life as a gay widower

Life as a middle age gay widower

When my partner of twenty years died unexpectedly of a heart attack on March 17 of 2008 (my 47th birthday) I was faced with the same emotions that countless other widows and widowers have felt since time began. First there was disbelief, then of course an overwhelming sense of numbness that cannot be put into words, then of course fear. How would I live without Len? What about the house we shared? Could I afford the mortgage on my own? Where would I live? Would I ever learn how to cook?

Len and I had been together for twenty years and like any other couple we had more than our fair share of ups and downs. I have always maintained that if anyone ever sat down and listened to his side of the story they would have said “you should leave Chalie (a nick name only he called me, and one, that it breaks my heart to accept, that I will never hear again), and if you ever heard my side of the story, you would have told me I should have left Len years ago. But Len and I had one of those relationships, and all of us, gay or straight, have witnessed, that defied all logic and we just could not live without one another. We needed each other like oxygen in order to survive, and on March 17 my oxygen supply got cut off.

Len was considerably older than me. He was 19 years my senior and as long as I knew him he had a host of medical problems. He battled Chrone’s disease (an auto immune disorder that affects the colon and lower intestine) and in 2001 he had to have a liver transplant as a result of having contracted Hepatitis B during a blood transfusion in the early 80’s before it was mandatory to screen blood donors.

Even though Len was older than me and had many medical issues, I just always assumed that he would live well into his 70’s. I would tease him all the time and tell him that he had come back from the dead more times than Freddy Krueger, so when I got a phone call from Len’s brother in law that “Leonard is gone” I was in shock.

Len was an assistant principal in a high school in Cherry Hill New Jersey and was loved by students, parents and faculty. He was somewhat of a legend in Cherry Hill and we could not go anywhere in the town, state, country or world without him running into someone he knew. Once on a plane to London he ran into an ex student and once while working out in a gym in West Hollywood I heard the familiar words “oh my God, that guy over there was my principal in high school”.

Len’s death made all of the local papers and even made the local evening news. The news stories mentioned how well he was loved by the community and that he was divorced and had three children, all of the information normally mentioned when someone of local prominence passes away. The news stories left out one major detail of Len’s life, and that would be me. Charles Middleton, or Chuck as I am known to most of my friends, or Chalie as I was known to Len.

Not being mentioned in any of the news reports was not that big of shock to me because at the time I was already in such a state of shock that it did not seem to matter. What I did not know was our relationship not being mentioned and me being left out of any news reports was just the beginning. It got worse, far worse than I could ever have imagined.

News of Len’s death spread quickly and soon the telephone began to ring off the hook. I am blessed with a large group of friends and family whom I can depend on in a crisis and by noon of that morning our house was filled with my friends, all doing what ever they could to comfort me. I survived on diet coke and cigarettes, the only two things that seemed to give me comfort.

By mid afternoon his three sons had arrived at our house and the first thing they wanted to see was the will. They had already called our lawyer and asked for a copy of it, but I always knew that when Len died things between me and his family would get ugly. It seems that death brings out the worst in people and when money is involved, things get uglier than you could ever imagine.

I was reassured by his three son’s that I would be part of funeral decisions and I did go to the funeral home with them and gave my input. When it came time to discuss Len’s obituary, I asked that I be listed as his surviving life partner, something that both Len and I had discussed before hand that we both wanted. The funeral director, his sons and his sister did not seem to have any problem with that and I put it out of my mind.

Later that night the family met at Len’s sister’s house so that we could go through pictures of Len’s life for picture slide show at the funeral. We all picked out pictures we liked and there was one of Len and I taken from the back holding hands on the beach that I wanted to be included, but his oldest son thought that that picture “would be putting our relationship in peoples faces and people already knew”. I was stunned, but again, I was still in such a state of shock and was just so numb, I did not know what to say. I had no idea that Len’s sons and sister were so ashamed of the fact that Len was gay that they were going to do everything they could to “sanitize” that aspect of Len’s life when it came to the funeral and the obituary.

Before I left Len’s sister’s house, his oldest son took me aside and told me he got a phone call from the funeral director and was told that since Len was being given a Catholic mass burial, they (meaning the funeral home) were afraid to use the words “Life partner” in the obituary and instead I was to be named as “dear friend”.

I spent twenty years of my life with this man. I had helped nurse him back to health after numerous operations, spent many a night in the emergency room with him as he spiked temperatures as a result of complications of his liver transplant, helped him raise his youngest son and in the course of just one day I had been bumped down in Len’s life to “dear friend”.

The next day his middle son drove me to the funeral home so I could view Len’s body. There he was, my “Lennny” or “Ert” as I would affectionately call him, lying in a casket in a suit that while he was alive we would joke as his “funeral suit”. He looked as handsome as ever. Of all the men I have ever dated, Len was hands down the most handsome man I have ever known. He was tall (6’4”) dark (Italian) and handsome. He resembled an Italian version of Sean Connery with beautiful white hair and a goatee. He never took a bad picture in his life.

I went to the casket and kissed Len and prayed and talked to him. Then I looked at the television monitor that was set up and was showing the slide show of his life and I stared in utter and complete disbelief and thought to myself “oh my God, they didn’t really do this to me, to us, to Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, what ever you want to call us. Out of 116 pictures, there were 9 pictures of me included in the slide show. Basically my life with Len was allotted one picture for every two years we were together. While I did realize, and to this day continue to realize, that Len had a life and a family before he met me, and that his sons wanted to remember their father as a family man, I was a huge part of Len’s life. Shortly before Len died, we had reached a stage in our relationship where things could have gone one way or another. Like many “married” couples, we had once again got to the point where you reassess the relationship and decide whether you want to continue or break up. We decided to stay together and after a tearful afternoon filled with confessions and apologies on both our parts Len hugged me and said “Ya know Chal, when all is said and done, you are still the best thing that ever happened to me”. How sad that the person that Len thought of as the best thing that ever happened to him was given just 9 pictures in a slide show that consisted of over a hundred (most of those pictures used had been taken by me).

Len’s funeral was huge. It was held at the largest church in Cherry Hill in anticipation of the crowds that were expected. The night of the viewing there were over 900 guests and the next day at the funeral, the entire church was filled. This may sound selfish of me, but I was mortified when my friends came to pay their respects and watched the slide show because it was so obvious that my image was missing. Anyone looking at the slide show would look at pictures of me and think that I was just one more friend. There was not one picture that would distinguish us as a couple of twenty years. I looked like one of his buddies. Just some guy.

For the funeral procession, every Cherry Hill Policeman on duty that day was assigned to direct traffic. As I state earlier, I always knew that when Len died things with his family were going to be difficult. They resented me from day one because until I came along, neither his sons nor his sister had any inclination that Len was gay. So along I came and soon became the family scapegoat. I did however expect that his family would show some degree of human decency and wait a week or so before everything hit the fan. Wrong I was because as I was driving his youngest son to the reception that followed the funeral, I was informed that the two older brothers wanted to “screw me”. I assured Matthew that legally there was nothing his brothers could do to me and that I was safe, but the emotional wound of that statement sent me further into shock. I got to the reception and there were his two oldest sons, smiling in my face all the while hoping to, as the youngest said, “screw me”.

At this point I would like to point out that I can be accused of a lot of things, one of them however is not marrying for money. Len was divorced and had to raise three sons on his own with no help from his ex-wife. The house we shared was mortgaged three times over and at the time of his death, he had about nine thousand dollars in the bank. There was nothing to screw me out of.

The day after Len’s funeral his two oldest sons stopped over with their wives along with Len’s sister. It is almost a cliché with gay couples when death occurs that the family comes in and starts taking things that belonged to the departed and the remaining partner has little if any rights to stop them. His one daughter in law started to pack up the china that Len bought when he was married. The very same china that Len and I served countless meals to our friends on. They took pictures, they took personal effects, they basically took anything they wanted and while I did have the legal recourse to stop them as stipulated in the will, I chose not to. I realized that while I lost a partner, his sons lost their father and his sister lost her brother. There were things in that house that as Len’s son belonged to them and I would have never stopped them, but did they have to do it the day after the funeral.

They left with their booty and I sat alone in the house that I shared with Len for twenty years. Pictures that had been hanging in our hallway for years were now gone, china that sat in our china closet for years gone. The next day the family came over and asked me what my plans were, what I thought I wanted to do about the house, etc. From the moment I walked in the door after I found out that Len died I instinctively knew that I could not stay in our home. Even though I could have afforded to, I chose to move. There were too many memories there and I knew if I was going to go on with my life I had to get out of that house. I also knew I had to do everything I could to further protect myself from Len’s family so it was decided that we would put the house on the market.

For those of you who have, or are trying to sell a house, the rule of thumb that realtors tell you is that less is more. Clear the house of any clutter. Take down all personal pictures. Try to make the house to look as move in ready as possible. So not two days after we buried Len, down came what was remaining of the pictures of Len and I. While I was at work one day the family came in and moved furniture, took down more pictures, took a blue willow plate off the mantle (a plate that I had given Len for Christmas one year and that had a great deal of sentimental value to me) and tried to hang the plate up on the wall. I came home to find that the plate had fallen off the wall and the plate was smashed.

What transpired over the next few weeks would take up more column space than allowed. I did however get a phone call from my lawyer who told me that he had just got off the phone with Len’s oldest son and that they were threatening to get their own lawyer, they did not want me to have anything. I knew this was coming. I also knew that as far as Len’s estate was concerned there would be nothing left over. I knew that even if the house did sell there would not be any profit to cover Len’s debts. I knew that I was entitled to a portion of Len’s life insurance and that it would be in my best interest to just take the money and find a place of my own. During a meeting with a realtor and Len’s brother in law and a contractor, which turned into a screaming match between the brother and law and the realtor, my lawyer pulled me aside and told me “get out as quickly as you can”.

So that I did. The insurance money came in and I found a one bedroom apartment. I learned how to cook for myself, I learned how to shop for groceries for myself and I learned how to pay bills and budget my money. Not once has Len’s son’s or sister ever called to see if I was okay or if I needed anything. Oh, I have gotten phone calls from them. Phone calls when they needed something, a favor, or information, but not once have any of them called me just to see how I was doing.

Some people reading this might ask why I am writing this article. Am I trying to tell the world how badly my partner’s family treated me? Am I am pleading my case for gay marriage? The reason I am writing this is because Len’s family erased all traces of Len and Chuck, Chal and Ert, Lenny and Chalie, what ever name we chose to go by. I am writing this because I am angry that I was not given the right to mourn the way the rest of the family was. I am angry that I was treated like Len’s dirty little secret and my relationship with him of twenty years was brushed under the carpet. I am angry that Len and Chuck only exist in my heart right now.

It has been over 21 months since Len died and not a day goes by when I don’t think about him. The worst part though are the dreams I have about him. Every week, at least three times a week I dream about Len and they are never pleasant comforting dreams. I would not wish these dreams on my worst enemy.

I have gotten on with my life. I found someone else to share my life with, someone who understands that there was someone before him whom I still miss dearly. I can watch television again. I can get up in the morning and not want to just crawl back into bed, yet no matter what I do or ever will do there will always be a part of my soul missing. Len was one of those people who was bigger than life. He filled up a room with his presence. I miss his sense of humor, I miss our shared sense of humor, I miss our secret language that we shared and I miss him.

I send e-mails to Len’s old E-mail address about once a week, and until his cell phone was disconnected, I would call just to hear his voice. People ask me what I want. Well what I want is not possible. I want Len alive and healthy. But what I will settle for is for someone to read this article and know that once upon a time, there lived two men, Chuck and Len, and we loved each other very much. We defined marriage. Not just gay marriage, but marriage in general. We loved each other for better or for worse, in sickness and in health and for richer or poorer.

Life is filled with lessons. Some of them are fun, some of them are hard. Some lessons you learn the easy way, others the hard way. If I learned anything about my experience with Len’s death is that resentment is a killer. Resentment just eats at a person’s soul until it becomes an obsession. I held (and sometimes still hold a great deal of resentment against Len’s family). So often I have thought about writing a letter telling them exactly what I thought of them. So often I drove home having an imaginary conversation in my head about how I was going to tell Len’s family off. The resentment I felt consumed me and by the grace of God, and the powers of Facebook, an old friend from high school came back into my life. This friend of mine has been through worse than me. She lost a son when he was only four years old. Through my friendship with her I learned how to replace my negative thoughts with positive thoughts, and every time I would start that internal dialogue in my head I would replace it with “I wish them well”.

I have a good life now. I live in Lansdale a community I love. I recently got married in Connecticut and I no longer carry around that anger and hatred in my heart. Don’t get me wrong, I am not ready, willing or able to sit down with Len’s family and have dinner and I don’t ever want to see them again, but my thoughts are not consumed with hatred and revenge. I wish them well.

Len, I love you, you are the love of my life and I remain forever, your Chalie.

Charles “Chalie” Middleton