Alone and Unobserved

When I think of my family, I think of my mother. Hers was the presence that governed the household growing up, hers the personality that dominated our family events, hers the opinions that informed and influenced my own. When I came out, it was her reaction that mattered, and her rejection and denial that devastated me.

Maybe that’s why Carol Lynn Pearson‘s recent interview with Affirmation affected me so strongly. Twenty years ago, Ms. Pearson wrote Goodbye, I Love You, an autobiographical account of her marriage to a gay man, their subsequent amicable divorce, and his death from AIDS. Since then, she has been contacted by gay men and women from all over the world who were touched by her story and wanted to tell theirs to someone who would listen. She recently took several of those stories and compiled them into a book, No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones. [Review most likely forthcoming.]

She drew on other stories to write her new play, Facing East, which premiered in Salt Lake City last November to sold-out audiences and wide acclaim. The play apparently describes the aftermath of a Mormon funeral, as the mother and father of a suicide victim linger at the gravesite after the other attendees have gone. The young man was gay, and his suicide was the result of a long and ultimately fruitless struggle to reconcile his sexuality and his religion. By all accounts, the play is poignant, relevant and deeply moving.

In the interview, Carol Lynn Pearson was asked how her play was received in Salt Lake. She said:

There is no way the production and reception of Facing East in Salt Lake City could have gone any better. We had huge and positive publicity before the play opened, in the press, on radio and television, and we had excellent reviews. . . . But the most thrilling thing was to watch the sold-out theatre fill up every night with people for whom I knew this was not just a night out for entertainment. There were young kids in leather and with spiked hair and nose rings. There were middle-aged couples in their Sacrament Meeting clothing. There were a few elderly people in wheelchairs. I knew that every person who bought a ticket to Facing East was someone who had a story of their own, that somehow this subject had touched them, either intellectually or at a very, very deep level of experience and emotion. I’ve never been at a play—mine or anyone else’s—at which there was more riveted attention. And the responses that I received personally after every performance—the tearful gratitude from so many people for whom this was a red letter event, an evening they would never forget and that for some was life-changing—made this one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
[Full text here.]

When I read this, I put my head in my hands and bawled like a baby. To think of going to the theater with my mother to see this play, or sitting down with my mother to read Ms. Pearson’s book . . . these are things I can dream about, but they are not things I believe in. I love my mother. I hate my mother. I miss my mother. I am frustrated with my mother. I want to tell my mother everything about my life. I want to never speak to her again.

What do you do? You go on. You smile. You go to therapy if you need it. You take medication if you need it. You wait. And you hope.

And in April, if you’re near Salt Lake, or in May if you’re near New York, or in June if you’re near San Francisco, you go see the revival of Carol Lynn Pearson’s play. Maybe you cry. Maybe you don’t. But maybe your heart heals just a bit. And maybe you can hope just that little bit more.