In Memoriam

Yesterday, our "gathering hymn" was "Lift High the Cross." Ever since the summer of 1983, I've had a particular image with that hymn. I'm in Bozeman, MT, with some few hundred other Lutheran college students for a Lutheran Student Movement National Assembly. It's a closing worship, and we've had a great week, and many of us are on that sort of spiritual high you can get at retreats or other intensive, focused religious gatherings. I have an image of this one student, from Texas Lutheran College (now University) carrying the processional cross.

He was not a close friend. He was a senior (maybe he'd just graduated, I'm not sure) and I'd just completed my first year in college. I went to Southwest Texas State University (now simply Texas State University) so I only knew him because he'd picked up a few SWT Lutherans on the way to a regional retreat that previous spring.

By that time, he knew he was going to seminary, probably was on a pre-sem track at TLC, although I don't know that. He was clearly pastor material. He had a natural leadership style that drew people to him, he clearly cared about people, and had a sense of humor that made him likeable. He was not showy about any of that, but a nice, quiet Lutheran boy.

Years later, I reconnected with him, if only superficially. By this time, he was a pastor in Louisiana and I was working in Austin, TX, at Augsburg Fortress, back when AF had a regional distribution point there. I went to Synod Assemblied for AF, setting up the assembly bookstore and such. We chatted some there. He talked a bit about his parish, how much he loved it, how well they treated him. No details except for that mutual love between a pastor and his congregation. When I teased him about staying in a first call for so long, he cited this love as the reason why he's never looked for a second call.

Then one day at lunch (I lived half a block from work at the time), I called my mother and after we'd talked about whatever it was I called her for, she said, "Didn't you talk about a _________." I said, yeah, he's now a pastor in Louisiana. He had some familial connection to someone in my hometown and there was a notice in the weekly paper that he had died. It was a bit shocking to say the least.

I don't remember how I found out he had died of AIDS related causes. I do know that I called around to other LSM friends, people who knew him better than I did, and it turned out everyone was as shocked as I was. He'd told no one that he was HIV+. Through the years, I kept running into people who knew him and slowly I pieced together the story that he'd known his HIV status for some time, but that he had promised himself that he wouldn't tell anyone until he had worked up the nerve to tell his mother.

This was before the current therapies that make HIV more manageable. This was back when a HIV+ diagnosis was a ticking timebomb and anything could be the last illness. He finally got up the nerve to tell his mother he was HIV+ when he was suddenly hospitalized with something. (I don't remember what---I want to say it was some stomach or intestinal infection that went ballistic in no time.) He died shortly thereafter, within weeks as I recall. It was especially fast, given how so many people with AIDS had extended, lingering deaths at the time.

This was my first personal AIDS related death. There was much that no one knew about his circumstances. He had, in fact, had a blood transfusion at some point and he was, in fact, gay and had a secret partner in the town where he pastored. Trying to figure out where he picked up the virus, however, is more about our desire to place blame somewhere than it is about the final outcome, which is that this pastor was dead, no one had known he was sick, and he left behind someone who was treated as "only a friend."

Understand, this was back when I was still not gay-positive. This was even before I'd gone to seminary, and I've already confessed that I wrote a papter in seminary about why GLBT folk shouldn't be allowed to serve in the ministry. Even feeling as I did about that, I still understood that there was someone who was more like a family member who could not sit on the family pew at the funeral. He was invisible to everyone except for maybe one or two people, and he was, reportedly, bitter toward the church about this.

What did I feel? I can't really remember, not exactly. I was sad for his death. I felt that he was very likely a very good pastor. And I probably felt he shouldn't have had a boyfriend and if he got the virus through sexual behavior, he shouldn't have been having that sexual behavior. All that feels very cold to me now, very judgmental and lacking in compassion, but I at the time I'm sure I felt plenty compassionate. I felt badly for the partner, who felt abandoned, invisible, unable to express his grief as a widower, but at the same time, I probably felt something like, "well, but he shouldn't have put himself in that position anyway, he shouldn't have been a pastor's boyfriend."

Even now, I don't use his name (although I'm sure there are people who could read this and know who I'm talking about) because I'm not sure if his mother ever knew about his partner. I don't know if his mother ever knew that he was gay. You'd think by now, she'd find out. But, you know, he would be approaching 50 at this point, and who even knows if his mother is still alive? All I'm saying is I don't want someone to be googling him and find my blog and have that as the source for "outing" him.

That's not the most important thing right now.

He remains on my mind today because we sand "Lift High the Cross" yesterday and on Friday we had a Lutherans Concerned meeting that is organizing to see to it that there are no more secret partners left behind (although I imagine there are some secret heterosexual partners left behind here and there, too---secret lovers are not the exclusive domain of homosexuals). He remains on my mind because his presence in my mind spans my pre-coming out days, my days of actively stating he shouldn't have been a pastor despite his many gifts for it, and my current days of being something akin to an activist (although I think activists are much more active than I am and I shouldn't use the term for my feeble efforts to the cause). He becomes a symbol of a personal journey and a symbol of how things used to be and a symbol of why things must change.

But before I make him only a symbol, I have to remember he was a man who picked up some Lutheran students for a weekend retreat one spring, who went on to seminary, and became a beloved pastor. He was a person with all the strength and frailty of any human being.

And he remains on my mind tonight because we sang "Lift High the Cross" yesterday.