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Jerome Atputhasingam
Staff Writer

An older man sitting next to me on BART was going through a notebook filled with photographs that were scotch taped on. I marveled at how these photographs were spaced so precisely as though these pictures required a particular space to live and breathe and have its being. The older man looked at each picture with a kind intensity that I have never seen before. It was as if he went through each minute pixel, trying to elucidate meaning which was blind to my naked eye.

After a few minutes, it dawned on me that I had been peering over his shoulder for the past five minutes. He didn't seem to mind my obvious nosiness, but I decided it was probably a better idea to mind my business. As I got out my notes to read, the BART came to a sudden halt, causing the older man's notebook to fall on my feet. The old man gasped and jumped up on his feet, as a flash of adrenaline rushed through his body.

I picked up notebook quickly. "This must be very important to you," I said, returning it back.

He had a sigh of relief, as he quickly grabbed the notebook from me. "It does," he replied returning to his seat. "It holds my most valuable memories".

"I am glad you have saved these photographs," I added, remembering how much I longed for photographs of my family who were lost in the Sri Lankan civil war. I often wondered what pictures of my brothers growing up, or of my parents getting married, or of my grandparents raising a family could teach me about myself. Pictures seem magical, able to transport our conscience to things visibly and invisibly seen, allowing us to catch a glimpse of history.

"They are all I have," the man on BART said in response. "My partner of forty years passed away a month ago, and these pictures are the only things that make me feel like he is still here with me." As his words echoed through me, I searched, unsuccessfully, for what to say next. He took my silence as a welcoming inquiry into his personal life.

He opened the notebook to the first page, where two teenage boys were standing in front of a basketball court. He pointed to the tall, African-American boy with beautiful thick curly hair. "That's Rob," the old man said gushingly as a wide smile graced his face, as if he had just experienced a sense of unexpected joy. I couldn't help but join in and as we smiled, we left the realm of strangers and jumped into the warmth of a new friendship.

He began flipping the page over, stopping at a picture of Rob cleaning the steeple of a church. He told me about how they had met at church. "The church at the time was barely getting used to the idea of interracial marriage, so the idea of two boys loving each other was not even a possibility," he said shaking his head. "But somehow amidst all the preaching about love, we began to experience an emotion that freed us both."

"I remember us sneaking out of youth groups and go get ice cream. Rob knew how much I loved my ice cream. Sometimes, he would ask me to meet him in the park next to my house and I would rush over there to find him sitting under a tree with a gallon of ice cream for me. That's when I knew he was someone worth sticking around with." The man laughed, turning another page, pointing to the two of them, now in their mid-twenties, inside a cramped bedroom. "In college, we were roommates. That was scandalous for a lot of our classmates. People asked me why in the world I, by my own will, would want to live with a colored man. I wanted to tell them because I loved him, but I knew that would create more trouble than anything. But we loved each other under the disguise of roommates for the next three years, only to be separated after graduation." He paused to catch his breath.

"Rob's parents got sick and so he returned home to take care of them. I was still three hours away, getting my masters. The distance made our relationship difficult. We grew apart during the year he spent nurturing his parents. I finished my masters and returned home as soon as I could only to find Rob in a severe depression. He lost both his mother and father within the same year, which made it only worse. But we somehow got through those years, healing each other through our words, our touch, and our presence."

The man turned a couple of pages over. The two young men had become fully grown in these set of pictures. The man was particular fond a picture of both of them on a merry-go-round. He laughed as he ran his fingers through the picture. "Our relationship was so childish in many ways. We continued to do kid things even when we got grey hair. We would go to fairs or children's parks and play on slides and swings. It allowed for a great sense of awe and wonder in the world and in each other."

However, that sense of awe was quickly broken by the next photograph of Rob on a hospital bed. He had lost about a third of his weight and all of his curly black hair. The old man told me about how this picture was the hardest one for him to look at. "When I first saw this picture of Rob after I had it printed, I cried for three days. I had told myself he was going to get better from cancer and I had made myself believe that he still looked fairly healthy. But when I saw this picture, I knew I was losing him. I didn't know what to do," the sadness in his voice was palpable almost as if he was reliving the exact moment reality hit, as his hope escaped without a proper good bye.

The last photograph in the notebook was that of both of them, both wearing a hospital gown, both forcing a smile. They looked scared, not for themselves, but for each other. "He died three months after this picture was taken. The last couple of months were the hardest. I wanted to tell him everything he had meant to me, but it is difficult to condense forty years of life into nine weeks."

"How have you been dealing with his death?" I asked, after couple of minutes of silence in which I tried to process, to the best of my ability, the depth of this man's story.

"The good memories definitely help. I think about how every morning, when his alarm went off, Rob would roll over in bed, and kiss me on the forehead. He thought I was asleep, and on some days I was, but most days, I would wait for his kiss, before I got up to start my day. It's hard to know that won't happen again, " the man paused to wipe the tears which had begun to fall gently over his sacred pictures.

"Even little things have become hard," he continued, "I can't bring myself to clean Rob's closet, because I'm afraid I will forget how he smelled. I can't even vacuum our house because every dust ball seems to contain a memory of us. "

Recognizing something in his periphery, the man quickly closed his notebook. "I am getting off on the next stop." I had forgotten we were riding the BART together. His words were so authentic, so real with emotion that it had paused my sense of time. I looked once more at his notebook as he carefully put it back into his bag.

I didn't quite know how to say good-bye, so I sat in silence. We both sat in silence until the BART came to a slow stop. And as he stood up to leave, he whispered under his breath, almost as if he was talking to himself, "His love liberated me. Real love liberates. I am learning that as I am grieving."

I thought about the liberating power of love over and over again that day and the more I thought about it, the more I began to understand. Love, of all forms, has this innate ability to make us free. Love allows us to honor what is ultimately true about our existence. And in doing so, it gives us the strength to let go, knowing that we too must liberate the people whose love has liberated us.

Meeting this absolute stranger liberated me in more ways that he would ever know. He was the first gay man I met who spoke about love with such vulnerability. As a queer man of color, I know this love story has become part of my own life story, because at its core it liberates the lover in my humanness.

Jerome Atputhasingam is a first-year medical student.

 

This article appeared in the February 9, 2012 issue of Synapse.