Subject:  Sylvia, By Debra L. Stang |
Author:
naomi
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Date Posted: 00:23:53 06/20/04 Sun
From the site :
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/lesbian_issues/58961
It’s Wednesday, January 17. I wrap my arms around myself as I look down at one of my dearest friends. She’s in a coma, beyond my reach, beyond all hope of survival. All night, her friends and family have been arriving to say their goodbyes. Nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins. Friends from the library and the geriatric center where she worked. Friends from the town where she went to art school. Friends from different political movements she was involved in. Friends from the feminist, lesbigay, and Wiccan communities. I wish she were conscious. She would love seeing all these different people come together in one room. And in different circumstances, she would love being the cause of it.
Sylvia Stone and I met in March of 1992 during a self defense class called Model Mugging. Syl was a shining star in that class, making friends (and lovers) left and right with her easy smile and her charmingly intimate self-disclosures. I was a little intimidated by her and kept to myself. (Years later, Sylvia told me that all during the class, she’d assumed I was a homophobic Republican. Wrong on both counts.).
On the last day of class, we had a chance to order videotapes of our graduation. Sylvia was between paychecks, a few dollars short, so I loaned her the money. It was only five dollars or so, and I didn’t think she’d bother to pay me back, so I was surprised when she called me and asked for my address so she could drop the money by.
That “drop by” lasted almost three hours, as we started talking and discovered we had many things in common. We both loved action movies with strong female leads, Broadway musicals, all things Disney, stuffed toys, and camp. We bonded over Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Sylvia figured out right away what I was still half afraid to admit to myself. She took me to my first gay bar and gay pride march. She saw me through my first crush and broken heart.
She found out that I loved to write, and encouraged me to write for the local National Organization for Women newsletter. Shy about calling herself an artist (though she was one), she never tired of proudly introducing me, “…and this is my friend, Debra. She’s a writer!”
We were never lovers. What we had was better. We were best friends.
January 18. Midnight. There’s just a few of us left now. Me. Allyson, Sylvia’s partner. Sylvia’s brother and sister and their spouses. And a niece. We move around Sylvia’s bed, rubbing her hands and feet, tucking the covers around her more snugly, whispering words of encouragement and singing songs that she can’t hear. I teach the others some of the “revised” lyrics that Sylvia and I wrote to Christmas Carols (“Rockin’ Around the Solstice Tree,” and “There’s Nothing Like War for the Holidays”). Through our tears, we laugh.
Sylvia was an artist, a painter who never completely believed in her own talent. Her work was somehow rich and stark all at once, complex ideas expressed in only a few brush strokes. Her themes were angels, reindeer, skeletons, stars, and demons. In one of my favorite paintings, a baby reindeer struggles against the grip of a red, leering demon, while an angel catches the little deer’s legs in her hands to pull it to safety. In another painting, nuclear war explodes across the planet while the angels watch, hands to their faces in horror. Her angels usually won their battles, but they faced terrifying opponents.
It’s ironic that Syl was the one who gave me the strength to come out of the closet for once and all, yet in many ways, she was more fearful about being “out” than I was. She even worried about me maintaining this web page, using my real name. She thought someone might track me down and hurt me.
She herself lived in terror of anti-gay violence. Her worst fear, she told me, was to be gay-bashed, raped or murdered. She was terrified she would die alone or worse, surrounded only by enemies. The murders of Teena Brandon and Matthew Sheppard broke her heart, and added to her fear. There was nothing I could say or do to help when these anxieties gripped her.
Yet every time the lesbigay community spoke out for our rights, she was one of the leading voices. She organized speak-outs and marches, and campaigned vigorously for a local human rights ordinance to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation. She was scared to death, but she did it. I will never forget the look of joy and disbelief on her face the night the ordinance passed.
January 18. 2:00 a.m. We’ve all been talking to Syl, trying to let her know what’s happening to her and that it’s okay for her to let go. “Go to the light, Syl,” her brother murmurs. “It’s okay. Just go to the light.” Allyson sits at her side and strokes her hair. I look down at Sylvia’s slack face and think to her, “I hope you can feel us here. Your worst fear hasn’t come true. You won’t die alone. You will die surrounded by love. I promise you that.”
Sylvia spent most of her life seeking true love. In 1997, she finally found it when she met Allyson.
Meanwhile, I accepted a job that kept me working nights and weekends. We no longer talked on the phone for hours every day, and our weekly get-togethers dwindled to seeing each other once every few months. When we were together, though, we were the same old team, enjoying the same things we always had.
The last time I saw her before she went into the hospital was right after the election. We had dinner and argued politics. Ever the idealist, she supported Ralph Nader. Ever the pragmatist, I supported Al Gore. We decided we could still be friends anyway and topped off the evening by giggling like teenagers over the movie, But I’m a Cheerleader!
Allyson called me on December 31. She didn’t want me to worry, but Sylvia was in the hospital. It looked like pneumonia. They were pumping her full of antibiotics, and she’d probably be home in a few days.
She wasn’t. Her condition didn’t improve. On January 4, the doctors did a lung biopsy which revealed extensive damage to her lungs. Sylvia was placed on a ventilator to keep her oxygen level up while her lungs healed.
I was scheduled to go out of town the next week, and Sylvia and Allyson both told me to go ahead and go. On January 6, the day before I left town, I spent several hours in the hospital with Sylvia. She wrote notes to me on a message board and even tried to laugh at a funny movie on television. When it came time for me to leave, I hugged her and promised to call her as soon as she was off the vent so we could talk. She hugged me back. I saw something in her eyes…not anxiety, not fear…perhaps sadness. Perhaps she knew something I didn’t. Or perhaps I couldn’t let myself believe what she seemed to know. I hugged her again and said something stupid like, “I love you. Get well.”
By the time I got back, Sylvia had developed Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS). She was heavily sedated, in a drug-induced coma from which she never awakened.
Wednesday night, when I came to the hospital after work, Allyson met me in the hall and told me as gently as possible that the doctors had spoken to her that afternoon. Even on the ventilator, Sylvia’s oxygen level had dropped into the 60’s (normal is 90-100). She couldn’t get well. She was going to die.
We began our vigil.
January 18. 6:00 a.m. Allyson holds one of Sylvia’s hands. I hold the other. Her sister and brother each clasp a foot. Other family members gather round the bed, whispering their love as Sylvia’s heart rate decreases. As it approaches zero, we cry out in unison…and her heart starts beating again, fighting to maintain a rhythm her body can no longer sustain. Leaning forward, I stroke her hair. “Syl, it’s okay,” I whisper. “When you go, we’re going to cry, you can’t expect us not to, but we’ll be okay. I promise you that. It’s okay for you to go. You’ve fought long enough.” A few seconds later, the heart rate slows to zero. And stays there.
Sylvia died at 6:10 a.m. on January 18, 2001. She was 42 years old. She was one of the bravest people I knew, a woman who was terrified of being harmed for her sexuality, yet one who overcame her fears to work for the benefit of the gay and lesbian community time and time again. To me she was a sister, a mentor, and the best friend I could ever hope to have. I’ll never forget her.
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