I, Mikey, having been born of goodly parents in the Year of Our Lord 1980 AD…

I always wanted to begin my story this way. Hey, if Joe, I mean, Nephi did it, why the hell can’t I?

Really though, I WAS born to great parents. I grew up in what was then a small suburb, now a very large affluent suburb, of Salt Lake City, Utah. I was born in the covenant and my folks were your typical young, Mormon, middle middle class couple. My sister was born two years before me, so by the time I came along, they had already begun their little family. My parents were fantastic. They loved each other and they loved me and my sister more than anything. My dad was a self-taught architect and making damn good money for the time. My parents met while receiving their degrees at Brigham Young University; my mom’s degree in Fashion Merchandising, my dad’s in Business Management.

I want to break here and give some background on my parents.

My mom, Virginia, was born in Utah in May of 1953 to Mark and Orpha Ward. She was the fifth of six children; she had three older sisters and an older brother. She spent most of her formative years living in the Seattle, Washington area. My mom didn’t have the most ideal childhood. She was born nearly three months premature, which in the 1950’s was usually considered a death sentence, obviously due to the lack of medical technology at that time, relatively speaking. I remember her telling us frequently that when she was born, she was able to be cradled in one of her father’s hands, and could have been put in a mayonnaise jar and still had room to move.

She spent almost the first year of her life in the neo-natal ICU at Holy Cross hospital in Salt Lake City. The doctors were cautious but hopeful about her prognosis, but also couldn’t make any promises as to whether or not my mom would live. At that time, most of the nurses at Holy Cross were nuns. Throughout her life, she always held a special place in her heart for nuns, as they had cared for her as lovingly as a mother would her own child.

Not long after my mother was finally released from the hospital and allowed to go home, her parents packed the family up and moved to Bellevue, Washington, which is a suburb of Seattle, east across Lake Washington. They moved into a modest, but beautiful home in the neighborhood of Clyde Hill. Much like the suburb I grew up in, Bellevue is one of the most affluent and highly-priced places to live in the Seattle area. Today, the median home price ranges from $350,000 to $400,000.

Because of her very premature birth, my mom was a sickly child. She had chronic asthma (which stuck with her throughout her life), and was a frail, tiny little girl. The children she grew up with and her brothers and sisters nicknamed her “Skinny Ginny”, because of her small stature. This nickname grew on itself as she got older and lost her baby teeth. “Skinny Ginny” became “Skinny Ginny the Toothless Ninny”. Over the years the nickname stuck, but was always used very affectionately.

When she began kindergarten at age five, she was still too frail and ill to leave the house. A two-way communication system was set up at home and in the classroom, so my mom was still able to learn. I always like to think of this as a 1950’s version of online classes. She attended school this way for a couple years, and by then her health had improved enough that she was able to start attending regular classes at the school. Because of her sweet-natured and outgoing personality, despite her health problems, my mom was a very well-liked little girl. She made friends quickly and was always fiercely loyal to those she loved and cared about.

My biological grandfather, Mark Ward, was a violent, hot-tempered, unfaithful, emotionally and physically abusive alcoholic, though as I’m told, he hadn’t always been that way. Outwardly, he was a very charismatic, charming man, who had the looks and the suave of a young Clark Gable. He made his living as a salesman, and because of his charm and charisma, was able to provide a very comfortable life for his family. As time moved on, however, most of the money he made was funneled into booze and other women. He began belittling and emotionally abusing his children, especially his two youngest- my mom and her little brother, Joe. He would constantly say to my mom that he wished she had never been born, and that she had been nothing but a burden from the beginning.

Tutu, my maternal grandmother, was as beautiful as a movie star. She was a wonderful mother, a loving wife and had solid relationships with each of her children. Despite the rapid decline of her marriage, she always remained positive, kind and fiercely protective of her children. They were the most important thing in her life.

When my mom was about nine years old, her father abandoned the family to be with another woman, leaving my grandmother with very little income and six children to raise. My grandmother (we called her Tutu, which is Hawaiian for ‘grandma’- to this day I’m not sure where the nickname came from), was forced to take on two additional full-time jobs to support her family. The job she loved the most and had been working at the longest was at a real estate firm. There, she met Eric Pearson, a successful real estate developer who owned properties all over the Pacific Northwest. Eric had also been married before and had children, although his first marriage had not ended amicably, and he didn’t have much of a relationship with his children. After Mark left, Tutu and Eric began dating and eventually married. Eric was the man that I knew my entire life as Grandpa; I never did meet my biological grandfather, Mark.

Tutu and Grandpa Eric’s relationship was something out of a 1940’s Hollywood movie. They were, as the old expression goes, “madly” in love. He courted her and treated her like a queen. He always used to refer to her as “my darling”. He embraced the entire family as if he had been a part of it since the beginning. Although most of my mom’s siblings were either in their late teens or early twenties when Grandpa Eric came into the picture, he thought of them as his own children, and all of them came to know him as Dad. Grandpa Eric was everything that Mark had not been. He was kind, loving and unconditionally supportive of his new family.

As the years went by, and my mom blossomed into a young woman, she became increasingly beautiful, and closely resembled her mother. She was still “Skinny Ginny”, but no longer frail and sickly. She was trim, pretty and confident.

Although both her mother and biological father were Mormon, they were never consistently active in the LDS church. As my mom grew up, however, she began to attend church on a regular basis, going with a good friend.

After she graduated from high school, my mom decided she wanted to move back to Utah and attend BYU. She said goodbye to her family and headed south.

My dad, Glenn’s childhood was vastly different from my mom’s. He was born in July of 1951 and raised in the Salt Lake Valley. His mother, Martha, was raised in the LDS church, but his father, Bill, was not. My dad never really attended church as a kid, and concentrated more on sports and girls. His parents were very close, and for the most part, my dad had a very happy childhood.

Grandpa Bill was a very successful architect. His office was run out of the house, and that gave him time to teach his sons the tricks of the trade. My dad was the second of four kids; he had one older brother, Mark, a younger brother, Brent, and a younger sister, Linda. He was closest in age to his older brother Mark, and looked up to him in every way.

Mark was handsome, popular, athletic and intelligent. He was everything most boys wanted to be. When Mark was about fourteen, he fell off his bike and got a very large bruise on one of his knees. Time passed, and the bruise didn’t clear up. My grandparents took him to the hospital and after getting an x-ray, the doctor broke the news that Mark had cancer. By the time he was diagnosed, the cancer had spread through most of his leg, and at the time, his only chance for survival was to amputate the leg. Mark underwent surgery and had his leg amputated. Unfortunately, it was discovered that the cancer had spread further than the doctors originally thought, and was now in Mark’s lungs.

Mark died at the age of sixteen. Obviously, the family was left devastated, but it didn’t affect anyone quite as much as it did my dad. Mark had been his best friend and his hero, but now my dad was the oldest, and had to be a role model for his younger siblings.

Time passed, and after he graduated high school, he was accepted at the University of Utah. He began school, and immediately joined the Kappa Sigma fraternity. In true fashion, he began drinking, smoking and doing all types of things that made his parents’ hair curl.

After a year or so at the U of U, drinking, partying and not getting much done scholastically, my dad decided to mend his ways and start going to church. He quit drinking and smoking, and stopped socializing with his fraternity. Eventually, he came to the conclusion that the only way to maintain his new ‘clean’ lifestyle was to transfer to Brigham Young University.

Not long after beginning classes at BYU, he met my mom. It was one of those love at first sight things like you see in the movies. My dad timidly asked my mom to go with him to one of the school dances. To this day, I keep the photograph taken at their first dance.

Like my Tutu and Grandpa Eric, my parents were crazy about each other. My dad always talks about how deeply in love he was with my mom, and how they would make out everywhere there was a couch. They both, however, maintained their “virtue” while they were dating.

My dad received his degree in Business Management, but had learned the trade of architecture from his dad. Right out of college, he went to work for his dad as an architect, although my dad never received “formal” training or a degree in architecture. My dad had a knack and a talent for the trade, however, and soon became my grandpa’s business partner.

After my parents graduated from college, they decided to get married. They were married in the Salt Lake Temple in April of 1976, and immediately began trying to begin a family. It wasn’t easy. They tried for nearly two years to get pregnant, and after going through some fertility treatments, my mom became pregnant with my sister, Amanda.

Mandi was born in January of 1978. She was one of the most beautiful little babies most people had ever seen. She was petite, and had a shock of white-blond hair. That girl could stop traffic, and that continues today.

Two years later, little old me was brought into this world via caesarian section. When I was born, I had a red mark on my forehead between my eyes- not really a birthmark; it would only appear when I was pissed off. In my opinion, I wasn’t the cutest of babies, but I was born with a set of dimples on my face that through the years I learned to work to my advantage in several ways. In my early twenties, those dimples got me laid more often than I probably would have without them. That damn red mark on my forehead, however, followed me until I was probably ten years old, but again, only appeared when I was angry. Why the red mark is important, I don’t know, just a small incidental detail about my physical appearance as a child.

Like my sister, I was born with almost white-blond hair. By the time I was about three or four, however, my hair darkened to a chestnut brown and my face was covered in freckles. God, how I hated the freckles. They were the bane of my existence throughout childhood and adolescence. From adults it was always “oh, look how cute your freckles are!” Fucking freckles. Although they have faded, at almost thirty-one years old, I still have ‘em. Fair-skinned Mikey and his goddamn freckles.

My brother, Kevin, was born about 3 ½ years after me. He was an adorable blond-haired happy kid and was such a great addition to our family. My brother and I have always been extremely close, and he was my best friend throughout the horror that was my adolescence. More on that later.

I was a happy kid, but very shy and reserved. I wasn’t comfortable around new people, and was always kind of a homebody. From an early age, I loved books and devoured as many as I could get my hands on. Records were another passion of mine. When I was three, my parents bought me a plastic Fisher-Price record player, and a whole bunch of those 45s with stories narrated on them that came with the book and the record. I don’t know what it was, though, about the physical records, but I loved them. I loved the shape, the feel of them in my hands, and most of all the turning action of the record player.

Anything that had a disc-like apparatus was a record player for me, even my mom’s Kitchenaid mixer. I used to steal the little disc that the bowl would spin on and play with it. My mom was constantly finding that damn thing in my room and would chastise me not to take it again.

One memory about records that I will probably never live down, happened when I was probably two years old. My mom was a gigantic fan of the Beatles. She had every record they ever recorded, most of them first editions. One day, she came downstairs and I had taken all the Beatles records she had out of their sleeves and spread them out on the stone hearth, thus scratching them all to hell. Again, like the red mark, the record obsession is merely an incidental detail and has nothing whatsoever to do with my life as a whole.

When I was four years old and my sister was six, my mom decided to put my sister in piano lessons. My parents went out and bought a nice upright piano and started my sister in lessons with a wonderful German lady, who I’ll call Gretchen, who lived down the street from us. Gretchen was about my parents’ age and she had kids that were roughly the same age as me and my siblings. From the get-go, my sister hated piano lessons. She was always something of a diva; and had a strong, stubborn personality like my mom. She didn’t like to be told she had to do something she didn’t want to do.

My mom forced my sister kicking and screaming to practice her piano lessons for a mere half hour a day after school. Not long after my sister began piano lessons, I figured, hey, that doesn’t look so hard. After my sister was done practicing, I would go in, sit down at the piano bench and play her entire lesson. Well, my parents figured they had a piano prodigy on their hands and immediately started me in piano lessons.

Thus started my lifelong love affair with music. I loved the piano. Loved it. Instead of going outside and playing sports and games with the other kids in my neighborhood, I would sit at the piano for hours at a time every day and just play. It was a place I could always escape to; it had a calming, head-clearing effect on me, and still does. When I’m playing, I’m able to focus all my attention on the keys of the piano and the emotion of the song, and nothing else really matters to me when I’m in that place. It’s very zen.

I took piano lessons for nearly fourteen years. I was involved in many piano competitions and recitals. It was always something I excelled in, and continued to love throughout the years.

My parents were always active in the LDS church, and raised us the same way. We went to church every Sunday, and my parents held various callings. My mom was Homemaking Counselor in the Relief Society for many years, and my dad served as Ward Clerk for a big portion of my younger childhood. My mom was what everyone would refer to as Supermom. She was active in everything she could be- PTA, Room Mother at school, my sister’s dance lessons, my piano lessons, my brother’s sports activities. She sewed, she cooked, she cleaned house, she even began furthering her education, taking correspondence courses from BYU. My mom was at the top of her game in my early childhood.

When I was about six years old, an event came to pass (hehe) that, looking back, was probably the first time I witnessed how cruel people could be. My mom was Homemaking Counselor in the Relief Society at the time, and was pretty close with all the ladies in the ward. Somewhere around that point, my sister, by brother and I all came down with a raging case of head lice. This was back in the day when they would hold “read-a-thons” at school, and all the kids would bring their pillows and blankets and treats from home and lay on the floor of the classroom reading for a whole entire school day. While there’s really no way of knowing for sure how we contracted the lice, this is most likely where we got it from.

My mom was in a panic. She was very obsessive-compulsive about keeping the house clean and disinfected, although she was never one of those mothers that kept plastic on the couch and never let anyone “live” there. But she did pride herself on the cleanliness of the house. The case of head lice was a huge curve ball. She took us to the doctor and got a lice comb and some anti-parasite shampoo, and spent hours picking the nits out of our hair. She boiled all the clothing and the sheets and eventually, the lice were gone.

Mormon wards being what they are, it wasn’t long before everyone knew we had head lice. The gossip spread like wildfire. The women of the ward shunned my mom, and gossiped behind her back, calling her an unfit mother, saying she should have kept her house cleaner, and paid more attention to her kids’ hygiene. The parents stopped letting their kids play with us, and coming to our house for sleepovers or anything like that was forbidden by all the kids’ parents. No matter what my mom did, she was looked on as a pariah in the ward for a long time.

This incident threw my mom into a deep depression. The vibrant, energetic woman I had always known deteriorated before my eyes. She spent most of her days in bed crying. She would get up only long enough to make sure we were fed and taken care of, but not much more than that. The light had drained from her eyes. All the things she loved to do no longer seemed important to her anymore.

After weeks and weeks of this, my dad decided it was time she see her doctor. She went in and was prescribed Valium. Back around that time, Valium was a very common drug given to people with depression. Not much was really known about depression; it wasn’t diagnosed as commonly as it is now. I don’t think drugs like Valium were really known as being highly addictive. The valium helped my mom return to some semblance of normalcy, and within a short time, she was out of bed and back to being my mom. Looking back, I don’t think she ever fully recovered from the incident with the lice. To me, it was the beginning of the end for her.

I was baptized and confirmed when I was eight years old, just like most Mormon kids are. When you’re eight years old, you really aren’t given much of a choice whether this happens or not. What kind of eight-year-old has that kind of freedom and self-knowledge to know what they’re getting into? Being baptized was just something you did if you were Mormon. There was never any question that it would happen, and at that time, it was a happy occasion for me. I was baptized at the Stake Center in the baptismal font by my dad. I had to be dunked twice, since my knee bobbed up out of the water the first time, and Mormon baptism requires full immersion of the body in the water. You aren’t really a Mormon unless every part of your body goes in the water. Being an adult now, with a tiny bit more common sense, this whole thing seems so epically absurd.

Much to my chagrin and against my will entirely, my parents made me go to Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. Again, this is just what was expected of Mormon boys. There is typically a specific track that all Mormon boys, especially in Utah, are expected to follow, and not stray too far from: baptism at eight, Scouting, Eagle Scout, Priesthood, both Aaronic and Melchizedek, Temple, Mission, BYU, Marriage, Kids, Grandkids, Adult Mission, Death. No one often questions this track in life, at least no one I knew growing up; it’s Just What You Did. But oh how I hated Scouts. I hated camping, I hated the outdoors, I hated the sports we were forced to play. I hated tying knots, and most of all, I hated all the mean boys in the ward who made fun of me because I wasn’t into all the typical “boy” stuff. All I wanted to do was stay home, read, play the piano, and do things with the friends I actually liked. But nonetheless, my parents were emphatic about me attending Scouts, no matter how much I protested.

I always knew I was different from other boys. As I said, I never did most of the “boy” things. Sure, I tried to fake it; I went to BYU games with my dad and pretended to have a good time, even though I had no idea what the hell was going on down on the field. I stood up and cheered at the appropriate moments, but never really knew why. I made friends with some of the boys on my street, and Aaron, who was really into sports but also wore his heart on his sleeve like me, soon became my best friend. He convinced me to sign up for Junior Jazz basketball and be on his team. I did. I was miserable. At that age, I was slightly taller than a lot of the other boys and therefore was made the position of Center. Hell if I knew what that meant. All the other boys on my team knew basketball inside and out. I faked it. I had anxiety before every practice and every game. I got yelled at by the coach and the other boys a lot, because despite practices, I still had no idea what I was doing. No one ever passed me the ball. I just kind of stood there most of the time during the games, moving my feet and holding my hands up over the kid I was supposed to guard. In the two (yes two, I’m apparently an idiot and told my folks I loved basketball) seasons I played, I was passed the ball one time, and got one ball in the basket.

I did well in school in those days. School came easy to me. It was something that I felt comfortable doing. I was a model student, did my work quietly and efficiently, and always handed it in on time. During recess, I spent my time mostly with girls. I felt more comfortable doing the things girls did at that age; hopscotch, jump rope, playing on the monkey bars. I didn’t want to play football or anything else like that during recess. As far back as probably third or fourth grade, the boys started calling me gay, even though none of them had any idea what the word meant; all they knew was it was an insult and would make a person feel bad. By the sixth grade, the insults had ramped up so bad, and rumors were flying around about me playing “sex” with other boys (which I had done with a couple other curious boys my age, but who DIDN’T do that?), and they knew I was a fag, and for reasons I still can’t fathom, I became affectionately known as “Hitler”. Day after day, the boys (and even some of the girls) in my class would give me “dead arm” which was when the boy used his knuckle and punched me as hard as he could in the upper arm. My parents never knew about it, but most of the time my upper arms were covered in bruises. I really didn’t know how to fight back. I became more and more withdrawn and it became increasingly difficult for me to go to school.

Let me jump back a bit and talk a little more about my home life.

1988, the year of my baptism, was also a year of many other not-so-pleasant events. Around that time, my parents decided to sell their home, and build their “dream house” in a new subdivision less than a mile away. We would still be in the same ward boundaries, since the area wasn’t hugely populated at that time. Being an architect, my dad designed the house himself. The building process was very stressful on my folks. A lot of late nights, big arguments about the rising cost of the house, all the unexpected errors made by the contractor. There was a lot of tension in the air between my parents during that period; tension that was poised to increase tenfold over the next few years.

Once we got moved into our new home, got settled in and things seemed to return to a bit of normalcy, my mom began getting crippling headaches. I didn’t know this at the time, but my mom’s doctor who had prescribed her Valium, had, after two years, taken her completely off the medication cold turkey. Knowing what I know now about benzodiazepines, having been on them myself for my own panic attacks, this was a very foolish move on her doctor’s part. Benzos, like narcotics, are a class of drugs that shouldn’t be stopped abruptly after taking them every day for a long period of time. The withdrawal symptoms are similar to withdrawals from heroin. But again, around this time, there wasn’t a whole lot known about the nature of Valium or any drug of its type, and there certainly wasn’t much known about the withdrawal from these drugs.

As I said, after my mom was unceremoniously taken off Valium, she began to get migraine-like headaches that would keep her from being able to function like a normal human being. My bedroom was just down the hall from my parents’ and I remember lying awake late at night and hearing her cry from her bedroom because she was in so much pain.

No one knew what to do. My dad certainly didn’t. He began to look stressed and exhausted all the time. He was working 50 hour weeks, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, trying to take care of me and my siblings, helping us with our homework and all this on top of trying to be there for my mom. My dad is and always will be my hero. The man has gone through so much heartache and hardship in his lifetime, but remains to this day undauntedly happy and optimistic.

When the headaches didn’t stop, and my mom’s doctor(s) had done every test they could think of with no results, he referred my mom to different specialists. Through hours spent in doctors’ offices, through painful testing, MRI’s, CT scans, and even a spinal tap, the results always came up with nothing. No one could figure out what was wrong with her. During this time, accompanying the headaches, my mom also began getting horrible panic attacks. She would be deathly afraid, shaking, screaming, crying for no apparent reason. She also had more frequent periods of extreme depression. She became more and more bedridden, and was unable to continue the Supermom role. My dad pretty much took over running the household.

As one would expect, my parents’ marriage was under a lot of strain. They fought almost constantly about everything; money being the main thing. My dad was working so hard, and about that time, the housing market took a dive. Because he was self-employed, the money wasn’t coming in nearly as quickly as it was being spent. Thousands of dollars a month were spent on medical bills, which left little money left over for household expenses. My parents unfortunately turned to credit cards to supplement the lack of income. This only made things more stressful for them financially.

I guess to understand the impact all of this had on me, it would be helpful to understand the dynamic of the relationship I had with my mom. I was, am, and forever will be a proud mamma’s boy. My mom and I were always best friends. She understood me in a way no one else ever has or probably ever will. As far back as I can remember, my mom always referred to me as her “kindred spirit”. We had a connection that was almost psychic at times. I always knew when she was in emotional pain, even if I wasn’t home, and she always knew the same about me. During the rare times of calm when the pain was less, and there wasn’t so much anxiety, my mom and I would sit and talk for hours about everything from the weather, to school, to theology, to family, to music…everything. We shared everything with each other. When my mom’s panic was at its peak, and she was cowering in the back of her closet in the dark, and my dad couldn’t figure out what to do to help, I would go in there and she would hold me and sing “You Are My Sunshine” and I could always make her feel better and bring her down from the ledge. These were really scary times for me. As much as I loved being there for my mom, it took a large emotional toll on me. It’s really difficult as a kid to feel like you’re holding all this weight on your shoulders and not really having much of a choice. I couldn’t just abandon my mom.

During those days, I prayed a lot. I studied the Book of Mormon. I looked for some kind of answer to why all this was happening to my family. I don’t think I ever expected an answer, but the emotional weight of everything that was going on, literally forced me to my knees in prayer because I didn’t know what else to do. I was always taught that God only gives people challenges in their life that they are able to handle, but my faith began to waver in the height of everything that was happening. But that didn’t stop me from believing that God would hold me up and make me strong. My grades in school were suffering. I couldn’t concentrate on homework, and my time in class was spent worrying about what was going on at home.

When the anxiety attacks kept getting worse, my mom’s doctor referred her to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist, in true form, prescribed a bevy of medications for her. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, not much was known about panic/anxiety/depression disorder, much less about the drugs typically used to treat them, but those drugs were thrown around like candy, and not much attention was paid to the combinations and dosages.

The medications began to take their toll. Her psychiatrist was constantly switching her from this to that to any and every antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication that was available. Zoloft, Depacote, Paxil, Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, and dozens of other things I can’t even remember. My mom never abused her medication; she only took the prescribed doses at the prescribed intervals. Alas, none of these medications worked. The anxiety spiked, the depression increased, and her asthma started raging out of control. Things began to get so bad and so dark. My parents continued yelling and screaming at each other. My little brother would come to my room and sit with me and cry. So many nights we just sat holding each other and crying, listening to the screaming and crying coming from my parents’ room.

During this time, the family, sans Mom, still attended church regularly. My dad held his callings and did everything he was supposed to do. I think church was a big escape for him, which at the time he really needed. Any escape at all. He didn’t know what to do. Anything he said to my mom turned into an argument. He was working later and later, and when he came home, he avoided my mom as much as possible. He had begun to look like an old man. The worry lines on his face were becoming deeper, and his health began to deteriorate. He was exhausted all the time, and by that point, my parents were sleeping in separate rooms; mainly because my mom was so sick, he couldn’t get the sleep he needed.

I want to break here and explain that my parents always deeply loved each other. I don’t know of many marriages that could withstand all the trauma my parents’ did and still remain intact. There were periods of calm interspersed throughout these rocky times. During these moments, my parents got along great. They laughed and talked and genuinely enjoyed each others’ company. My dad just didn’t know how to cope with the stress of my mom’s illness. None of us did. It was like a huge black cloud hanging in the air all the time.

As I grew into adolescence, I realized more and more how different I was. As I began puberty, and should have been noticing girls, I started noticing boys. To be perfectly frank, I never really paid much attention to it. It wasn’t this big epiphany I had like “Oh. My. God. Becky. I. Like. Boys. That. Is. So Wrong.” No, it just kind of was what it was. By the time eighth grade rolled around and I was about fourteen, I understood a lot better what ‘gay’ meant. I realized I had little to no interest in girls, and the time I spent fantasizing during the times I masturbated, I found myself thinking about other guys in my school, wondering what their penises looked like, and how it would feel to touch them and have them touch mine. Again, at the time, it just wasn’t a big deal to me. ‘Gay’ wasn’t something that was talked about a whole lot, at least not in the concrete sense. At fourteen, I really didn’t grasp the actual concept of sex. Sure, I knew what it was, I had gone through the whole birds and bees talk with my folks and I heard kids at school talk about it a lot, but sex as a reality didn’t impact me much. Even though I began masturbating when I was about eleven years old, it never occurred to me that it was bad. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing, I just knew it felt good to do it. The guilt never really hit me and I got lucky that the whole “do you masturbate” question never was directly asked in my priesthood interviews. Sure, the, “are you morally clean” thing got asked, but for all I knew, that only was referring to having sex with an actual person. I passed the sacrament with no guilt. I studied my scriptures. I believed in everything the Mormon Church taught me. At thirteen, I was made president of the Deacon’s Quorum. My spiritual self seemed to be the only part of me that was wholly intact. I liked going to church. I liked feeling like I was close to Heavenly Father. I think at that point, it was the only thing I felt like I had left to hold onto.

Thinking back, I kind of kick myself for not keeping a journal. I started probably ten of them, but as with a lot of things in my life, I started, but never finished or kept it going. It would be really fascinating for me to go back through and actually read the thoughts I was having at that point in my life. The details and timelines of all this have become a bit blurred. That whole period in my life felt like one ongoing nightmare, so I’m finding it a bit difficult to keep all this stuff in chronological order.

As a complete and utter aside, and because I suffer from a bit of ADD, I want to talk a bit about memory. Memory, all alone in the moonlight. Memory is a funny thing. Every moment of every day as long as we live, our brains are bombarded with sensory stimuli — unless you’re Helen Keller and have been shot up with some weird Amazonian numbing agent, in which case there would be no stimuli, mainly because you’re Helen Keller and you’d already be dead, so it’d be a moot point anyway.

Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches. Head, shoulders, knees ‘n’ toes, knees ‘n’ toes, knees ‘n’ toes, head, shoulders, knees ‘n’ toes, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. For the average homo sapien, our brains process and immediately discard most of the external stimuli we are exposed to day in and day out. The big exception to this rule would obviously be the blessed few who have the gift of a photographic memory; although I can’t honestly say whether that would be a blessing or a huge annoyance. I don’t think I’d want to remember a lot of the things I see. For instance, just the other morning, some random homeless man in a wheelchair came rolling over out of nowhere to the smoking area outside the office where I work (keep in mind, I don’t work in a downtown urban-type area. It’s an office park with nothing else really in the immediate vicinity) and began sifting through the ashtray and scouring the ground for cigarette butts that had one or two drags left on them, and stuffing them in his socks. I don’t want to remember things like that. It’s horrifically sad, and quite frankly, more than a little creepy. Of course, thinking about it further, I may want to keep that one in the Files so I have something to talk about at future awkward dinner parties I’m sure I’ll be invited to at Lindsay Lohan’s house when she gets out of rehab.

But, at the end of the day, whether fortunately or unfortunately, I’m not one of these Sainted Mind Photographers myself, so I constantly marvel at the small, minute, seemingly insignificant and wildly random details my brain seems to hold onto for some utterly bizarre reason; things I’m not really exposed to repeatedly in daily life. Why, for instance, do I remember the lyrics to a song I heard only once and hated, but for the life of me, can’t remember the exact color and shade of my mother’s eyes? I saw them nearly every single day of my life for over twenty years, and to this day, I don’t think I could pick them out of an eyeball lineup. Especially if it was one of those high-pressure lineups in the dim room with the one-way glass, where you’re the white trash hooker from Rhode Island named Sheila who was the only witness to a heinous contact lens incident, sitting there with your ratty bleach-blonde hair and dark roots wearing bright magenta lipstick and matching eyeliner you got at the Pick ‘n’ Save that you knew were a bad idea but went real well with the shoes you stole from that bitch that calls herself Couch Cushion who works the 7-11 parking lot one street over and is constantly stealing your Johns because she swallows and you don’t but you know you’re way classier and give better head than she does plus you practice safe sex by doing backdoor because the last thing you want is to get pregnant again so soon. So you’re sitting there in the police station and you’ve got the whole I’m Coming Down From a Ten Day Meth and Heroin Bender twitches and you’re smacking on a flavorless piece of Big Red gum that keeps sticking to the partial dentures your pimp had to pay for because your last John punched you for accidentally using teeth when you were giving him the five-dollar Mississippi Tongue Twister that happened to be the weekly special you were running at the time, and the butch female cop who’s wearing too much Acqua di Gio for Men aftershave and whose breath smells like canned green beans, M&M’s and Camel Menthol cigarettes has her mouth right next to your ear, which is kind of a turnon, even though you’re not really into bumping uglies with another girl again, plus she’s grinding her teeth and threatening to tell your pimp that you’ve been skimming trick money off the top for the past twelve years to pay for your out of control canned cat food addiction if you don’t hurry the fuck up and point out the eyeballs she KNOWS you saw that night, but no matter how hard you try you can’t point them out because there are five sets of disembodied eyeballs staring at you through the glass, and your memory isn’t that great since you tripped over a stray cat in the alley where you sometimes give quickie discount half ‘n’ halfs and hit your head on the edge of the dumpster that your best friend lives in, so Officer Butchie loses her cool and starts hollering and throwing the used Kleenex at you that she keeps handy for the chronic post-nasal drip she developed from snorting too much blow off the toilet seats in the bathroom at the police academy. Or something. So, just like our friend Sheila the Hooker from Rhode Island, I’m not all that great under pressure, especially if I have a butch female police officer with a hardcore coke habit screaming and throwing Kleenex at me.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Early adolescence. So, from the time I was maybe eleven or twelve, I had a best friend. His name is Josh. I use him in the present tense because he is still a part of my life. He grew up just four houses away from me, was a year older and we were interested in a lot of the same things. Josh and I spent almost every day together. After school, on the weekends; we even took Josh along on family vacations with us sometimes. He was like a member of the family. By the time I was fourteen, and realizing that I might be *gasp!* gay…I felt like he was the only person in the whole world I trusted enough to tell. I sat him down one Friday evening when he was sleeping over, and told him the things I was feeling. He sat calmly and listened to me and told me he was my friend no matter what. We left it at that. Things didn’t change between us at all; we went along as we always had.

The more I came to terms with being gay, and the more I understood what it meant, the more the guilt started to set in. I attended all the Priesthood Sessions of General Conference with my dad and little brother, and each time, either the prophet or one of the GA’s would bring up how evil it was to be homosexual. I would sit there in abject terror for my soul, knowing this was a part of me that I needed to squash. I needed to stop masturbating and thinking about guys in a sexual way. I needed to pray harder, and study the scriptures more, build my testimony and turn my life around. Above all, I could never, ever tell anyone else.

The first real sexual encounter I had with another guy happened when I was about 15. At that time, my parents had purchased a computer and before long, we were ONLINE! I logged in hours on America Online. I spent a lot of times in the M4M (male for male) chat rooms, and found myself beginning to talk sexually with other guys. So much for turning my life around, eh? The more I tried to suppress the feelings I had, the more they pushed themselves up. I came up with an online “character” for myself. According to my online profile, I was 16, Latino, ripped with muscles and a huge penis. I found naked pictures that looked like my description online and posted them to my profiles. I talked with hundreds and hundreds of guys, mostly older, and always I found an excuse not to meet them.

Over time, I got braver and braver about revealing things about myself online. I made more accurate descriptions of myself, and posted my real age. I took down the fake pictures, but didn’t replace them with any real ones of myself. I began wandering into the local gay chat rooms. As a tender fifteen-year-old, I got a lot of attention from the older guys. They would hit me up with things like, “oooh, jailbait” or, “do your parents know you’re in here” followed by flirting, followed by cybersex, followed by invitations to meet. Rarely did anyone under the age of eighteen contact me. Most of these guys were in their late twenties to early thirties.

Of course, the last thing I wanted to have happen was to meet someone and have the word get out that I was gay. One afternoon, my parents and I had a fight. I have absolutely no recollection what the fight was about, but I do remember being really angry with them, and I wanted to act out. The only way I knew how to do it was to enter my secret online world. That day, a thirty-five-year-old guy named Chase began to talk with me in the Utah M4M chat room. Chase was in town on business from Canada and was staying at a motel off I-15 in Midvale. We chatted for awhile and he eventually asked to meet me. This was it. I was going for it. I told him to meet me at a nearby mall. I convinced my sister to drop me off at the mall to meet some “friends from school” and hang out. She dropped me off, and I hurried to the other side of the mall where I told Chase to pick me up. After standing outside ZCMI for about ten minutes, Chase pulled up. I was terrified.

Chase didn’t look anything like his description. He looked to be in his mid-forties, was probably close to fifty pounds overweight and was smoking a cigarette. I didn’t know what to do. Like a total idiot, I got in the car with him. The thing I remember most about Chase is he had an Aussie accent. I was too nervous to ask him many questions, but as he drove toward his motel, he started rubbing my leg. I vividly recall the smell of his aftershave or cologne. I probably won’t forget that smell until the day I die.

He tried to make small talk with me the entire way, but I was too scared and shy to talk back. We reached the motel and I followed him to his room. Within seconds, he grabbed me and began kissing me. Sad as this is, this is the first time I had ever kissed anyone. I was pretty grossed out. He started taking his clothes off and taking my clothes off and before I knew what the hell was happening, I was performing oral sex on him.

Keep in mind; this is the very first time I had done anything like this with anyone. I was really disgusted. Here I was, not even sixteen years old, in a motel room with a complete stranger who was probably three times my age, doing things that made me sick to my stomach. He was really overweight and this was the very first time I had ever seen an uncircumcised penis. It horrified me (though that horror has since left the building). A lot of what happened that night I have blocked out, but I do remember being down there doing what I was doing and him farting right in the middle of it. I remember gagging and trying not to throw up and all the while trying to make sure he knew I WASN’T gagging and choking back vomit.

After being there about a half hour, he finished. I didn’t. I asked him to take me back to the mall so my sister could pick me up. We didn’t speak on the drive back. I got out of his car and he drove off. That was the last time I saw or spoke to him.

Words cannot describe how awful I felt. I ran back inside the mall, went straight to the bathroom into a stall and began to cry. What had I done? I was unclean. I had a huge, heavy stone sitting in the pit of my stomach and there was nothing I could do about it. I stayed in the bathroom for probably close to a half hour, then dried my eyes and went to a payphone to call my sister to come get me.

I was sitting on a bench outside the mall when my sister pulled up. I got in the car and immediately she could tell something was wrong. I told her I had just gotten in an argument with one of my friends and that I was okay. I didn’t sleep a wink that night. I tossed and turned and tried to scrub my brain; praying silently that I could erase what had happened, and most of all that God would forgive me. I knew I had done something gravely serious, and knew it would come with equally serious consequences.

For the next two weeks, I fastidiously stayed away from the computer and did my best not to think about what I had done. I spent every evening in my room reading the scriptures and praying that Heavenly Father would make it all better and forgive me. After nearly a month, I felt pretty much back to normal, and continued on with my life, but for probably the next year, I could still smell Chase’s acrid cologne in my nostrils.

Time moved on, as it does, and I became increasingly aware that I probably wasn’t going to change. I had prayed. I had cried. I had done everything I knew how to do to make this “affliction” go away, to absolutely no effect. I continued chatting online, but instead of seeking out random sex partners, I went in search of someone to date. I figured if I focused my brain elsewhere, I wouldn’t be tempted to have sex. Plus, after what I had done, the thought of actually repeating the same mistake kept me in line for awhile. At that point, I had no idea sex could be anything other than smelly, disgusting and wrong. I still had a sex drive, sure. I was an adolescent boy in the height of puberty, after all. But after the horrific Chase experience, I was too scared to try again.

Things on the home front weren’t improving much either. In fact, things were getting drastically worse. By this time, my mom was nearly completely bedridden. Like before, years ago, any light she had in her eyes had gone almost dark. I did everything I knew how to do to help her, but being only a teenage boy my resources were limited. Not to mention the set of problems I was creating for myself without anyone knowing.

Carrying around a secret like that is sheer torture. The weight and taste of it gets so bad, there are times you’re sure you won’t be able to continue walking. But whom could I talk to? Who could I tell? My parents were certainly out of the question. The bishop? Hell, no. I began to feel trapped. I started having a whole slew of suicidal thoughts. Evidently, there was no way out of this except to die. I was tired of fighting to keep my family together, trying to help my mom, worrying about my dad, attempting to keep my brother shielded from the hell of what was going on in our house, all the while grappling with what I thought was an affliction. God had obviously abandoned me. My prayers had gone unanswered. All my cries for help fell on deaf ears.

I never attempted suicide, but there came a point when it was all I ever thought about. My mind became obsessed with thoughts of death. I had my funeral all planned out, right down to what music would be played. The only solace I found was knowing that once I got to the ‘other side’, whatever that was, all these problems I had would cease to exist.

As I said earlier, the specific times and dates get a little muddy, but I was in mid-adolescence when my dad had his first heart attack. He was in his mid-forties at the time. His family had a big history of heart disease; his mother passed away of a heart attack in 1984. I remember the ambulance coming to the house and taking my dad away. It was then that I understood how fiercely I avoid conflict. When the ambulance came, I was hiding up in my room, doing my best to convince myself I was completely aloof. And if I’m brutally honest with myself, I think I was a little desensitized by that time. So many shitty things had happened, this one felt like the proverbial drop in the bucket. In fact, it was eerily funny in some way. It was like, “REALLY? HOW MUCH MORE???”.

Even at her lowest, my mom was fantastic in a crisis. Shades of her old self really came shining through. At a time when it seemed she should have been falling apart, she completely came together and stepped up to the plate. She remained calm with the paramedics, with everyone. She went to the hospital with my dad and arranged for my siblings and me to stay with friends for the night.

Thankfully, the heart attack was minor, and there was little damage. It was painfully clear, however, that my dad needed to reduce the stress in his life. But how? His doctor ended up putting him on a fairly high dose of the antidepressant Zoloft. Unlike with my mom, the drug seemed to do wonders for him. He was much calmer, took things more in stride, and my parents seemed to fight less and less.

A year went by, and disaster struck again. My dad had another heart attack. This time, however, my mom was in no way, shape or form equipped to handle it. She completely shut down. She was taken to the hospital alongside my dad. They admitted both of them to the hospital; my dad to the cardiac ICU, and my mom to the psychiatric unit for observation.

My world was falling apart around my ears, or should I say falling even further apart than it already had. My parents were both in the hospital, I had no idea whether they would live or die. By this time, I had pretty much given up on God. Where the fuck had he been? What had all of us done to deserve having this much shit rain down on our heads?

My dad had dodged a bullet yet again, but this time the treatment was more aggressive. They went in and inserted stents into arteries in his heart to keep the flow of blood going and to help get rid of the blockages. This seemed to help for awhile, and my dad’s health improved.

My mom’s health, however, continued deteriorating. She continued seeing the psychiatrist and his wife, who was a licensed clinical psychologist. It seemed everything that could possibly be done was being done, and yet, nothing was working.

Later that same year, my dad had his third heart attack. This time, he was taken via helicopter to the cardiac trauma unit at St. Mark’s hospital. While en route to the hospital, he was given a shot nicknamed the Artery Blaster, which allowed just enough blood to get through the artery to keep him alive. This was the only thing that kept him from dying. The cardiologist delivered the news the next day that my dad would need to undergo a triple bypass surgery. My dad was still only in his mid-forties. What the hell was going on? They scheduled the surgery for the following day. My mom stayed by his side the entire time, and once again was back in survival mode and seemed to be doing quite well.

As we all know, most things aren’t usually what they seem to be. The REAL beginning of the end was just around the corner.

My dad had been in the hospital for two weeks recuperating from the very invasive bypass surgery. The surgery had been successful, but it left my dad completely unable to care for himself. He required round the clock care. My mom was at the hospital with him day and night, providing the emotional support he needed. My sister, brother and I spent quite a bit of time at the hospital as well, both to support my dad, but to support my mom as well. During the weeks he was in the hospital, he was healing faster than expected and seemed to be doing quite well.

Out of nowhere, extended family started swooping in. My dad’s younger sister, Linda, flew in from Texas. My mom’s younger brother Joe flew in from Seattle. There may have been others, but I can’t immediately recall. I believe at this point I was about seventeen.

By that time, my faith in the LDS church was all but nonexistent. I only went to church when I was forced to go, and even then, I usually only stayed for sacrament meeting. On the weekends, I was going out to clubs and staying out far too late. My grades weren’t that great, and school almost seemed like an afterthought with everything that was going on at home. Even graduating didn’t seem all that important to me.

While I was glad to see my extended family that came flying in while my dad was healing, I was beginning to question their motives. Everyone seemed really tense and something odd was floating around in the air. It was almost palpable. I chalked it up to everyone being concerned about my dad. If only that had been the case.

One afternoon, my aunt Linda and uncle Joe asked that I sit down and talk to them. I went into the living room and there they sat along with the bishop of our ward. Before I could even ask what the hell was going on, they launched in and explained that they were planning an intervention on my mom. They had decided that my mom was a drug addict and that her continued use of her prescribed drugs and her behavior were going to end up killing my dad. They were planning to completely blindside my mom. My dad was scheduled to be home from the hospital the next day and that was when they were planning the intervention. They explained in no uncertain terms that I was not to interfere with the intervention, and wasn’t to breathe a word about it to my mom. It was very “you’re either with us or you’re against us, and you sure as shit better be with us or else.” It was explained that my little brother and me were not initially going to be part of this intervention, but if my mom didn’t agree to go to rehab, we would be brought in, because we could be the key to making this a successful endeavor because my brother and me were closest to my mom. Out of all of what was about to transpire, I think this is what has scarred me the most. They were exploiting the close relationship I shared with my mom, and worse, they were going to do the same thing to my little brother.

And where, you might ask, was my older sister while all this was going on? Well, she had conveniently moved out of the house at this point and was living with friends in an apartment. I resented her for a very long time for leaving my brother and me alone to deal with all this, but I know now it was the only way she felt she could survive. As far as my sister is concerned, I have been able to forgive her for her part in what happened. She had helped coordinate this entire intervention. My mom’s older sister Karen, younger brother Joe, both of them recovering alcoholics and AA poster children, along with Bishop Chapman had been the masterminds behind everything that was happening. With all the time that has passed, I realize she was mainly just another pawn in the game

Mandi and my parents had a very rocky relationship after my mom began to get sick. Mandi was a party girl. She was drinking, experimenting with drugs, and having sex. Looking back, I’m sure this was her way of acting out and trying to deal with what was happening. When she was still living at home, she was gone most of the time, at her boyfriend’s house, her friends’ houses, basically anywhere she could be other than home. She loved my mom, I knew that, but she pretty much didn’t want anything to do with her. Mandi blamed her for tearing apart our family and causing all my dad’s health problems, and was pretty vocal about that.

And, while we’re at it, you might be asking, what did my dad think of all this? Later I learned that he agreed to it, because he was too weak to fight. This was quite literally an ambush and given his weak state, he was in a very similar position I was in. This was going to happen and there wasn’t a goddamn thing he could do to stop it.

I was in shock. I couldn’t even begin to process all this information as it was flying at me. The only thing I could think of to say was “What?! You’re doing this the day my dad comes home from the hospital after having MAJOR SURGERY? ARE YOU NUTS? My mom isn’t a drug addict!” But they weren’t listening. The really compassionate response I received when I asked this question was, “Your dad’s arteries are clear from the surgery. He’s just fine.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was going to happen no matter what I did. And really, what could I do? I was one person up against all these people who were on a Mission- determined to do what they were going to do, and God save the people who tried to get in their way. They were armed with the weapons of God.

I told them flat out that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the intervention, and not to ask, but they made it clear that I probably wouldn’t have much of a choice. The phrase they kept using was “do you want your dad to die? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you don’t cooperate. In fact, it’s quite possible you’ll lose both your parents!” They also let me know that if my mom didn’t cooperate and go to rehab, social services would be called and it was very possible my brother and me would be taken in by the state and placed in foster care. I know now that my dad never would have let that happen, but at the time, the threats were very real, and utterly terrifying.

I was told to go to my friend Josh’s house the next afternoon and stay there until I was called. I spent the next day with Josh, as instructed. I told him everything that was about to go down. He was as dumbfounded as I was. He loved my mom almost as much as I did. But like me, he felt helpless. He gave me as much support as he could, and I will never be able to repay him for that. I never would have made it through without him.

It was becoming late in the evening and I still had not received a call. I was on tenterhooks waiting to hear what was happening. Around 9pm, the phone rang. I was surprised to hear my mom’s voice on the other end of the line. She was absolutely livid. Her anger was almost seeping through the phone. She told me to get home right then. The tone in her voice made me really uneasy. When I got home, she began to grill me about how much I knew about the intervention. I told her honestly that I knew about it, but had outright refused to participate in it. She told me she wasn’t going to rehab, and there was nothing they could do to make her go. She was hurt, confused, angry, but eerily calm about the whole thing. We sat and talked for hours, and then she asked me a question that caught me completely off guard. She said, “If I had to leave, would you come with me?” I asked her what she meant by that, and she said she might have to pack up and leave and start a new life somewhere else, and she wanted to know whether I would come with her. I had no idea how to respond. A million thoughts were swirling around in my head. I thought about the gravity of what she was asking me. I thought about never seeing my friends again. I thought about never seeing my dad again. It scared me, but at the same time, I have to admit, I was intrigued by the idea. I also knew I loved my mom and wanted to do anything I could to support her. Somewhere deep down, though, I knew the escape would never happen. She didn’t have the heart to leave behind everything she had always held dear. The idea was born from fear and anger. She was feeling cornered, and wanted to do anything she could to escape.

We talked until the wee hours of the morning, and eventually she fell asleep and I went to bed. I slept fitfully. I knew the battle was only beginning, and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to get through it. I did something that night that I hadn’t done in a long time. I prayed.

The next morning, I woke up convinced for a moment that it had all been a terrible nightmare. But as is often the case, that moment of relief is dashed when reality sets in and you remember what’s actually going on in your life.

My mom was sequestered in her room. She had locked the door and wasn’t allowing anyone in, and wasn’t speaking to anyone who tried to talk to her. I couldn’t really blame her. I think at that point I was just as angry as she was.

No sooner had I gotten showered and dressed, I was informed that our whole family, excluding my mom, were going over to the church to meet with Bishop Chapman in his office. My uncle Joe was coming along with us. I told them again that I wanted absolutely nothing to do with any of this, but again, I was told if I wanted my parents to live, I would go along with it.

We sat in the bishop’s office at the church for hours. Scriptures were read, blessings were given, and tears were shed. The bishop called on God to give my uncle Joe the right words to say to convince my mom that going to rehab was necessary. This nightmare was never going to end. At this point, I was too tired to fight them. I didn’t have anything left inside me to give. I felt a lot like I believe my dad felt; just too emotionally and physically drained to argue. I sat quietly, listening to what was being said, numb and barely hearing a word.

Another intervention was being planned. The bishop in all his infinite wisdom was convinced that this time it would work because he had two secret weapons: my brother and me. He knew my mom would listen to us, and if we said the right words, she would agree to go to treatment. We were told what we should say: if she didn’t go, we would be taken away from my mom and not allowed to see her. We were told to tell her explicitly that she was destroying our family and killing my dad. If she loved us, she would agree to go.

I would be lying if I said I remembered much about the first intervention I took part in. I can’t even tell you where it took place. One thing I remember is feeling very angry that I was being coerced to participate in something that was destroying my family. My heart was breaking and there was nowhere I could turn for solace. The bishop was right: the words were spoken, words I didn’t believe. Lies and sentences I knew were breaking my mom’s already fragile spirit. Someday I hope I will be able to forgive myself for speaking those hateful words. I felt like a puppet, being manipulated and controlled by Joe and Bishop Chapman. Eventually, my mom agreed to go to a 28-day inpatient treatment facility just south of Salt Lake City. Everyone was thrilled. Everyone but me. I looked into my mom’s eyes and I could literally see her heart breaking. I had never seen that kind of pain in her face, even through all the horrific panic attacks and deep depression I never saw her that broken. Broken, but resigned to what was happening to her. She, too, was too exhausted to fight anymore.

The next day, she was checked into the treatment facility. It was done rather unceremoniously, as was the case with much of her previous medical treatment. The only sense of relief I felt was knowing that this part of the ordeal was over. I was so drained, and spent the next few days walking around in a stupor. I was emotionally numb, but even through the numbness, I was still able to feel the pain.

The next few days were eerily quiet. The atmosphere was very subdued, but an odd electricity had also impregnated the air in our house. At the time, I thought I was just being paranoid, given all the weird shit that had come down. I learned then never to give in to a false sense of security. No matter how bad things are, I was given a hard lesson that things can, and usually do get a hell of a lot worse.

Over the years my mom was sick, she became really lonely. A lot of the depression stemmed from that, I think. People she thought were her friends had abandoned her. She couldn’t get her brothers and sisters to return her phone calls. My sister was difficult to reach. My dad was at the end of his ropes and just didn’t know what to do for her anymore; not for a lack of wanting or trying, he just didn’t know how else to be there for her.

To pass a lot of the time, my mom discovered QVC, one of the many home shopping channels on cable TV. She watched it constantly, day and night. She told me once that just hearing the presenters talk made her feel less lonely. To this very day, thinking of that just breaks my heart. Naturally though, the watching turned to buying. She began collecting porcelain dolls. They arrived on our doorstep by the dozens. Eventually we had hundreds of these dolls all over the house; some were never even taken out of the boxes. She said that knowing they were going to arrive gave her something to look forward to; a little ray of sunshine in her bleak world.

I understand now how unhealthy the obsession with the dolls was, but I also understand the reason behind it. She wanted so badly to give her life purpose and meaning, and this was one way she found that she could do it. The physical and mental limitations that had taken over her body prevented her from doing much of anything else.

I remember frequently having long conversations with my mom. She was so sad because the state she was in was completely opposite of how she’d always been. A woman that was so vibrant, energetic and full of life had been reduced to a lonely woman who rarely left her room, was too scared to be around people and whose life had become completely devoid of happiness. She cried so often because she thought of herself as being a terrible mother. There were so many things she wanted to accomplish and do, but simply couldn’t. All the facets of her former self were slipping away from her more and more with each passing day.

Witnessing her deterioration was one of the most painful things I’ve ever been through. I felt so completely helpless because there was nothing that could be done for her. Medically, everything had been tried, short of committing her to a mental institution, which she sometimes begged for. Over the years, she spent several voluntary stints at the psych unit at the University of Utah hospital. As painful as it was for her, it was the only way she could think of to get away from the house and rest. Above that, she knew being away would ease the stress on our family and more importantly, give my dad a little downtime. These periods often gave her a little more hope, but that never lasted long.

Before long, the house became neglected. My dad was in absolutely no shape to be able to keep up with it by himself, even with our help, the task was so overwhelming, we kind of threw our hands up. The house became cluttered and dirty. All of us knew it was an issue, but we hadn’t the slightest idea how to go about dealing with it.

The house itself became a catalyst in the weeks and months that followed. The time was quickly coming for my mom to return home from treatment. As I said earlier, there was an odd feeling in the air, a feeling that none of this was even close to being over with. Just a few days before my mom’s scheduled release, we were once again summoned to the bishop’s office. There, under the unassuming smile of Jesus in a traditional LDS painting that was hanging on the wall above the bishop’s desk, my nightmare began again. My mom wasn’t coming home from treatment, at least, they were going to make damn sure she didn’t come home anytime soon.

There was to be yet another intervention. Bishop Chapman, Joe and Karen, my aunt, had decided that my mom needed more treatment, but they didn’t want her at a facility in Utah. My aunt Karen worked closely with a rehab facility just outside Spokane, Washington called Sundown. This is where they were going to send my mom. It was a 90-day inpatient program, with only limited contact with the outside world.

Bishop Chapman once again told us that in order to make this work, my brother and I would need to use the close relationship we had with my mom to coerce her into going. This time, he told us we would need to tell her that we didn’t want to have a relationship with her unless she agreed to go.

The whole thing was like some déjà vu horror. I had lived all this just three short weeks before. Only this time, they were pulling out all the stops. If I didn’t do what they asked, not only was my dad going to die, but I would most likely never be allowed to see my mother again. These threats weren’t veiled, either. This was going to happen unless we did and said everything we were told.

Emotional manipulation and extortion should be punishable by law, especially when it involves kids. As helpless and scared as I felt, I can only begin to imagine how my brother was feeling. He was only fourteen at the time all this was going down, and had a far more fragile heart than me. I could see the pain and terror on his face, and I knew he felt just as trapped as I did.

The plan, as it was explained to us, was to go to the treatment center in Salt Lake City with the pretense of a “pre-release family counseling session.” We, the family, would be in a room with my mom, a counselor and Bishop Chapman. Once again, we were going to blindside my mom, just when she was becoming hopeful that she was on her way home.

The next evening, we arrived at the treatment center. I was quite literally sick to my stomach. I had only seen my mom once since she had entered treatment, as they felt that her case, family contact would hinder her treatment. I missed her so much, and the last thing I wanted to do was see her under circumstances such as this one. We waited in the lobby for quite some time, and the bishop continued “coaching” my brother and me on what we were to say. I only half listened. I hated this man so bad. He had taken this whole situation and just run with it. It began in the family, starting with my aunt and uncle, but now, Chapman was running the show. I could feel the sense of smugness and what he thought was power radiating off his skin. I could barely look at him. He had this mock look of concern on his face, but it was very easy to see through it. Just his presence there made me so angry I could barely see clearly.

Eventually, the counselor/interventionist came out and escorted us into a small conference room. She gave us the lowdown on how this would all happen, and reiterated the things we needed to say to her. She also said my mom would most likely become very agitated and upset (duh), and this would probably be one of the most difficult interventions she, the counselor, had ever been a part of. Even she seemed hesitant about doing this. I think she knew my mom really had no business being in treatment at all, let alone being shipped off to another facility a thousand miles away. After about twenty minutes, she informed us that she was going to bring my mom into the room.

My mom came into the room a few short minutes later. She saw us all sitting there and began to cry. She rushed over and hugged us, and looked terrified to let go, for fear we might all slip away. The look on her face crushed the little bit of my heart that was still intact. How could I possibly break her heart again? Every cell in my body was screaming at me to get the hell out of there. I knew there was no way this would end well. I couldn’t stand the prospect of destroying my mom’s spirit any more than it had already been destroyed. Yet again, I was left with nothing to do, nowhere to go, and no one to turn to. Everything seemed to move in slow motion. I didn’t want the moment to come, but I couldn’t wait to get it over with. The longer I stayed in this “happy” moment, the more I knew how much she would be destroyed. My heart felt like it was leaking into my shoes.

The counselor said she wanted to start the meeting with my sister. My sister stood up and began a tirade. She let my mom know why we were there, and demanded that she, my mom, stop being selfish and go to Sundown. My mom’s face blanched and turned to stone. I couldn’t look her in the eye. She immediately said there was no way in hell she was going. My sister started yelling at her. “YOU’RE KILLING MY DAD, YOU SELFISH BITCH! CAN’T YOU SEE YOU’RE RUINING OUR LIVES????”

My mom stood up and stormed toward the door, but it had been locked from the outside. She crumbled to the floor and began to sob. The counselor motioned to me to go talk to her. Everything I had been “coached” to say went right out the window. I knelt on the floor next to her, held her and told her I loved her, and would love her whether she went to Sundown or not, and that I would always be there for her, and no one could ever take that away. I told her though, that all of this shit that was going on would never stop unless she went. That, I knew was true. The only reason I wanted her to go is I knew this would keep happening over and over again, and I couldn’t take doing this again. I looked right in her eyes. She looked like a child sitting there on the floor, eyes filled with fear and confusion. I wished more than anything that I could just magically take her away from this place and make everything alright for her. She looked so trapped and helpless. I think she knew there really wasn’t any way out of this. After what seemed like an eternity, somehow, someway, she agreed to go to Sundown.

I had said this so many times before, but this time I meant it. I couldn’t take anymore. I had absolutely nothing left. I was a shell. Everything I’d ever known had been pulled out from under me. Emotionally, I felt nothing. Physically, I was so tired I could barely stand. Mentally, I felt like my entire personality had fallen out one of my ears, and it would take me a lifetime to find it again.

If it was at all possible, Bishop Chapman looked even more smug and pleased with himself. He had, after all, used his Priesthood Power to degrade an already fragile woman into doing his bidding. To this day, I have no doubt in my mind that his intentions were far from good. This man oozed evil. He smiled the entire way out to the parking lot, embraced us all, got in his car and left.

My mother completed her time at the treatment facility in Utah, then was on a plane to Spokane, Washington to enter treatment at Sundown.

I found myself living under the naïve delusion that during the time my mom was in Washington, our family would be left to recover from the events that had transpired over the past weeks, months and years. You would think by this time, I wouldn’t allow myself to be lulled into this false sense of security about my life. Part of me thinks it was some kind of internal survival instinct; that I had to believe something good was going to come out of all this.

Not much time passed, two or three days maybe, after my mom left for Spokane, and there was still that nagging energy in the air, sort of like those days you have when you wake up and and you’re absolutely positive there’s something wrong. No matter what you do you can never quite put your finger on it? That energy hung around in the air for days. I tried my best to ignore it, but my intuition or whatever you want to call it kicked in and I went to my dad, who had spent most of the last few days in bed, still recuperating from his surgery- something he hadn’t had the opportunity to do much since he was discharged from the hospital. My dad and I spoke for quite awhile about everything that had gone on. After a few minutes, I asked him point blank what was going to happen now. He told me the bishop had met with him, and as a ward service project, a few people were going to come in and help clean our house.

As I mentioned earlier, the house had been neglected for quite some time. It needed to be deep cleaned. To be honest, I was actually looking forward to having a clean house. It had been quite awhile since we’d had that luxury. If I had known what was really about to happen, I would have been down on my knees 24 hours a day with a toothbrush, cleaning the entire house by myself. I would have gladly accepted bruises on my knees and muscles so sore I wouldn’t be able to move, and the cramped hands and the smell of bleach that would never quite come off my skin no matter how many showers I took. I would have even gladly cleaned the house with my tongue.

It began innocently enough. Four or five members of the relief society showed up at our door armed with cleaning products and buckets, and genuinely kind smiles on their faces. These women I truly don’t place any blame on for what happened. The women with the cleaning arsenal were the closest people to friends that my mom had. They began in the kitchen, and really CLEANED. Things were pulled out of the kitchen cupboards and the insides of the cupboards were washed. The kitchen was really getting CLEAN. It started smelling really good, and I actually began to look forward to coming home.

But then, more people started showing up to ‘help’. It had been decided by the bishop that in order to pay the bill for my mom’s rehabilitation, a yard sale needed to be put together with any excess things in the house that would fetch a price. Then the real fun began. The house was swarming with people, everyone from the entire Elders Quorum, and the entire Relief Society. Kids, teenagers, practically the entire ward began to descend on our house.

Rooms began to be torn apart. Every closet was opened and emptied. Every box, every container, every drawer was pillaged. Family heirlooms were taken. Our entire lives, beginning to end, were laid bare for the entire ward to see. These people were quite literally airing our dirty laundry out all over the neighborhood. I remember one day, coming home from being someplace, and found three men from the Elders Quorum in my bedroom, going through my closet and the drawers of my bureau. I. Freaked. Out. I began screaming and yelling at them to get the fuck out of my room. I literally pushed them out the door, then moved my bureau in front of it and barricaded myself in. I had finally reached my boiling point. I felt something in my brain snap and I began tearing apart my bedroom. I had never felt that kind of rage before. I had never let something take over my body that way. All the pain, humiliation, coercion, manipulation all came flooding back, hitting me like a huge wave crashing into a rock on the shore. So this was what it felt like to be crazy.

In reality, I know it’s kind of silly to be so protective of STUFF. Physical things. Possessions. Some of which to this day I have no idea why I would want to keep. But it wasn’t just stuff in my mind at that time. These were things that had been a part of my life. Evidence of the past. Proof that certain events had really taken place.

And it wasn’t just the stuff. It was the feeling of violation, of losing every shred of privacy our family ever had. Of feeling like this was something all these people in our ward had just been waiting on for years, the chance to dig in and get to the fleshy center of our family. To figure out What We Were All About. To uncover every dirty little secret and expose it. Then, they might Finally Understand Us.

The pillaging continued for weeks. More than a few of the ladies from the Relief Society, a majority of the women that had first come in and began to clean, began to be completely disgusted with what was going on. They saw people pocketing things they found that they wanted to keep. They saw people picking and choosing things that would be in the Yard Sale, but deftly hidden away and priced so low so they themselves could get their hands on it.

The aforementioned women stopped coming to the house. They couldn’t take it anymore than I could. Down to the deepest parts of my soul, I know this small group of women genuinely cared for my mom and our entire family, and believed what they were doing was the right thing. For that, I will always hold a special place in my heart for them. Particularly for a woman I’ll call Debbie, who grabbed the jewelry box full of my Tutu’s jewelry, some of which was priceless, and kept it at her house until my mom’s return. She didn’t want The Mob stealing or selling it. Thank you, Debbie.

After the dust settled, the house cleared, the Yard Sale went down, and things began to get quiet again, I began to question myself. There are so many things I wish I had said and done. I wished more than anything that I hadn’t contributed to putting my mom into rehab, when I knew from the bottom of my heart that she didn’t belong there. I said that to several people but I was told I was in denial and did nothing my whole life but be codependent. Was there a real way to fight back? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever know.

For the rest of my life, I will never forget the day my mom came home. I was at school the day her flight came in. When I got home and pulled up in front of the house, the next door neighbor’s door opened, and a woman I barely recognized emerged. I hadn’t seen my mom in over three months. Standing there was my mom, sixty pounds lighter, with glowing hair, and a smile on her face. She saw me, and ran toward me. The image of her running toward me will be burned into my memory long after I’m gone from this life. It is one of the moments in my life that made me realize how much I loved this woman. I hadn’t seen my mom run like that since I was a small child and she would play with me on the grass of our backyard, the sun glinting off her hair, and the million dollar smile she used to have before the sickness took its toll on her body.

She ran toward me and scooped me up in her arms and held me for a very long time. All these years later, I can still feel her arms around me.

*********************

Over the next year, I grew a lot, both mentally and emotionally. After all that had happened involving the members of the ward in my neighborhood, I understood that this behavior that I had seen was not divinely inspired. These people were selfish, greedy and only cared about their own agenda. As a result of this, and finally coming to terms with being gay, I realized the Mormon church had absolutely no place in my life. I stopped going to church. I still didn’t have the courage to tell my family about my sexuality.

I was raised pretty liberally. My parents were never the so-called ‘Nazi-Mormons’. Because most of my extended family was very diverse and most of them weren’t active in the Mormon church, my parents taught us to accept people as they were. I have always felt lucky for that. My cousin came out as a lesbian years before I even hit puberty, and there was never any question about the fact that we needed to love her and be a part of her life. My mom was a firm believer in the importance of family, and keeping ties with everyone, no matter what.

Still, even knowing that, there was still so much fear in letting them know the true me. Part of that I think is that despite how much I had learned, I still didn’t know who I was. I was dating, having sex, sowing my oats as it were. But something deep down inside me was screaming to get out.

After my mom came home, her anxiety attacks increased tenfold. Since there was no medication in her system anymore to help regulate her mood, the attacks went unchecked. I think after awhile, everyone, including my aunt and uncle, realized they had made a big mistake sending my mom to rehab. Even while she was in Sundown, the staff and counselors there told her they really had no idea why she was there. She didn’t abuse her medication, she wasn’t a junkie…she was a woman with a disorder as real as cancer, and it wasn’t being treated properly.

More doctors, more treatments. Medicine had advanced somewhat over the years to where more was known about how to treat anxiety disorder. Finally, it appeared that there was a combination of medication that seemed to start working. Things actually began to calm down a bit around the house.

I graduated from high school in June of 1998. I had received a full-tuition scholarship to Southern Utah University for Opera and Vocal Performance. Before my sophomore year in high school, and I was working with my parents to decide which classes to take, my dad literally dared me to take Men’s Choir as one of my arts electives. I had never really thought about singing before. I was a pianist. But, since there wasn’t any piano elective taught at my high school, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try my hand, or my voice, at singing.

I took to singing like the proverbial duck to the proverbial water. I had found another musical escape I could pour my energy and concentration into. Through the years of high school, choir became my life, my sanctuary, something I could use to balance everything else that was going on at home.

I progressed through the more elite choirs in high school and won several vocal competitions. I felt like I had finally found my niche.

In September of 1998, I moved to Cedar City, Utah to attend school. I was on my own for the very first time in my life. What should have been an opportunity for me to spread my wings and figure out more about myself became an opportunity for me to become friends with alcohol. You know that old story about self-medicating. I found that drinking made me forget about the pain of the past ten years. It made me feel confident- something I had never felt before in my life.

I don’t think I was ready for the freedom. I abused it. I didn’t go to class very often. I sat in my room and read a lot of books, none of which had anything to do with my classes. All I wanted to do was rest. I was becoming exhausted for absolutely no reason. God knows I wasn’t exerting myself in any sense of the word.

I was driving home nearly every weekend. I worried about my parents. I missed my own bed. I missed the security of my house. I wanted to spend as much time there as possible. After a few weeks, I noticed I was losing weight, and my health was getting worse.

One weekend, I came home and became violently sick. I had a raging fever, a cough that felt like it had originated in the balls of my feet, and my body was wracked with pain. I was vomiting anything I tried to eat. When I began throwing up blood, my parents rushed me to the emergency room.

I was put on IV liquids, and heavy doses of acetaminophen to bring my fever down. Vials of blood were taken. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I couldn’t sleep. There were a whole slew of tests run, and I came up positive for mono.

I had never been so sick in my entire life. It took me nearly twenty minutes to get from my bedroom to the bathroom and back because I had to stop and rest so often.

So, I had to forego my scholarship and move home. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t all that sad about it. I think in my heart that’s what I wanted to do all along. I was sick for about two months, but then began to return to normal.

As my health improved, my attitude started worsening. My parents and I fought constantly about everything. I was so on edge and angry all the time. Any little thing would set me off. I was spending my weekends at Club Bricks in downtown Salt Lake City, looking for men. I found a few, had a few one night stands, but I still hadn’t found anything permanent. I had to keep up living this double life and it was killing me.

At the beginning of 2001, I lost my best friend.

My twentieth year was an interesting one. As the fights between my parents and me began escalating, I knew I needed to be on my own again. A good friend of mine from Wyoming was looking to move to Salt Lake, so I suggested she and I get an apartment together. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to move out of my parents’ house.

We found an apartment in Murray, Utah, about ten miles from downtown Salt Lake. Well, instead of changing the pattern of my life, I continued my love affair with alcohol. Every night was a party. And I never had trouble finding sex either. The job I had at the time gave me plenty of people to choose from, and boy did I ever.

I still wanted to find a steady relationship. Eventually, I met Dan through a friend of mine. Dan was everything I was looking for. He was heart-meltingly handsome, funny, had a good job and his own apartment…and he was smitten with me. We began spending nearly every night together. He worked a swing shift, so we generally spent the entire night drinking, watching movies and talking. Things were so easy with Dan. I fell hard and fast for him. He treated me like a king.

Toward the end of 2000, my mom’s health went into a tailspin. Her asthma had gotten so bad, she was on oxygen 24 hours a day. Walking was almost out of the question. She spent most of her time sleeping on the couch in the family room. My dad was faithfully by her side.

On the afternoon of January 20, I received a phone call from my dad. My mom was in the hospital. She had been watching TV with my dad and my little brother and had abruptly stopped breathing. She fell over on her side, but somehow they were able to get her breathing again. They called 911 and they tool my mom to the hospital. Everyone assumed she had accidentally overdosed (there they went with the drugs again). She was having her stomach pumped and was given a charcoal solution to absorb what was in her stomach.

I got in my car and drove to the hospital. When I arrived in the trauma unit, I could see through the window of the room she was in and she was hysterical. She was sobbing and the nurse kept forcing the charcoal solution down her throat.

I went into the room, and sat by her bed. She held my hand and she just kept saying over and over that she didn’t try to commit suicide, she didn’t try to commit suicide, she didn’t try to commit suicide. I believed her.

They wanted to keep her in the hospital, but she insisted on going home. They released her after one day.

The next two days, she was in and out of consciousness. She would wake up periodically, look at the clock and just say, “it’s been 5:00 three times today already…. what’s going on?” She had stopped making much sense.

Periodically, I would get together with a good friend of mine and just spend the evening singing. It was a good way to blow off steam, and usually we sang at my parents’ house. My mom loved hearing us sing. Sometimes she would come into the room we were singing in, and sit with her eyes closed and just listen. Her favorite song we would sing was “The Rose” by Bette Midler. The lyrics really touched her. I remember each time we would sing it tears would roll down her cheeks.

It had been a very long time since Christine and I had gotten together to sing. Out of the blue after months, she called me and asked if I wanted to get together and sing for old time’s sake. She asked if we could go to my parents’ house. I agreed to meet her there that evening.

We sang for a long time that night. My mom was sleeping on the other side of the wall, but I knew she heard everything. The last song we sang that night was “The Rose”. I had made plans to meet Dan at his apartment after he was off work. As the time rolled around where I needed to leave, I went in and kissed my mom goodnight. She held me for a moment and told me she loved me with all her heart.

I arrived at Dan’s house around midnight. It was the same routine. We drank whiskey and Coke, watched movies, made love and went to sleep.

Early the next morning, there was a fierce banging at Dan’s front door. This wasn’t unusual. Dan frequently had friends drop by unannounced. I got up, put on Dan’s bathrobe and went to answer the door.

Standing there was one of my brother’s best friends. A million thoughts flooded my head. First, no one close to my family knew about Dan, let alone knew where he lived. Second, I thought, oh shit, they’ve found out I’m gay. It’s amazing in hindsight how quickly the brain can move. About a hundred of these similar thoughts passed through in the space of about a second and a half.

Brandon looked grim and serious. He said, “Michael, you need to come home, there’s been a family emergency. Your mom’s dead.”

And there they were. Out in the open. The words I had feared hearing since I was a child. My darkest nightmare was coming true. I began to crumble. As I headed toward the ground, my roommate and good friend Shawntelle rushed in the door. She pushed Brandon aside and crossed the room just in time to catch me.

So many times I have tried to articulate how I felt at that moment. Being that I’m now nearly twenty thousand words into this epistle, I figure it won’t hurt to try one more time.

Time seemed to move in slow motion, but at the same time rushed past me in triple time. Ice and fire swirled around in my brain simultaneously. My veins filled with concrete, and my muscles had turned to liquid. The world stopped moving completely, and I was stuck in that one moment interminably.

The details get a bit fuzzy, but I remember going back into Dan’s bedroom and telling him what had happened. I vaguely remember getting dressed and getting in the car with Shawntelle.

The only thing I remember about the ride from Dan’s apartment to my parents’ house was the song that was playing. In the tape player was the single of the old eighties song, “Electric Blue.” Since it was the only song on the tape, it kept looping and looping, playing and playing. I haven’t listened to that song since that day.

As we turned into the neighborhood where my parents lived, all I remember thinking was, please, God, please don’t let her body still be there, please, please, please, please. As we pulled up to the house, two police cars, a fire engine and an ambulance were parked on the curb in front of the house. I knew her body was still inside.

I still had been unable to cry. I couldn’t feel much of anything. When I walked in the front door, my family was all sitting in the living room right off the foyer. I saw my dad sitting there. When he saw me, he stood up and I ran into his arms. The moment, I mean the fraction of a second it took for my dad’s arms to envelop me, everything snapped back into focus, and my world was color again. It was like dropping an ice cube into a pan of boiling water. I began to sob. My heart broke down to levels of grief I never thought I could feel. My dad just kept saying in my ear, “it’s over. It’s over.”

I held my family and we cried together. The finality of all this came rushing in with the sun through the windows.

The paramedics were still in the other room examining my mom’s body. Any time there is a death at home; the room is automatically labeled a crime scene until law enforcement clears it. Evidently, by the time I got there, they had already been in there with her for nearly an hour.

My dad was making phone calls to friends and family, letting them know what had happened.

Shawntelle and I went outside to have a cigarette. For some reason I can’t explain, I was terrified to go outside. The sky literally felt heavy. I was afraid to look up for fear of what I might see. I expected it to come raining down on my head like Chicken Little. I remember finally mustering up the courage to look up, and just like a child, I imagined I could see teeny tiny people walking around in the clouds. Silly, but I remember doing that. Shawntelle and I sat on the back porch, smoking and not really talking. I looked up and she had tears streaming down her face. She looked helpless. We didn’t talk the entire time we were outside.

We went back inside, and what I saw made my blood boil. The neighbor, Robyn (who many of you are familiar with from the letter I wrote to her that I posted here a couple times) had rushed down the street to see what all the hubbub was about. That woman, who was one of the worst offenders in the Yard Sale Debacle, the woman who had done nothing but spread acidic gossip about my family all over the ward for years, was standing in the foyer and hugging my little brother. I wish to Christ I had said something. But, being my typical non-confrontational self, all I could do was grit my teeth and bite my tongue. My dad eventually asked her to leave.

The day wore on. More phone calls, more visits. The casseroles and cold cuts started rolling in. The last thing I could do was eat. It was all I could do to keep my empty, acidic stomach from dancing the conga inside my body.

That evening the cavalcade of family began coming in from out of town, beginning with my favorite aunt, my mom’s closest sister, Suzanne. Suzanne had been a rock for our family as long as I could remember. She supported my mom unconditionally through everything that had happened. She was like a second mother to me and my brother and sister.

I went to the airport with my sister and brother to pick her up. She came off the plane and when she saw us, broke into tears. She hugged us all and just said, “we’ll get through this together.” And I knew she meant it.

Since there was still so much financial turmoil swirling around, my dad was feeling pretty scared about how he was going to pay for my mom’s funeral services. Because both he and my mom had had so many significant medical problems in the last few years, my dad had a lot of trouble finding an insurance company that would give them coverage they could afford. The housing market was still in a pretty big slump, so there still wasn’t much money coming in. To supplement his income, and to be able to have insurance, my dad took a part-time job working customer service for Discover Card. He worked an early morning shift, then came home and did drafting out of the home office. At the time my mom died, he had only been working for Discover Card about three weeks. He hadn’t even had a chance to elect his medical benefits.

Now, whether or not you believe in God, or fate, the Universe, or some other divine presence that has the ability to intervene in your life, one of the many phone calls that came in the day my mom died made me very aware that the news that was delivered on that call could in no way be coincidence. We were all sitting in the living room. People were coming and going, offering their condolences. The phone was ringing off the hook most of the day. About two hours after I arrived at the house, the phone rang again. My dad answered it and within about 30 seconds, his eyes widened and he burst into tears. We were all watching him intently, and when he hung up the phone, he was just looking around in bewilderment.

The phone call my dad received was from the Human Resources coordinator at Discover Card. Despite the fact that he hadn’t yet elected company benefits, Discover Card was issuing a retro life insurance policy for my mom in the amount of $50,000. On top of that, they were cu