I got an email today asking me to speak at my friend Chuck’s memorial service. I’m trying to figure out what to say, and I need to vent, so the Dope is elected. If you prefer to skip grieving threads, skip this one. And forgive me if the title is offensive; truly, I don’t intend it to be. But “old fag” is how my friend always referred to himself, so it seems appropriate.
Chuck was a great guy in more ways than I can possibly tell you. Part of me blanches at the thought of even making the attempt here, much less in front of people who loved him.
I guess I should start with why I loved him so much. He was a teacher of mine, but the truest impact he had on me was long after my high school days. You see, midway through my college career I knocked a girl up. For the first couple of years of my son’s life, I didn’t want to take responsibility for him. I wanted to keep going the way I was going, to have fun and to fuck endless girls whose names I didn’t know. Chuck slapped some sense into me. Chuck forced me to see that the time for being a jackass was over; now was the time to be a man, and if I didn’t step up to the plate then, then nothing else I ever did would ever be worth a damn, because I wouldn’t be worth a damn. He told me that claiming to love my son while not supporting him was worth precisely nothing. So, grudgingly, but with Chuck’s support and occasional kick in my ass, I started doing what I needed to do. And I discovered something that Chuck already knew, that he was trying to teach me – that taking responsibility would change me, would make me better, would make me grow, and that rather than resent my son I would love him more for helping me grow up.
When my son got sick Chuck was there for me. He kept me from losing it when my son got sicker, when his mother told me how much she hated me for supplying the bad genes that were killing him, when I blamed myself for wasting so much time early in his life. And when my son died, Chuck did so much I cannot possibly describe it in words that come close to doing it justice. The closest I can come is to swipe a line from Tolkien, when Aragorn said that the Fellowship would have to find a way to live without hope. That’s what Chuck did for me: he helped me live without hope, until hope made its way back in.
I wasn’t the only person whose life Chuck touched. I may not even be the life he touched most. He was a gay teacher in the South who, although closeted, found a way to bring comfort and hope to his gay students. I have no doubt that his gentle example, his humor, his attention, and his love kept some of my classmates and many more of his students I don’t know from committing suicide. After he retired he was a resource for every old lady in his neighborhood; whenever I saw him he was on his way to fix someone’s fence or car or pipes or something else. He had barely enough money to see him through life, but he always had found a way to help out people who were in worse financial straits. When one of our church members, a homeless fellow, didn’t show up for service and the attendant free meals two weeks in a row, he got me and several others of the parishioners to join him in prowling the streets until we found him (he’d been injured in a fight in an alley) and got him the medical help he needed.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen Chuck. I’ve been busy, and broke, and I didn’t want to call him until I was on my feet again, so he’d be proud of me when he saw me again. I’ve been doing better financially, and I’d been thinking about paying him a call, but I foolishly put it off, for no reason I can call anything but stupid. I missed my chance to say goodbye to him, and more than anything else that is what I regret.
The literal meaning of the word “angel,” I am told is “messenger.” An angel is a messenger from God, one who does God’s work on Earth, whether in announcing God’s will or interceding in human lives. I don’t believe in magic or miracles, but I believe in angels, because I knew one. His name was Chuck, and he was my favorite old fag.
