It was recently brought to my attention that I am apparently “patently offensive” on forums such as Facebook, Twitter and the like. Not so much in general as specifically to those of a… religious nature.

Let me start this diatribe by stating that while, yes, I’ve never gone out of my way to have any religious or spiritual friends in the past, I never actually had a problem with religion. In fact, I had tried to find a reason to expose myself to religion throughout an extended period of my life. This probably came as a result of having a miscreant of a father who was adamantly against religion and forbade my mother from talking about it in our household. Obviously, having a mother whom you respect who is religious, and having a father that you don’t respect for a multitude of reasons gives one the drive to go against their demands. This led me, throughout the years, to study Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism… going to church with numerous friends (despite my overwhelming discomfort), and simply… giving the whole “religion thing” a chance.

Needless to say, I never “found God”. All the faith in the world couldn’t have convinced me that the bible is anything more than a book of fairy tales written by a group of people centuries ago (when they believed the world was flat and the sun revolved around the Earth) to “keep people in check”. But that’s not the point that I’m trying to make here.

I consider myself to be a generally “good” person. I hold the door for people, I let them know if they drop something on the street, I let friends know when they have something in their teeth, I donate to charities, and while my family’s idea of a family reunion is an email or text message on one’s birthday, I still try to let them know that I’m there for them whenever they need me. My first relationship was with a guy who I stayed with for 4 years, even though it was completely self-defeating and corrosive to my self-esteem. It was one of those “I can fix him” relationships for me. I was young and didn’t know any better… but my point is that I wanted to make it work because I’m not the type of person who sleeps around, even though the (stereotypical) Christian would like to believe that I am, because “that’s how gays are”.

A little more than half a year after that toxic relationship ended, I had the pleasure of meeting my current boyfriend. On our first date, I knew right off the bat that he was the complete opposite of the first guy. He was sweet, sincere, and “genuinely nice”. A few dates later, I found out that he was religious… Christian, to be exact. Goes to church, sings at church events, the whole shabang.

I was mortified.

I wasn’t scared because I’m atheist, and “oh my god how can someone believe that nonsense?”. It was because being a closeted gay male and being a religious individual just don’t mix. It brings self-loathing, insecurity and lots of hiding.

Fast forward a few years, though, and things turned out pretty well. I appreciated (and appreciate to this day) his ability to see the point of view from different people. This is something that he and I have in common. He is a person; I am a person. Two separate beings capable of having our own differing ideals about things… yet being completely respectful of one another. That’s something that we’ve always appreciated about one another, that I’ve seen other couples struggle with. The idea that you have to be with someone whose belief system matches yours seems ludicrous and ridiculous to me… and finding someone who shares that belief with me is a fantastic feeling.

Fast forward to just recently, and me finding out that the boyfriend was asked “how can you handle being with someone whose beliefs are so adamantly different from yours?”

There are so many ways to go about reacting to that. Simply, though, it all comes down to one thing. The fact that I post anti-religious rantings on Facebook. Immature? Perhaps. Selfish? Probably. Deserved? Hell yes. While I have met more Christians that I admire, respect and look up to in the past 8 years with my current boyfriend than I ever expected to, there are countless others out there that would beat me to a bloody pulp, either verbally or literally, if they had the chance.

“There are those of us who are good, though… we’re not like the rest. We’re here” is what I hear sometimes. Yes, perhaps. But what are you doing about it? What have you said to your friends, your family members, your congregation, to get the word out there that gay people aren’t the work of the devil? That we’re not looking to convert children and that there really isn’t a “gay agenda”?

Out of all the Christians that I’m friends with on Facebook, I have not seen a single post or repost anything… EVER… in support of the gay community. I’ve never seen a “share” of ANY of the “It Gets Better” campaign videos, for example… and those videos are epic. They’re important. They’re vital.

But… not one share.

If Christians feel like they’re being attacked, it’s probably because they’re not doing anything to spread the word in their own community that the gay community is NOT bad… and if they’re not going to do it, then I’m sure as hell going to take the time to defend myself, my friends, and those I care about against a group of people who have been spewing hatred for centuries against someone like me. Someone in an eight and a half year relationship, running a company with his partner out of their one and a half bath condo with a cat… because I deserve that much.

One of very few positive moments of my trip to Florida for Thanksgiving was receiving this… a small, sculpted chunk of copper that brought back loads of memories the instant I laid eyes on it. It brought back memories of helping my mom dry the dishes she was washing at the kitchen sink, and seeing this thing on the window sill. To this day, I’m still not even sure what it is or where it came from. It brings back positive memories, though, and that’s all that matters.

“God saw you getting tired and a cure was not meant to be,
So he put his arms around you and whispered “Come to Me”.
With tearful eyes we watched you, as we saw you pass away.
Although we loved you deeply, we could not make you stay.
Your heart stopped beating, hard working hands at rest.
God broke our hearts to prove to us, He only takes the best.”

- Irish Funeral Prayer.

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It’s been a weird couple months. I can’t believe that it’s already the end of February. More specifically, today’s February 25th… my mom’s birthday.

Like I’ve said before, I’ve never dealt with death in the past, so I’m not really even sure how you’re supposed to celebrate someone’s birthday when they’ve “passed on”, especially when it’s not even a month after the fact. The whole situation seems surreal. I feel like I should be calling home and asking dad if mom got whatever gift I would have gotten her and if she likes it. But yeah, not today.

So instead of visiting her or talking to her on the phone, I’m just going to have my own little event for mom. I’m going to a little flower shop in Noe Valley that I know and love and picking up a bunch of daisies (mom’s favorite flower, which I never understood because they’re the simplest of flowers… but she would always light up when I would go outside as a kid and pick some for her), and head to the Marin Headlands to watch the sunset. I might not be religious or spiritual, but I’m not above watching the sunset with her and wishing her a happy 56th birthday.

We all miss you so much, mom… you were, and are, more loved than you probably ever knew. Happy birthday, and I love you.

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I feel overwhelmingly guilty about leaving her side and heading back home, but I don’t really have much of an option.  I have to get back to work and get back to my life.  Not only that, but I found out that my mom didn’t want anyone “hanging around while she was dying”.  Like always, she was both proud and protective.  It’s always been like her to not want to show any sign of weakness.

That, coupled with the stories that I’ve heard from nurses here at hospice (about how protective people are known to “wait” until loved ones aren’t around to pass away) have led me to believe that it’s better that I head home and “wait for the call” instead of sticking around, waiting for it to happen.

One thing that’s going to stick out to me thinking about my last night here is when my mom, completely confused and out of her mind, asking me for a wet rag.  I wasn’t sure if she wanted it warm or cold, so I asked… and she answered “cold!” as if it was the stupidest question ever asked… hah.  Some people would take offense to that, but I kinda liked it.  That moment is going to be one of the last ones I’m going to have with her and her strong personality, regardless of whether she knows what she’s saying or not at this point.

If I had to pick one word to describe this whole experience, it would be “confusing”.  It sounds odd, but I’ve had to deal with a whole slew of emotions that I’ve never encountered before… especially with me leaving before “the inevitable” occurs.  I feel guilty that I’m leaving my mother and that I’m not going to be here to say goodbye when the time comes, but would I really feel any better about being here when she dies?  But do I only ask the latter because I’m being selfish and I don’t want to be here when she passes?  But if she doesn’t want me here, anyway, is it being selfish to think that way?  Should I just be thankful that hospice is doing the best that they can to take care of her and make this experience as peaceful and painless as possible and be glad that I don’t have to see the end result?

Such a strange mix of emotions.  Everyone I’ve spoken to here says that it’s normal to feel this way, and that my being here for two weeks is more than she could ask for… but I still can’t help but feel guilty.  Everything comes back to me leaving before my mom dies.  My mom is dying and I’m not going to be here.  It’s that plain and simple.  It’s my mom.

Another weird emotional thing is that I can tell that I have my guard up, but I’m really trying not to.  It doesn’t even make sense trying to put it into words, and I don’t know how to explain it.  I feel like I’m ready to say goodbye… or, more like I’ve already said my goodbye… but at the same time, when I hold my mom’s hand or when I brush her hair to help her fall back asleep, I can barely hold it together.  All this time I’ve kept telling myself that I’ve been ready to say goodbye to her, but I don’t think I’m ready at all.  I can’t picture a life without her.  My mom was, is and will continue to be my “safe place”.  Any time I couldn’t deal with a situation, she was there for me.  Any time I needed someone to talk to, she was there.  It didn’t matter what it was… work, financial issues, relationship issues, problems with friends… she was there to listen.  It’s not even that she gave the best advice (she discouraged me from ever leaving corporate america, regardless of how miserable I was), but it was the fact that she gave advice that she thought was best… and that she listened.  In this day and age, just finding someone who will give you their undivided attention is a rarity.  She always did just that.

There are a few ladies in the hospice room next to my mom’s.  The first lady that I spoke to was the wife of the dying man in the room.  As odd as it sounds, or as selfish as it sounds, it was comforting to hear that she was just as conflicted as me.  I feel like that’s a horrible thing to say, but it made me feel slightly less alone.  The second woman that I spoke to asked me if I was religious (and we all know what my answer to that question was).  She said that it must be such a relief to be religious in this type of situation, and I told her that I’ve been thinking the same exact thing.  It must be so comforting to think that, after all this pain and suffering, you move onto a better place where all the people you love who “passed on” before you were waiting for you.  That thought and that prospect of hope and comfort is so appealing.  I have to admit that even me, Mr. Atheist Supreme, pondered the possibility for a moment… but just for a moment.

The third woman was pretty awesome and asked for my email address since I “live in her old stomping grounds” and told me a story about how she got kicked out of church as a kid for asking too many questions.  Amazing.

In any case, the angel they put on the doors of those expected to live 24 hours or less has been on my mom’s door for two weeks.  If I can boil all these words down to just one thought… it would be that my mom has always been, and continues to be, the biggest fucking badass I know.  Goddamn the woman is strong.  If I live my life with half of that fight, I’ll be happy.

Just like my last post, I’m not sure there’s a point for me typing all of this, but I just needed to get this all out.  I’m sure this isn’t going to get any easier for quite some time, but at least I have an outlet to get these bizarre emotions out.  Good night.

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I don’t usually open up about myself or my family or, well, pretty much anything when it comes to my emotions.  At least, not anything of any substance.  I’ll bitch and moan and groan about politics and religion and the usual bullshit, but try to find out something about my childhood and you’d be hard pressed to find someone, anyone, who could tell you more than “Marquis was a quiet kid”.  I guess now, when I’m watching my mother die on the bed in front of me, is as good a time as any to open up about why my mom, born Josephine Ann Wysocki (then Kish, and now Kelley) has always been and will always be the strongest person I know.

As far back as I can remember (and honestly, that’s not all that far back since I’ve blocked out most of my childhood), my mother has always been the strong one of the family.  Back then, I had a larger family than I have now… my mom had two sisters, both with two children (Aunt Sally had two sons, and Aunt Rosie had two daughters), and Uncle Joe  was the stereotypical bachelor… more fun than you could imagine.  I don’t remember Aunt Sally ever being married (obviously she was, but I’m not sure I was even born by the time she was divorced), and Aunt Rosie was married to Uncle Tony.

Those were the days when family was good.  We’d have family gatherings and everyone would get together and laugh and have fun, food galore, and so on and so forth.  These were the good times.  These were times that I wish would outnumber the memories I had of the rest of the times… when my mom was defending herself, and us kids (my older sister and my little brother) from her abusive husband.  The things that I saw as a child are things that nobody should ever have to see at any point in their life.  One night that stands out more than most is the night that my (so-called) father came home drunk, fought with my mom (to put it in tolerable terms), and held us at gun point (with a hunting rifle, no less) for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably two or three hours.

As extreme as that sounds, that was relatively mild on the spectrum of insanity we were subjected to.  Eventually, the aunts and uncles I spoke of earlier came together to help us move out of the house that I grew up in, and move into an apartment away from the sociopath known as “father”.

That opened up a whole new chapter of my mother and her unending strength.  Not growing up in the most privileged family, she took a few jobs at that point to help raise my little brother and I.  She worked harder than anyone I’ve ever met.  She went from being a housewife and full time mother to working daycare, working assembly lines in a computer chip manufacturing plant, and even cleaning houses to give us kids what we wanted and to dress us better than the poor kids of the school district.  There was such a dramatic range in our school district in regards to economic class.  No matter how tired she was every day or how many hours she had to work, our mom made sure that we had great birthdays, Christmas, even Easter.  I’m not sure my little brother or I ever truly appreciated that fact.  She spent so much time working hard to give her kids what they wanted, that she forgot to spend time showing us that what we wanted was the result of a lot of hard work.

A few years after she moved out to support the three of us, something strange happened.  I’m not sure if I blocked out a specific event or if it was just “one of those things”.  All the family that I talked about earlier… my two aunts and two uncles and four cousins (all on my mom’s side, by the way.  To this day, I still don’t know any of my relatives on my “father’s” side)… well, we just fell apart.  There always seemed to be tension of some sort or another, but one day it was just gone.  Nothing.  Nobody talked and nobody talked about why nobody talked.  Those great, fun family times were just gone.  I think this was especially hard on my mom who always depended on her family to help her through all the hard times that she’s been through.  To this day, I hold a grudge against all of them.  I don’t know if it’s rational to do that or not, but it is what it is.  Needless to say, I’m not sure how I’m going to react if any of them show up to my mom’s funeral.  Something tells me that’s not something I’m going to have to figure out.

Somewhere along the line, my mom was diagnosed with Crohn’s Colitis.  In other words, the most painful intestinal disease you could think of that flames up even worse based on nerves.  Pair that with my mom being prone to having nervous breakdowns.  Years later, she would also be diagnosed with bipolar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.  All of these things combined, along with chronic arthritis and a lifetime of smoking started to tear her down.

Fast forward to eighteen months ago. July of 2009 is when my mom, Josephine Ann (aka Josie, JoAnn, Jo) Kelley, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Chemo wasn’t an option because of all of her other medical conditions, and same with surgery.  Eighteen months of “waiting it out”.  I don’t get home to visit family nearly as often as I’d like to… it’s typically the holiday season and maybe one or two other times throughout the year.  The last time I saw her was Mother’s Day of last year.  I tried a few times to make plans to come down for Thanksgiving and/or Christmas, but my mom screamed at me saying that she didn’t want me to see her in her condition at the holidays.  One thing I know after all my time on this earth with my mother is that she says what she means.  Telling me not to come during the holidays means not to come during the holidays.

So all these months later, I finally see my mom today.  This amazingly strong woman who has never taken shit from anyone and who has fought for everything that she’s ever had in her life, is now laying near-lifeless in a hospice bed with tubes coming out of her body, an orangish-yellow tint from kidney failure, her face skeletal and literally half the weight of the last time I saw her.  This woman, who my (wonderful, wonderful, wonderful) step father has seen slowly deteriorating over the last year and a half has done the complete opposite for me.  Three or four visits over that timeframe and she’s gone from a veritable She-Hulk to a fraction of who she once was.

This simple fact makes me guilty beyond words.  Yes, life happens.  Yes, I have a job and friends and a partner and my own life on the other side of the country… but the guilt of seeing my dying mother less than a handful of times over the past 18 months is killing me right now.  After all the hard times that I went through after I moved away from home, now is the time that things are good.  Now is when things are stable.  I have a wonderful life in California with great friends that care about me and a partner who is a dream come true.  Someone who supports me as a person, who cares about me and my dreams and my goals.  Someone who loves me unconditionally and who challenges me and who always has a shoulder for me to lean on.  I live in a beautiful condo where I get to work in a loft office and not deal with corporate bullshit anymore.  I’m finally financially stable after making so, so, so many stupid mistakes in my life.

Finally… things are good.  And then this.  And now, of all times, this is when the universe decides it’s a good time to take my mother from me.  Now, when I could start visiting her more often and walk along the Gulf coast with her asking her all kinds of mundane questions like “what kinds of things did you regret doing as a kid?” or “I just learned how to make the best turkey chili… wanna make it together?” or “I know you don’t like alcohol, but want to try one of my guinness cupcakes?”  Now is when I have to come to Florida to watch my mother die.

I could parade a few paragraphs of “it’s not fair” or “why her, why now?” or any number of other death cliches, but that’s not how I want this time to be spent.  To be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure how I want this time to be spent… but I do know that, with all her strength and all her stubbornness, my mother would not want that.  She’s ready to “be in heaven” and to “meet her maker” and all that stuff that I’m so quick to categorize as jibberish or nonsense.  Even this evening, when I walked into her room and lost my composure at the sight of her severe weight loss, she just looked at me and said “don’t cry, Marquis”.  I know that she doesn’t want this to be a sad event, but… well… it is.

I don’t know how to end this entry.  I wish I had a positive spin to throw in, but I really don’t.  I know all the cliches, and I know all the things that people say to make people like me feel better at times like this.  ”It’ll get better… just hang in there” or “My thoughts and/or prayers are with you and your family” or “it’s just going to get harder before it gets better, but it will get better”, but right now, as harsh as it sounds, none of that means anything.  Right now they’re all just words.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate that people are trying to be supportive and let me know that they’re there for me, but none of those words are going to reverse the cancer that’s taking my mom away from me.  None of those phrases are freezing the swiss cake rolls like my mom used to do because she knew that made them exponentially better in my eyes.  None of those condolences are teaching me to shave because my deadbeat dad never made the time to do so.  None of those words can make my mom run out the front door and hug me like there was no tomorrow when I came home to visit.

I never got to show my mom around San Francisco because for years she couldn’t fly.  I couldn’t show her the view from Coit Tower.  I couldn’t drive her across the Golden Gate Bridge or to the top of Twin Peaks or Ocean Beach.  I never got to take her to the Sea Ranch Lodge or the Chapel where I want to get married one day.

There are so many things that I regret not being able to do… whether it was my fault or nobody’s fault.  All I know, at this point, is that I hope that throughout the rest of my days on this planet, I hope for just half the strength that she’s had her whole life.

I’m sorry this is just miserable.  I’m so drained and exhausted and sad right now.  Then again, this isn’t really for anyone but me.  I needed to let this out.  Good night, Marquis.