JASONCHARLES.NET PODCAST NETWORKTIM featuring Abby Stokes
A two-part podcast featuring author and activist Abby Stokes sharing a story of love and loss during the early '90s AIDS crisis in New York City.
TIM PART 2 The Lark Ascending
New York City author/activist/performer Abby Stokes tells the harrowing but beautiful second part of the true story TIM.
"TIM" is an original two-part monologue from author/performer/activist Abby Stokes. She shares her intimate story of love and loss during the early '90s AIDS crisis in New York City. Listen and subscribe to TIM wherever you get your podcasts or live & direct on jasoncharles.net Podcast Network Audio Dramas Channel
For more information about Abby Stokes go to www.abbystokes.com
Jason Charles dot Net
Audio dramas
The following True story from author, performer and activist Abby Stokes took place in New York City in the early nineteen nineties.
This is Tim Part two.
The interesting thing was, I actually didn't cry very much with
him because we were and like practical, make it as good as it can be if we can fight it, great. If we can't fight it, let's plan. So our conversations were not a wash of tears. I would sit with him in the hospital all day
if there were visitors. Yes, I would cry for that. But otherwise we would make plans. And it was so interesting because the floor that he was on in Cabrini was the AIDS floor. I mean, that was a devoted floor that was overrun. There was a nurse. We called him Superman, This sublimely attractive
male nurse that took care of Tim. We would talk to him. They were amazing there, because course they were. It was early on, people were just dying. They weren't. Nobody was being saved. It was just a matter of how long you were gonna take to die in the hospital. We talked about it. A lot. This was not undiscussed. This was over discussed, you know, He was 26 had a hole in his gut that was toxic and a colostomy bag and cancer that wasn't going away and AIDS that we didn't know much about but knew was, you know, at that time, really a death sentence. So
it didn't seem like it was that fast
looking back on it. It was so fast. But at the time, it felt like it was going on. So, like the notion of him wanting to give in and let him go seemed like exactly the right thing to do. And we had no idea that drugs might be coming down the line later. I wouldn't have saved him. You know, honestly, I think things were
where, where they were with the inside of his body at that stage. So Tim
is recovering from this open wound, and
I get a phone call
like two o'clock in the morning, and
it's one of the nurses that I knew and she said, Tim's having respiratory issues. I think you should come in.
And so I'm I'm like, you know, I'm on high alert and thinking this is it? They're They're calling me at two o'clock in the morning because it's something must have happened and he's dying right now. So I race over to Cabrini and I get to Tim's Room, and he's not intubated, but he has an oxygen mask on and he's alert. But he's using the oxygen mask, and my yellow pad of paper was
by the bed, as
it always is, and Tim sort of motion to it. I
don't think he
understood whether he could talk or be heard very well with this new apparatus on. So he motions for the pad and he gets the pad and he writes in very big letters. Let me die And then he circles it
about six times and
I said, I am I am not about to hold you back from whatever needs to transpire So
when I said to the doctor, you know, can you give him whatever it is that will accelerate things, she said. I hear exactly what you're asking for, and I'm completely on board. So I said, The doctors on board,
they're going to start the morphine
and I think because of that, Tim felt comfortable that however, it was gonna happen, then he should take off the oxygen mask because he's gonna die, whether it's a morphine or not having the heir. So he takes off the oxygen mask and he looks at me and
nothing happens. He doesn't gasped for air, He doesn't look in discomfort in any way, shape or form. And he looks at me and he says, Well, what's going on? And I said, I don't know. And whatever that respiratory issue waas it was done.
He was now completely breathing on his own
without the oxygen mask, and they hadn't started to administer the morphine yet. So this was a moment for Tim and I to come to a big decision because he'd said, Let me die when we thought he was dying
here we were at this different kind of intersection where
the oxygen obviously wasn't
necessary to keep him alive. The morphine was about to happen.
And
should we stop it? Should we sort of ride whatever the next chapter is gonna be? And
Tim said no, we should let what started. Continue. So
I said, Well, the nurse is gonna come in and he said, I'm gonna pretend that I don't hear her that I don't respond to her. And so the oxygen's off his mouth and he's lying in bed and the nurse comes in. Tim, Tim and he doesn't flinch. She doesn't move, and she eventually actually literally picks up his hand and drops it the way like you know what? If somebody was unconscious and then she lied, and now she's gone and he sits there. He's like, What are we gonna do it? I'm like, You know what? Then
let them do the morphine
like, let's just see if we can keep up this charade long enough for the morphine to start. And then moments later, Tim says, I have to go to the bathroom
and I'm like, Well, honey, it's you either like, lift the lid on this charade or I think you have to wet the bed
because otherwise we wouldn't get the morphine. So, Tim, what's the bed? And the nurse comes in and he doesn't respond, and she sets up the I V with the morphine and he falls asleep.
And I would say, probably an hour later, it's not quite done yet. It's just starting. I'm exhausted. I'm sitting in the chair beside him, and I hear him say it isn't awake. But he says, Okay, boys, I'm ready to go
and he wakes up a little bit afterwards and I said, Were you having a dream? By any chance? And he said, Why? And I said What? You said something, But I don't tell you what you said until you tell me what the dream was. And he said that he was at the pearly gates of heaven. There was God and there was Saint Peter. So the pearly gates opened and two little boy angels walked by
with wings on. And Tim said, Where do where do I go to get my wings? And the angels said, We're gonna have to sing for your wings. Completely appropriate. Shoo in. And so he was following the boys, and that's when he said, OK, boys, and ready to go. That's what I heard. And that was He woke up shortly after, so that was that dream.
And then he falls asleep again, and
less than half an hour later
I see him. He's lying flat on his back and he puts his hands up in front of him
as though he's holding something and he makes a motion like he's signing something. And then he closes what he's holding. And again, he wakes up a little bit afterwards and I said,
Tim, did you have a
dream? And he said Yes, Why? And I said,
Tell me what it was You were
dreaming and he said I was signing the book of life, which is what he did in the air while he was sitting in his bed. And then he started going in and out like he wasn't really making sense.
But time went by and it was the next day and he wasn't dead yet. He was in a mostly what seemed like kind of a coma, you know, he wasn't responsive and his parents arrived. His parents and his sister did arrive.
I felt so sorry for them because they would go and visit him. And
I swear
that he was responding to them
because the little list twitch of his eye or move of anything was obviously confirmation for them, that he heard them.
When the Let Me die thing was circled along with taking the steps for the morphine, I actively as his medical proxy took him off any food and any other medications
as per his instruction to me. So I made it very clear to the nurses that you know of any pain relief he wanted. And he could have any liquids that we're not. Liquids that would sustain him but water. But he couldn't have anything else. And at some point during one of the visits in the hospital, Elinor
must have said to the nurse,
You know what you giving him besides the morphine? And the nurse told her nothing.
And Eleanor was furious, and she pulled me out to the hallway and she accused me of trying to kill her son.
I said, Elinor and I, luckily Tim had written, Let me die in the piece of paper and circled it so I could point to that. But I also said, you know, I am his medical proxy, and we talked about this a long time, and Tim didn't wanna have any food or any medication anymore. And I'm just doing what he asked me to do. And she was very upset, completely understandably,
and begged me to change those instructions. And
I said to her so, Elinor, if God wants him to live,
Medicine's not going to save him, and food's not gonna save him. It's God's will, whether or not he lives. And so I'm gonna ask you to use your faith and you pray as hard as you can and get everybody else in the church to pray. But that medicine's not gonna save his life.
I was being entirely manipulative. I will confess that now because I don't have a religious bone in my body. But it spoke to her and she calmed down and we didn't have to give him food or anything else.
And I remember it was a week. That was a week he lasted with. The morphine oncologist had said to me that often what happens is Children who are in cancer wards
don't die until their parents leave to go have a meal or have that one night. They leave the room because the child feels the parents great sorrow at their passing and so they don't want to disappoint their parents. So, the oncologist said, Often people die when they're alone because they won't die when somebody's there because they feel them pulling them to stay. Tim was never alone at that stage because I was there. His parents were there. We were sort of rotating and I realized maybe he needs to be left alone. So I thought, I'm just gonna go to Fire Island for the day just to get away and let them have time alone with him. I do remember getting on the ferry in this very dear friend of mine who's a big guy. Everybody knew what was going on. You know, Everybody was being very sweet. And I just remember I just put my head into guy's chest. It was such a big chest, and I just sobbed like it was just like this Big bear.
He didn't die while I was gone. I'm happy. Happy That didn't happen. So I came back
and Tim's condition hadn't changed at all. And then we get a phone call early in the morning and it's super man and Superman calls to say I've been doing this a long time. He's gonna go today,
so I
rally the troops and we head on over to the hospital.
Tim is John Dis at this point, you know he's got this intestinal thing and he's had no antibiotics because I took
him off the
antibiotics and he hasn't had his eyes open for these days. But when we get there, Tim is sitting up in bed. He's sitting up in bed. Eyes were open,
His eyes are yellow because they're John. Destiny's a little fleck of black inside the white of one eye, but he's alert
and he's talking
and
I look at Superman who's waiting for us, and I say What is going on? And he pulls me out to the Halloween. He said, This often happens right before somebody dies. They can be in what seems like a coma, and all of a sudden they have this rallying thing that happens, he said. That's why I want you to come in, because it it could be a very short amount of time that this lasts and then chances are
he'll go and Tim
is quite chipper. But he's not making sense like he actually, says the Trans nurse. He tells me that he found out last night that she's pregnant with triplets
and I was like Well, she doesn't have
the body parts for that, but I sort of like that. So
he was perky
but didn't make sense. And ah, Superman looked at me after Tim said that. And he just said, Don't leave the room
because I know how these people know this. You know how they can live through this over and over again. I have no idea. And I looked over it, Tim, and
he didn't make a sound.
He didn't gasp for anything. He just turned to stone from, like, you know, could only seem from his neck up. It was this transformation from what wasn't a moving person, Really. He'd stop talking. His eyes were closed. But I could see life leave his body because it was from his neck up. He just stopped. There was no movement and his color slightly changed.
And that was it. And I remember going over to kiss him on his forehead. And it was a rock.
There wasn't like there was no anything that spoke of life.
His religious belief, his belief system, which obviously, you know, what's the last thing that he did
you know, was he was fading and there was signing the Book of life. So, like he never let go of his
religious faith. Even though his religious faith by all accounts would reject him wholeheartedly, and I really respected that with him the way he was able to sort of mould it. He was a firm believer, but he believed on his terms and able, any really believed that it was a misinterpretation on everybody else's parts to have the judgment, you know, that we all see all the time his religion sort of
hopped up in moments. It wasn't like you talked about it all the time. He asked me to pray that
day when it was feeling so bad, but that was really the final thing for him. It was very important for him to ultimately go to heaven.
But ah, you know Tim in his own way, even though he didn't believe in Golden Roads and mansions and all of that. But it was important to him that he sort of resolve these issues, and it wasn't covering his bases. That was just part of his spirit is a person.
After he passed, I remember his mother being there.
She stayed with him and I remember going into the nurse's station and again these nurses all knew me, so
they didn't
mind. It immediately sat in the nurse's station and got on the phone to find the funeral home in Oregon to see if they could fly his body back on the same flight. They flew Eleanor back on. I wanted to see if we could coordinate that with her. So then Eleanor left the next day with Tim in tow.
That's when the AIDS quilt was just being put together.
So I put together a panel for the AIDS quilt
and called the OD on Ansel Hawkins, who ran the Odeon at the time to tell him Tim had died, and I asked if we could have his memorial service there and God bless them. They shut down the old young.
I think it was a Saturday afternoon. They closed the place down for us to have his memorial service. I think we had to be out by two o'clock. So the AIDS panel was there. People signed it with champagne and great toasts. I have to say it was a
It was a fabulous memorial service, and the flip side of it was it was the same day that they were having Timms
funeral in Oregon.
It was why I wanted to have it be the way it was gonna be at the Odeon because I knew that there were things happening at that funeral that would not have pleased him that his parents needed to do. But that talked about a religion, that he didn't completely
agree with the limitations of it. And
his mother had actually sent me a picture of him after he'd been prepared for the open casket
and like he was made up Harb like, was just like I really wanted to have the memorial service be exactly what Tim one. And he told me like I knew what music to play. It was larks ascending. That was what he wanted to have. Playas people came in. I knew who to ask to speak like all of that have been laid out by him. And John was there.
John had come to New York to see Tim before he died, so they got to speak to each other before he died. And then John came back for the memorial service. There were a lot of people with memorial service, was really fun and beautiful and elegant
and just the way Tim, it's sort of prescribed it to be as opposed to the lasagna in the rectory that was happening on the other side
of the country,
where
potentially people might have been saying that it happened because he was gay, which was his big thing, that he was gonna He knew that there were people in the church that were saying that that's why it happened.
So that was, you know, I was quite driven to not have there be
any
shame or whatever the hell was happening over there. I wanted to just be glorious joy and, you know, gratefulness for him. Yeah, it was pretty fabulous party, I have to say. Then people came here afterwards actually remember really vividly after he died, a friend of mine's
brother had been on that Lockerbie flight that went down.
Jenny and
Jenny came over the night after Eleanor left, and it was so hot here, I didn't have an air conditioner yet, and it was so hot and the only cool place in the apartment was three kitchen because of the tile floors. And I remember Jenny and I just laid down on the tile floors to talk, and Jenny said to me, You've been in a horrible accident she said. You need to treat
your emotions as though there It's a full body experience, she said. So if you need to curl up in a ball for days, if you don't need to eat, if you do need to eat, if you don't need to talk, whatever it is, you need to really respect that. This first aftermath is a CZ, though you've been in a horrible, horrible accident, and I was so grateful, she said, that cause it was exactly I also felt like I'd lost my husband,
not because there was a romantic thing between us. You know, we had an intimacy that was very condensed, but it was very similar to what I imagine old couples or go through when they're trying to figure out how to handle that last chapter. So I was devastated, and yet I was entirely fortified
by Tim's grace and by the fact that we had really controlled what was happening to the best of our ability.
It's why I really feel so strongly that everybody with their love ones needs to really discuss this, whether you're young girl, because you don't know when it's gonna happen. But you know We need to talk about what your wishes are and what's the reality and what's the ugly part of this and the beautiful part of it, because that's the only way that you can start healing after it happens. I remember Superman actually
came to the memorial service and he passed me a piece of paper when he walked into the OD on and it said, Grief is the pain of the rope burns of trying to hold on.
I thought that was so gorgeous and so true. And I guess, luckily for me, because
although it was fast, the process was very clear. I wasn't trying to hold onto Tim, you know, I very happily let him go because I didn't want him to be in any more pain, missed him. But
you know, it was so right. It was exactly as it was supposed to be, so there was no regret about that.
I mean, it was sad, obviously, but it seemed so natural because of how
alloted sort of unfolded and mostly unfolded because of his grace. It really was his generosity of spirit to help people process it before it happened, and I felt so lucky
who knew how long or short it was gonna be and the of the intervention of my friends saying, You've got to stop, go to the hospital every day. I didn't regret one second of it then because it happened so fast. I felt so grateful that I had been able to spend the time with him, and I felt actually really grateful for having gone through the experience as hard as it waas.
It was the end of the summer. I think I went to Fire Island and just got lost there for a while and just, you know, enjoyed
the resting there until the body got out of the trauma.
I went to Angels in America shortly after Tim died, and I was apoplectic in my seat enough that the woman beside me asked if she should escort me out of the theater because I was such a mess.
I found that, you know, it was unbelievable and fabulous, and I was probably a little early for me to see, and that's why I was such a wreck. But it's so easy to talk about it now. But like what we have to remember is like people coming out of the closet and dealing with AIDS and people afraid to use the same fork and all that stuff was still happening and happened for a long time after. So
anything that gave heart to these horrible stories of what people were going through, you know, whether it was the normal heart or whether it was Philadelphia or any of those. I was thrilled to have any of that be out in the open. I actually shortly thereafter took a class at the new school called The Social Construction of Disease that was written by the guy who wrote and the band played on. He was teaching the class, and it was all about how we deal with disease and some diseases we feel bad about.
Well, you know, we feel bad when somebody gets cancer. People weren't feeling bad about AIDS. People were not looking at AIDS, you know, the broad spectrum of society was not looking at AIDS and being like, Oh my gosh, we need to cure this these poor, young, predominantly male in the United States. People are dying from this, you know, it was
happening because people done something wrong, was what a lot of people were saying, and that was so inappropriate and so
absolutely inhumane. So anybody doing anything showing the true stories of the heart behind the people, suffering anything about AIDS and about people's fight and the reality of it and the statistics spoke to me and I couldn't get enough of it.
Did the AIDS walk in was like, powerfully advocating for money and research.
I'm
trying to think, like, did I?
If I look back on it, would would there be anything that I would have spent more time, spent, less time done anything differently, and I
I don't know that I would have changed anything I couldn't go to The memorial service is because I couldn't deal with the grief that other people were experiencing. And I think I was protecting myself because I'd had this sort of amazing process with it, and I didn't want to fall into the dark hole.
I wish I'd gone to. The memorial service is I didn't go to
I wish I hadn't chickened out on letting myself be completely wrung out emotionally. That was I do regret that I that day that I walked into a to Gramercy Park and turned around and didn't go into that church and other times when it was offered. You know, when things happened over that next year. I regret that. And I think I was just afraid I was gonna completely fall apart, and that would have been fine had I fallen apart and I might not have fallen apart, but I didn't do that, and I not only do I regret it cause I think it wasn't respectful, but I think I just wasn't challenging my own ability to phone part
or not.
I went with what I felt, but I think
that I remember regretting it at the time. I remember the next day feeling, and I don't often feel regret. It's not sort of in my lexicon, but I remember thinking
it wasn't it. I should have done that.
It was sort of I could have done that. That's probably the only thing I can think of.
It's funny, A friend of mine said to me the day of the memorial service, A light went out of your eyes. A light is gone
and I think the light was innocence. I don't think it was something bad that I had a darkness in my eyes. My take of his observation was,
you know, we all have to go from child to adult at some point, and I think child to adult is really about
knowing what the real world has, which sometimes the real world has very sad things are very mean things or whatever it was. And I think the light wasn't that I somehow was not gonna be as effervescent, but I think it was just this transformation that, like all innocents, had left, you left the room because somebody who
if didn't nobody deserves to die. You know, he was a lovely addition to the world, and they're sort of was like, Well, I guess we can't rely on anything, because if it made sense, he'd still be here. But I guess things don't make sense. Things just go the way they go, you know? So that's an innocence that but it's I felt
empowered, really by all of it. I felt like it was an amazing experience that I was really grateful to have shared with him. That was more the aftermath than sadness or loss. I was really lucky to have gone through it and really lucky that, you know, he was so gracious. And I hope you know some part when I'm a nicer person than I am on other days. It's probably cause I'm trying to channel Tim.
It's not necessarily
my nature,
but it was His. Yeah,
there's this story.
Okay?
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For more information about author, performer and activist Abby Stokes Go to abby Stokes dot com
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