We were sitting in a restaurant and he reached across the table for the salt. His long sleeve moved up and I saw the scars. I knew his journey had been a difficult one. When you are the gay son of prominent mormons, you struggle. His struggle had included shop-lifting an exacto knife and hiding behind the trash dumpsters slicing his arms. An older woman trying to throw her trash away discovered him in a pool of blood and called for help. He survived, but the scars never went away. He formed deep thick keloids that would not even fade with plastic surgery. But the real scars were the ones you couldn’t see. Drugs and alcohol would control most of his adult life. He spent years locked in a battle with meth-amphetamine. He would loose years of his life in the battle. Lately he said that he had won over alcohol but he relied on daily antabuse administered by his brother to stay sober. Nothing was ever as it seemed. He left one day saying he had to get sober. He went to his parents cabin in Park City. He wrote a letter before he left. He was sorry. He had lied. All he was doing was drinking. He had stolen money….lots of money. But don’t worry. He would be back. He did come back. Just once. His parents paid to send him back to LA and rent a U-haul. He cleaned out the house while I was at work. I came home to food all over the kitchen because he took the refrigerator. He took the furniture but in a random confusing pattern leaving and taking whatever he could throw into the U-Haul as fast as he could. He left chaos in many ways. It took years to repair the damage he did. We didn’t talk after that. He hurt too many people. I spent a long time healing. Then he contacted me on Facebook. He said he knew I might not want to talk to him but he was hoping. I called. It was obvious things were not good. He was living in a place provided by his parents in Utah. They were back in charge. He was having lots of health problems. He called a few days ago and when I called back he was slurring and confused. The next day he called to say he had taken his sleeping pills to explain it. Saturday morning his brother called to tell me he was dead. He had died of a seizure. It was Pride weekend. I am on the board of directors and had to deal with all that involves. But thoughts crossed my mind. I remember coming to Pride with him and how his drinking caused problems. I remember him volunteering and getting lost to go drink. But I also remembered the good times. The parts of him that had kept us together for almost 5 years were not forgotten, they were just covered over. His funeral is happening right now. This is my way of mourning. I found a picture of us hugging with our dogs, looking over the California coast. I realized it was my daughter who had taken the picture. He hurt her more than most. My kids paid a huge price for his being in my life. It is why I severed contact. But it did not change the memories of what had been the good parts. We loved each other. We had both traveled the mormon highway doing as we had been told. Went on missions. Got married. I was set free by people who loved me more than they loved the mormon church. He was tortured by people who loved the church more than they loved him. But we found each other and for a while we were partners, we were family, we were in love. We had wild crazy sex and we laughed… A LOT. His self hatred was fueled by alcohol and he killed off the laughter and eventually the love. But for a time we were deeply passionately in love with each other. I had thought to let this pass. Until I read his obituary. It was cleaned and sanitized and a pack of lies. His father is an author of fiction and the skill seems to have been put to good use to disguise and deny any semblance of truth. Who he was is lost. Both the good and the bad….though there is so much they find bad even they are hard pressed to find ways to tell the story. They retold stories I had heard when we were together. His life has been frozen in time. All that time wasted. An obituary for a man who stopped growing a long time ago….a life lost. His being gay is not even mentioned. His ex-wife of less than a year is mentioned. None of his gay partners are. His “triumph” over drugs and alcohol is noted, their contribution to the problem is not. The damage it did is not mentioned. His hatred of mormonism is hidden beneath lies about his being a missionary. Too bad they haven’t read his missionary journal. Well they can’t because he left it here. He had to return to that in the end. He lived and died in lies. I guess his scars will finally fade. Mine have been opened a little with his passing. I question my own lack of wisdom but remember it was a LONG time ago. I cringe to think of his dying alone. I can imagine him having his last seizure and knowing it was over and I have to admit, I wish I was there to say good bye and tell him to not to be afraid. To tell him that I had loved him...once...a long time ago, and that it was okay for him to go this time. To try to take away his fear. I guess that is the final message. It was fear that drove all the madness. Fear that his parents would never love him and that he couldn’t live without that. Fear that he was never good enough. He found release from the fear when he drank and was then afraid he would be found out. But I remember the times he made me laugh and the times he made me so hard I thought I would explode…and the times I did. I remember the times he would surprise me. He tried SO hard. He hated things about himself that no one should hate. Some of them were the very things that made me love him. I remember when we would be together naked and the scars would all be visible. I loved that he trusted me with his scars. I thought he had paid a price for both of us. In a way, I thought he had paid a price that I had been spared. I realize now the price was greater than I ever imagined and can’t ever be paid.