A life in a box of papers untouched for almost twenty years.
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Emptying out my father’s house in preparation for its sale has been a stupefying experience. Trying to cut back overgrown yard, the need to replace the furnace, getting rid of old clothes, broken furniture, remote control airplanes, finding about two hundred dollars in coins scattered about; the work is tedious.
The endless sorting and disposal is, well, endless. At least the attic now has had everything removed, except for an old air conditioner and a box with my uncle’s name on it. I decide the box is lighter than the air conditioner and I bring it downstairs.
I look through it. It was a microcosm of his all too short life. Uncle Marty was six years younger than my Dad, born in 1936 on Washington’s Birthday, February 22nd.
He was my grandmother’s favorite child. We know this because she told my father, and knowing her, likely everybody else. Probably not the best move by a parent, but as we all know no parents are perfect, except on TV and in the movies. I always wondered that because my father could never measure up to his mom, I could never measure up to him.
The box contains personal and professional correspondence, as well as medical and financial records no more recent than 1988. That’s when Marty died. From complications from HIV. Marty was bisexual.
Some useful facts. Marty majored in English and graduated from NYU in 1956. He went to medical school at the University of Chicago and graduated in 1960. Did his internship at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in the early 1960s.
“…I wanted to change my karma. I had previously tried many spiritual paths with the intent of becoming happy but I had not succeeded…Yet sound guidance from senior NSA (Nichiren Shoshu of America) members helped and I became happy for the first time in my life.”
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He married Aunt Myra (she liked to be called Mike) in 1963 and they had their first child, a daughter in November 1964. There were a number of letters from Marty’s supervisor and colleagues at the hospital noting this blessed event.
Marty was going to be drafted, or he could volunteer to be a member of the US Public Health Service, Center for Disease Control, now known as the CDC. He chose the latter, worked on immunological and infectious diseases in children (he was a pediatrician) and later was a Major in the US Air Force Reserve.
After his commitment to the CDC was over, he got a teaching and research position at the University of Florida. Marty and Mike added two boys to their family, but in 1972, they got divorced. In reading some letters, Marty still loved Mike, but their marriage was over.
Mike remarried and had her children take the last name of her new husband. I don’t know why she did this other than considering that Marty’s bisexuality was the ultimate act of betrayal to her. In 1972, times being what they were seems plausible to me, but it is only my hypothesis.
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He pursued a career as an academic pediatrician with specialized training in developmental immunology under the National Institute of Health (NIH). In 1984 he mod to California where he was a professor of pediatrics at Kern Medical Center and at UCLA Medical School. He became a Buddhist in 1985. I found a photocopy from an article about his spiritual journey in Pioneers of Humanistic Medicine.
“…I wanted to change my karma. I had previously tried many spiritual paths with the intent of becoming happy but I had not succeeded. I experienced all sorts of obstacles, including a breakdown in my relations with family members and damage to a new car. Yet sound guidance from senior NSA (Nichiren Shoshu of America) members helped and I became happy for the first time in my life.”
The stigma of AIDS in the 80s along with the desire of Marty and my father to never tell my grandmother the truth about his illness left him to die without any eulogy or memorial.
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After attending a conference in New York City in 1986 (the last time I saw Marty), he returned to California and his practice of Buddhism changed his life for the positive in his work and with his boss. “I feel that practicing Buddhism has made me be a better physician because I am a happier, more compassionate person. Compassion is a very important characteristic for a physician.”
Records of relations with his kids are spotty in his correspondence, though I know from my Dad, when he was diagnosed with HIV in 1987, he lost all contact with his children. I saw the applications for all the experimental medical treatments, of which he underwent, all unsuccessfully. With his background in immunology his understanding of the treatment and the prognosis must have been terrifyingly ironic.
The stigma of AIDS in the 80s along with the desire of Marty and my father to never tell my grandmother the truth about his illness left him to die without any eulogy or memorial.
In his papers I found a poem written by his daughter that he kept with him. It reads:
“Love is…
Love is like a morning dove that sings of peace and heaven above
Love is like a baby deer that struggles to walk to know that love is near
Who will someday be walking on his toes because love is everywhere.”
— Marlena
A life in a box of papers untouched for almost twenty years.
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This article originally appeared on Open.Salon.
Photo credit: Nathan O’Nions/flickr