Goodbye, I Love You

I've been listening to John Dehlin's interview of Carol Lynn Pearson. If you're not familiar, Carol Lynn is a Mormon poet/author/playwrite. She married Gerald Pearson, who was gay, in the 60's. She knew about his sexuality before getting married, but it was a different time and they decided to go ahead with it. Long story short, the marriage didn't last and Gerald ended up contracting AIDS and Carol Lynn invited him back home so she could care for him as he died. It's a beautiful story. She wrote a book about her courtship and marriage to Gerald up to the very end. It's called Goodbye, I Love You.

I remember hearing about the book when I was at BYU. I checked it out from the Provo library and read it all in one night outside somewhere where I could find some light. I think it was on a curb outside a Best Buy or something like that. I was too afraid to take the book back to my apartment because it had the word homosexual on it. I cried and cried and cried as I read it. It was one of the first things I read that even attempted to explore and understand and show some compassion for the situation I found myself in.

Listen to the interview and read the book. It's well worth your time. The following is an excerpt from a Walt Whitman poem that is in the book and that Carol Lynn reads in the interview.

O to speed where there is space enough

And air enough at last!

To be absolv'd from previous ties and

conventions....

To escape utterly from others' anchors

and holds!

To drive free! To love free!

To dash reckless and dangerous!

To court destruction with taunts, with

invitations!

To ascend, to leap to the heavens of the

love indicated to me!

To rise thither with my inebriate soul!

To be lost if it must be so!

To feed the remainder of life with one hour

of fulness and freedom!

With one brief hour of madness and joy.