’s a bit long…

I am discovering that I have a deep desire for being a silent or almost silent companion. In sickness or in health. Sometimes it is about listening, simple listening. Letting someone talk, weep, rant, rage, grieve. And sometimes it’s about just being there with them nearby.

My cousin D was in the hospital a few years ago. He’d had a reaction to a sulfa drug and it was burning him up from the inside. He was at St. Francis Hospital at Pine and Hyde in San Francisco. In the burn unit. He was in a great deal of pain. They had him on morphine. He was drifting in and out of consciousness. All we could do was wait. And somehow let him know we were there.

D and his wife, S, live in Martinez, in the East Bay an hour away. He had gone to Kaiser several times complaining about the drugs. They had pooh-poohed him. Finally, they took him in and then rushed him to this excellent burn unit just up the hill from where I live.

One day I went up to see him and there were a couple of people in the room. I was there for D and yet I felt compelled to participate in the conversation. I don’t even remember what they were talking about, but it felt like polite conversation – the kind I most hate. I wanted to quietly let D know I was there and then I wanted to just sit and be with him. It was impossible during that visit. I also watched D struggle to follow the conversation and participate in any way he could. It made me tired.

The next time I went no one was there. I walked over to D and saw he was awake and I touched his arm and said “I’m here. I’ll stay a while. If you want to talk, let me know. I love you. I have a book. I’ll just sit and stay with you a bit.” He squeezed my hand slightly.

And I did just that. I sat in that room until the light dimmed and the sky turned blue gray. I moved the chair so I was near D’s bed and could see his face at a glance and could touch his hand easily. I read my book and let time pass.

After an hour or more I got up and moved the chair away and told D I was leaving. He was asleep. I left.

I walked out through a darkened and empty hospital lobby into the urban twilight. I walked down the hill through the quiet and the gloaming. The time of day when the veil is thin and it is neither day nor night. Even with city noise and traffic, it always seems to me to be a quiet time of day. A transition time.

I went to see D several more times before he was released. Most often I was there by myself, sitting in the quiet, being present, breathing the same air, holding vigil.

At the time I thought I wasn’t doing enough. That somehow I should be doing more. That I should be talking to him, cheering him up. That I should be an enthusiastic participant in the conversations in that sick room. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I hated the whole conversation thing. I hated seeing D trying to participate, trying to be gracious. Trying to be a good host when he was struggling just to stay conscious.

Yes, I’m projecting. No, I haven’t talked with him about this in particular. But I have talked to others. He and I have talked about my visits and how very much they meant to him.

What I have come to believe is that my quiet presence was a gift. To both of us. To D because he could just be and let himself heal and sleep or wake or do whatever came along, with no pressure to participate in any other part of life. To me it was a gift because it allowed me to just be, to just feel, to connect on a level without words or actions. I feel a very very strong connection to D now, stronger than before. And it’s based on nothing more than my sitting in a dim room, reading a book while he was healing.

I dream of quiet moments like these, with my lover, whom I have not yet met.

Last 4^th of July, I went to J’s to help him get his web site back up. He asked for my help. And the 4^th was the only day I had a whole afternoon free. I’ve known for some time that J has cancer. We had lunch a couple of times. I know him from the San Francisco political scene. And when I had my studio down near the ballpark I’d run into him on the bus from time to time.

I have been uncomfortable with him because I haven’t known what to say. About his illness. And let’s be frank, about his impending death. I hate false cheeriness and yet I didn’t know how to be authentic – to go deeper, to say something

That Friday, I went to his loft on Bluxome Street. Yelled up to his open window – the buzzer was broken. His old girlfriend, N, from New York was visiting and when I got upstairs J was sitting on an overturned plastic paint can smoking an exotic cigarette near his doorway.

The day was loose and mellow. After riding on the Muni Metro in a crowd of ball fans going to the game, the neighborhood a few blocks away was quiet and still. It didn’t feel like anyone else was in the building.

We puttered around, moving files from one old Mac to another. E came over and she and N went to Whole Foods to get lunch for us all. I called the Internet company and got the owner on his cell phone and he reset the DNS servers and helped fix the file uploading problem. And then I fixed the site. I added text links to the bottoms of the pages and got his site back up and running.

He sat with me for a bit while I was working and then he went into the other room and lay down. He said I could ask him questions. He said he had not invited many people into his space recently, and wouldn’t. He simply didn’t have the energy to have them around.

At one point I asked him a question, and his answer came quietly and softly from the other room. I worked away. For a couple of hours. The women came back and we ate at his table. J is dying. He has end stage prostate cancer. He gets tired easily, but he’s all there mentally.

I told him I felt honored that he would invite me into his home at this stage of his life. That he would allow me in. That he would welcome me. When I left, the sky was overcast, the neighborhood was still quiet, only my footsteps on the sidewalk made any sound. Several times I stopped, to let the tears run. To cry. To feel the sadness. The sense of impending loss. To let sorrow take hold and to acknowledge the emotions of bearing witness and to feel gratitude that somehow I can help. That what I can do is what he needed. I could show up. Just by being me. Just by being present. And the gratefulness that I could sit and be quiet. I could let him nap while I read or worked on his web site. I could just “be” there.

When my friend T died of AIDS in Santa Fe, when he didn’t want to see me at the end, when I was unable to connect or give comfort, my grief was terrible. Terrible because I really couldn’t help and terrible because I wasn’t allowed to help.

So yesterday when I began thinking about this I was appalled and saddened. Is this about me? Only about me? Is this about only being able to be around sick or dying people? What is going on?

These are special moments – with sick or dying friends. But it’s more than that. In the world of the everyday. In the world I’ve had to fight and gear myself up for, that world in which human connection can be a pressure cooker, there is little time to just be. What did you do? is often the first question. Nothing. Nothing? What do you mean you did nothing?

It is such a gift – one that I can give and want to give and one that is often appreciated. And more often, not. It is a quiet gift. There is something profound about simply being with someone. Sharing the space. Breathing the same air. Letting them do what they need or want to do while I do the same. We don’t have to talk. As a matter of fact talking gets in the way.

I am grateful that I can do this. That it is a gift I have and can give. That I am willing, even desirous of giving it, sharing it. This is something I want in my own life. This … this space… of being together without volition.

Without volition. Ah. Yes. Without force of will.

I want to find this sense of connection, this comfort in each other’s presence, this sacred space of just being with others. With a lover. With a companion. With friends. I suppose this is connected to writing with others. With holding space at the labyrinth. With other safe spaces. Perhaps it’s even about being quiet in my own presence and letting myself just be. It is a gift.