After the Fall, a post script

After reading a post by my dear friend Tony entitled "Shame", I realized that the meaning behind the title of this blog, “Forever Silent”, originates from my feelings of shame. As old as I am and with all my life experience, I am unable to get past the shame of being gay. For myself, I feel that I have come to accept that I am gay but I am still too ashamed for it to be public knowledge. Also, the the shame and discomfort my wife feels about that part of my personality would most likely keep me in the closet for the foreseeable future.




Tony, in his post, spoke about standing, looking out at the river and having details come back to his remembrance about his past experiences, an epiphany of sorts. I had something similar to that happen to me recently.



In an earlier post entitled, "The Fall", I wrote of my special friend David, who had disappeared from my neighborhood and I did not know what had happened to him. As I originally wrote this story, I wrote it in the way that I remembered it. Recently, in another effort to explain, again, to my wife some of my feelings about that time in my life, something returned to my consciousness that I had "forgotten". As I struggled with my emotions, a memory came flooding back to me as to what had happened to him.



Through tears of shame, I explained to my wife how I felt responsible for David's disappearance from his home and later in life, his suicide. She asked me why I would feel responsible. At this point, a window opened up in my mind and the memory came back to me that had remained hidden for decades.



After his disapperance, I learned that David had gotten into a fight with his drunken abusive father. I was not completely sure what the fight was about but I felt at the time and I probably was right, it was about me. It is so amazing to me how we can crowd difficult memories and feelings to the hidden corners of our mind.





David was a tough little kid and when his father started verbally and physically pounding on him, this particular time, he fought back, knocking his father down. David ran away, leaving his father semi-conscious on the floor. Eventually, David would go to his grandmothers home and would never return to live with his parents. I didn’t learn about some parts of this story until some time after his disappearance.

As I look back on the sequence of events that year some things have become quite clear to me. I am quite sure David's father had learned of our physical relationship, of our "summer activities, most likely from his sister who had promised not to tell.

As in other times that David and I had gotten into some trouble together, David's dad most likely called my father to apply the blame where he thought it belonged. My father never said a word to me about it. He probably didn't have a clue how to handle something like having a "queer" son, but the course of our family changed  soon after.

After this incident, we received a call from a local Mormon man who was proselyting for his church by phone. My father answered the phone that night. When he hung up he came into the livingroom where the rest of the family was watching tv. He told us of the conversation he had with this Mormon man and that he had agreed to let the Mormon Missionaries come visit our home and talk to us about their church. We were all stunned at this turn of events. My father had never before shown in any interest in any organized religion. Something or somebody must have changed his thinking. Me?

We met with the missionaries regularly for several weeks and soon after we were all baptised into the "Church". For my part, I readily accepted the teachings of the Church and still to this day believe that it's teachings are true. The Church and its members have been a valuable asset in my life and I am sure that because of it, I am alive today. I am grateful to my father for opening our home to the young Mormon Elders who taught me about our loving Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ. It was a time in my life when I needed the strength and support that this knowledge and all the other aspects of belonging to the Church provided me.

I must admit that I have struggled over the years with the knowledge that I was and am gay/bisexual because these feelings are in direct conflict with the moral standards of the Church.  But, the positive effects which the Church has brought to my life and the lives of my family, have more than outweighed whatever shame, fear and confusion that I have felt over the years. I do hope that someday I can reconcile those negative feelings which still cause me to be ...Forever Silent.