by Studs Terkel
She died May 9th, 1984. I had just turned nineteen—I was a freshman at Stanford then. I had come back from a chemistry exam and there was a note on the door: CALL HOME. THERE’S AN EMERGENCY. My uncle said that she had died. It was like the bottom had fallen out. My whole life . . .
Early memories of her? Oh, so many. I’d go to Malcolm X College with her. She was taking courses. [Laughs] I would sit in the back of the classroom while the class was going on, and I would doodle and draw. She’d take me along everywhere—’cause my mom was working. We had a kitchen table, and she’d read the paper while I was doing my homework. Everything was done at the kitchen table.
When I went to St. Ignatius,* my life really changed. I became very, very busy. [Sighs] I was headed out the door for my final exams as a freshman when my grandmother had a heart attack. I wanted to see her, but I had to go to school. I had to take those exams. It was what she wanted.
She stopped smoking, stopped drinking, she retired. She was slowing down. She was just living to see her dream come true in me.
When I went to Stanford, she wrote me pretty much every week. She would send me all sorts of clippings from Chicago newspapers, just so I’d feel at home. She sent me stuff pretty much every week.
My birthday was May 6th. I was taking my midterm exams that day. She had another heart attack, probably on my birthday—but they didn’t call me and tell me she had died until the 9th. I have a feeling that in her last moments—she knew I was taking those exams—she told them not to call me. She was seventy-four.
I flew back . . . I can’t describe my ache. It hurt so badly. It was two years before I got over it. I finished out the school year, but I was never the same after that.
I felt like I was wandering. I felt like I was out in the wilderness by myself. I didn’t feel connected. I didn’t feel like I belonged anyplace. I just plugged through Stanford as best I could. It was not a good time. Even academically—I didn’t perform well. But it was good enough. By the time I was a senior, I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to change the world in that way, one person at a time. After five years at the UCLA Medical School, I knew what I wanted to do with my life—be a neurosurgeon.
My experience at the medical school was difficult. I really believe I was expected to fail, not to succeed. There were about thirty African-Americans in the class of two hundred. The attitude of the faculty as well as some of the students was so clear to me. But I was thinking about my grandmother all the time. I had to make it.
Since my grandmother died at seventy-four and I’m thirty-five, I feel that half of my life may be over. But something else is beginning. My marriage is beginning. My career is beginning, my wife is a doctor, too.
The grief about my grandmother never goes away, but you find a way to put it in a place where you see the good things. She’s gone, but somehow, some way, I know she plays a role. There’s this connectedness, this level of understanding, the feeling tone that my grandmother told you about years and years ago. And I was in the room when she said it. [Chuckles]
She had a feeling for me, wanting me to live out a life that no one in our family ever lived before. And I believe she still plays a role in what I do, where I go, how I do things. She’s very much alive in my memories: the way I see and remember, the way I try to conduct my life. Hopefully, one day I’ll have a son or a daughter and teach him everything from medicine to changing oil to cutting the grass.
I think it also helps me as a neurosurgeon. I’ve had to tell people their loved ones are no longer here, even though they’re looking at this shell of a human being. The person they knew, the mind they knew, is no longer here. Once you say that, people understand. And they may be comforted, I don’t know . . .
I look at the nurse’s aides who work in the hospital, and I remember a long time ago when my grandmother was one of these people. I speak to them. I know their names. I see my grandmother, and I see the struggles that these particular women—most of whom are black, single, with children, trying to raise their families—are trying to provide. I see the path that they’re on, because I’m at the other end of the path: I know where they’re trying to go.
And when they bring their little sons or daughters to the hospital, I remember being brought to the hospital by my grandmother to see the hospital and the patients and the physicians.
I see this hospital aide in another family, who is just as important to her child as my grandmother was to me. Someone who has the same dreams for their children and grandchildren and would do anything to set their souls free.
*She was “Lucy Jefferson” in Division Street: America (New York: Pantheon, 1967).
*A Chicago Catholic school celebrated for its high scholastic standards. He was a scholarship student.
Epilogue
Kathy Fagan and Linda Gagnon
They are lesbian mothers. Each has an eighteen-year-old son. They are visiting Chicago because Linda’s son is about to enter Elmhurst College, located in a western suburb. They are celebrating the occasion. We are in my kitchen. It is a dialogue. Each listens intently and with obvious affection as the other speaks. Kathy, the upper-middle-class daughter of a Cleveland salesman, is the first to speak.
I AM FORTY YEARS OLD, a physician. I did my residency at Cook County Hospital. That was an exciting time—there was a lot happening. I met Ron Sable there. He was a gay doctor who was quite active politically. He was outspoken on many matters—civil rights, peace, and gay rights, of course. He ran for alderman and almost won. I discovered I was gay at medical school. It didn’t click until then. Cook County was a wonderful training ground for many gay doctors. It was at that time that I decided I wanted a child. I was looking for someone to donate sperm.
It was unusual then. This was 1981. I began talking with friends and looking for someone who would be willing to be a sperm donor. This is the whole turkey-baster concept. You obviously need sperm and you need an egg. The joke was that a gay woman would get a turkey baster and have the sperm in the turkey baster and insert it. So first I needed to find somebody who would be willing to do this. I just started asking around, and what was wondrous was that Ron was very open to the idea of donating sperm. He felt strongly that lesbians should be able to have children. The one way he could support that idea was to donate his sperm. So Ron’s sperm and my egg made a child. He’s a boy, now eighteen years old. He’s a neat guy. His name’s John Gabriel Fagan. He’s entered college—he’s at Northeastern in Boston, studying computer engineering.
We continued to live in Chicago for a couple of years before I moved back to Cleveland with John. Ron came to visit us in Cleveland a few times during the course of John’s growing up, so he came to know Ron as his dad. They didn’t spend a lot of time together. I think Ron wasn’t that used to being around kids.
Ron died of AIDS in December of 1993—seven years ago. John was eleven. There was a celebration of Ron’s life. It was a tribute to him. His lover was there, his mother, his sister. Hundreds of us were there. We came together: Linda, her son, John, and myself.
Linda and I had started to know about each other a few years before that, through Ron. He told me Linda had a son of his sperm, too. We talked a little bit and wrote some letters to each other. Linda and Matt were living in Florida. I actually met Linda for the first time in April of 1993.
[Linda picks up the story.] I was born in western Massachusetts, Northampton, in 1950. I have five brothers and two sisters. I came from a working-class family. My father was a crook. He was a gambler and a crook. He spent five years in jail.
You asked who I am, that’s who I am. I was the youngest. I grew up in public housing in Northampton. My mother worked. We were never on public assistance. When my father got out of jail, we moved to Wheaton, Illinois—partly for a fresh start.
I knew I was gay when I was in high school, when I was sixteen, seventeen. I went to college for a short while, but I didn’t graduate. I was really kind of footloose and had wander
lust—it’s very prevalent in my family. We had to find our own paths. So I went back east, to Northampton, Mass. I was nineteen, twenty. I lived there for a long time and worked and spent all my money on women and booze. [Laughs] Then I came back to Wheaton to see my mom. I was twenty-six, and I needed to get some kind of occupation. She taught me how to be a neurotechnologist, and that’s what I do. She knew I was gay. She just wanted me to be happy. I wanted a kid. I had a strong desire to have a child, but I wasn’t ready to have a child until I could justify bringing a child into this world. It really took me a long time before I could find a positive reason to have a child.
I worked in WICCHA—Women in Crisis Can Help Act. It was a hotline. I was involved in the women’s community. It wasn’t particularly that I didn’t want male interference—I love women. [Laughs] I wanted a child, and I wanted a long-term relationship. That was maybe selfish of me, but I thought I could have that with a child. A friend of mine who lived in Chicago knew Ron Sable. They were good friends. She said he might be interested in doing this. He said he’d be glad to meet with me. We talked about it for a while, and if there were any medical reasons why we shouldn’t do it. He wasn’t ill at the time. That was just when HIV and AIDS were getting public attention. He said, yeah, he would do it. I had a significant other, I was in a relationship at the time. We would find out when I was fertile and we’d call up Ron, and Ron would say, “OK, I’ll come over.” He’d come over, go into a spare bedroom, drop the stuff off, and then he’d leave, and we would do the rest. That was 1982. My son is two months older than Kathy’s—he’s eighteen. His name is Matthew Gagnon.
Where did you have the baby?
Here, at St. Luke’s–Presbyterian. I worked there, so I had him for free. Then I left Chicago because my son was getting to be five and I just couldn’t see raising him in Chicago. I went to Florida and took a job in a hospital down there. Ron visited on occasion.
When did Matthew discover that Ron was his father?
Shortly after Matt was born, I called up Ron and asked if I could put his name on the birth certificate—because I was freaking out. He said fine, he said OK. Kathy and I had known about each other and actually met very briefly. She called me up one day and said, “We have these kids that have the same father. Would you like to get together?” I said, “No, I don’t think so.” People in my life at that time were telling me that it wasn’t a good idea. I had a lot of pressure that the boys shouldn’t meet until after high school.
Then Ron called me and said that he was coming down to visit, and he would like to see us. I thought that was great—because Matt had gone to spend a weekend with him. We had a nice visit and he left. Ron had meant to come down to tell me that he was HIV-positive. He wanted to tell me, but he just couldn’t. He wrote me a letter. [Her voice breaks.] Which was . . . it was just really sad. I called Kathy up right away and said, “Let’s meet.” Then I really was ready to meet.
KATHY: It was Easter weekend, 1993. We decided to meet in Chicago. Ron rented a house on Lake Michigan. We all stayed together for the weekend. We knew Ron was dying. That’s when Linda and Matt and John and I first met. It was electric—it was just beautiful. It was one of the most beautiful weekends in my life.
LINDA: That was it.
KATHY: Everybody got along great. Ron watched his kids play. We all had dinner together, Easter dinner.
LINDA: We had fireworks. I brought them up from Florida.
KATHY: That was one of the things John remembered best, the fireworks.
Is that when something happened between you two?
LINDA: Absolutely.
KATHY: We couldn’t put it in words yet, but, boy, did I feel it.
LINDA: Nothing physical happened.
Was it love?
TOGETHER: Yeah.
KATHY: It was, it was. It blew me away. I had no expectations that that might happen.
[After a long pause] LINDA: I wasn’t prepared for it. I mean, it was wonderful—it was just . . . We knew that we needed to spend more time together.
KATHY: Oh yeah, it was just so strong.
Was Ron aware of this?
LINDA: I drove Ron back to Chicago and he asked me, “How did you and Kathy get along?” And I said, “Well, she already wants to take me to California to meet her sister.” [Both laugh.]
KATHY: The next time we got together was when school ended for the boys and you drove up. It was in June of ’93. They came up to stay at our house.
LINDA: Oh, yeah. [More laughter] I remember that.
KATHY: And it was still electric between us.
By this time you had decided to live together?
KATHY: No, no, no! We just decided to be intimate. Ron is getting sicker. We were alerted that there was going to be this big tribute to him in July. So again we met. It was just a stunning tribute—it was very emotional. One of the things I was thinking about was how were John and Matt taking this in? They were only eleven years old.
LINDA: By this time, they were calling him Dad. He was writing cards and letters, “Love, Dad.”
KATHY: It was quite emotional for John. I could see that he was somewhat blown away by that event.
LINDA: One of the really nice things that we remember, I think, is that we had an intimate dinner with Ron, all of us—his mother, his sister, and José* was there, too. And we were able to connect with his family. The sad thing was we tried to continue that connection and they didn’t—but at least we had that one time.
We rented a really expensive hotel room, and we asked Ron and José if they would take the boys overnight, because I thought it would be good for them, you know, for all four of them. It was that same weekend as the tribute. And then we had dinner with them and they took the kids. And then we spent the night together at the hotel. That was it, that night.
KATHY: Linda and I have been together since then. She and Matt moved up to Cleveland so that we all lived together that next year.
LINDA: In ’94. We now live in Cleveland Heights. [Haltingly] My sister just died last week. I was really close to her. But when I think of death, I think of Ron and I think of when he was dying. I was really sad, because I had wanted Matt to be able to get to know him. I had a long time ago told Ron that when Matt asked who his dad was, I was going to say, “Go talk to that man over there.” So there was this loss of opportunity for them to know each other for a long period of time, which made me very sad. At Ron’s deathbed, I had made a promise—that I would care for Kathy and for John and for Matthew for the rest of my life. When I think of death, I think of that time.
KATHY: I guess I still believe in the hereafter . . . We have my mother living with us. She has Alzheimer’s, so we’re taking care of her. Her Alzheimer’s is at a point where she does a lot of talking, and you think maybe she has hallucinations. But she’ll say people’s names and she talks about my uncles who’ve died, or my dad. And we get this feeling that we’re getting visited by all of them. [Laughter]
LINDA: And after my sister Chris died . . .
KATHY: My mom was talking to Chris.
LINDA: And she didn’t know Chris that well . . . Who knows?
KATHY: I feel that my dad is still with me, that Ron is still with us, that they’re there watching out for the boys.
LINDA: Since Ron died, I became aware that suddenly you start seeing these people in other people. I would see Ron in other people. I would see his nose or I’d see his jaw or I’d see his shoulders. I would see him, in some ways, far more often than when he was alive. I don’t know what that means, but I think it means something. Another thing that’s interesting to me about death is that while Ron was actually dying, time slowed down dramatically. It continues to move, but it is so much slower.
I remember sitting in Ron’s apartment—he died at home—and thinking about all these cars that were just going by, and that life was just continuing on outside these doors. To me, that was comforting. Because I knew that I could, when it was time, go and join that world again. De
ath was much different than life out there. If there’s life hereafter, I feel that if it’s just sleep, it’s the best sleep that I’ve had in years—and who wouldn’t want that? And if you meet all your friends, or you get to be absorbed by this great space, who wouldn’t want that? I find a lot of comfort in that, and it’s OK.
KATHY: As Ron became ill, I think that our boys became a different thing for him. Originally it was political. He wanted lesbians to be able to have kids if they wanted to. He was interested in the boys somewhat, but he had his own life. But when he became sick, the specter of death broadened his view of life and he really wanted to know those boys better.
LINDA: He grew into it. It’s very bittersweet, this memory. Our love came from a hard time. I think it made it very strong.
But you’ve had no social difficulties?
KATHY: That’s not totally true. When Matt and Linda first came up to Cleveland to live, we enrolled him in a Catholic school because we thought it might be better. They figured us out right away and they did not want us in that school. They drummed him out of the school. Here’s a kid who just lost his father, just moved to a new place, and they gave him all Fs! They didn’t want to talk with us. They wanted us out of that school.
LINDA: We had our two separate families and we forged them into one. It is one now. They feel as brothers.
KATHY: They were worried: Gee, are we gay because we have gay parents? Does that mean they’re gay? They went through thinking about that and talking about it. So far they both think they’re not, they both think that they’re heterosexuals. One of the things that we see in both of them, they’re very tolerant of diversity, and that’s nice.
LINDA: Ron gave me my entire life. He gave me everything. He gave me my whole life. [Near tears] He gave me Matthew, who is someone I would go through a burning building for. I would die for him. Unless you’ve had a child, you can’t imagine the love that you feel for a child. Ron gave that to me. And he gave me Kathy. She is the love of my life. We will be together until death parts us. So he’s given me everything. And he never asked for anything. He gave me Matthew because I asked him. And he gave me John. He gave me my family. He gave me Kathy because I think he knew I needed her. I think he knew we needed each other. It was difficult being a single parent. He knew. He was involved in both our lives. So he engineered it. He wanted this, he wanted us to be together. And we accepted his gift.