The Wait's End

June 26, 2015

Tonight I got a call from a former student of mine.  He was a product of the early years of my career (bless him), and is undoubtedly one of the most clever, intelligent, kind, classy people I’ve ever met.  For nearly a decade we soldiered through life with nary a word one to the other.  Life had taken him hither and yon, and here I remained in my post at Parkview.  But in the past year we have reconnected, and in every exchange with him I feel like I am swirling about in an era long past, in a country across the sea.  In fact, I’m quite certain the two of us could be plopped down in a drawing room at Downton and fit right in, save the corset, the blue blood, and the fortune.  The bottom line is that we are each the president of the fan club of the other. It’s not a bad gig.

His life has not been easy for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that he is gay. Here.  

The Supreme Court ruling today was historic.  For a host of my closest friends, it was personal. I’m not at all interested in debating the politics of gay marriage or what this ruling means or blah blah blah.  I am interested in the fact that some of the best people I’ve ever met have a freedom and a right for which they have longed and long fought.  I love them. Their happiness is mine.

For this friend and former student, it was a monumental day. He told me he just had to speak to me, that he and his partner plan to marry September 1, and that my presence on his side of the aisle would make the day complete.  Done.  

We promised to meet soon and we will.  After we hung up, I sat in the dusky light out back, and I felt a sob swell up.  It started in my heart.  I love what he means to me and I to him.  I love what this means to him.  As the sob ran its course and after more surfaced in its wake, I laughed.  Hot damn, I thought.  He’s happy.  And he's not alone.  

“Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it.”
― Ann Brashares, Sisterhood Everlasting

Today, the wait ends.