Project Rebirth (15 page)

For Larry, the loss of his life partner after nearly fourteen years together left him profoundly alone and unbearably empty. He couldn't imagine being without Gene in the years ahead. He had always pictured growing old beside him, having his partner in crime for all of life's adventures, obstacles, and Broadway musicals.

Gene was so full of life. He had a way of putting people—even the most reticent or socially awkward—at immediate ease with a self-effacing joke, a gentle touch on the arm, or an inquisitive question. Though Larry and Gene would often circulate separately at parties, Larry knew he could always glance over and see Gene dazzling someone with his sweet charm. By the end of any and all social gatherings, Gene was everyone's new best friend. As Larry's son Ian describes, “If you looked into Gene's eyes, you could see straight to his soul.”

He radiated that energy to those around him, which is why Larry had trouble understanding why his life has been cut so short, at only forty-seven years old: “It just didn't make sense. I could see Eugene at ninety years old organizing ballroom dancing at the nursing home.”

As lonely as Larry felt, he did draw strength and comfort from his very close relationships with his family, especially his children and grandchildren. Shortly after Gene's death, Ian drove up from Baltimore with his daughter, Catie. The nine-year-old, who loved coming to New York City and spending time with Grandpa and Gene, wondered out loud at his absence: “Where is Gene?”

“Gene's with his mother, with my father, and with a lot of friends and people that he loves,” Larry assured her. Catie didn't mention the subject again during that visit.

The following summer, Ian brought the whole family back to visit. Larry was playing monster and tickling his granddaughter, ever the goofy grandpa, when Catie began to cry and sobbed, “I miss Gene.”

“It was so funny to see this ten-year-old having that much emotion about this man that she just knew as my partner,” Larry explains. “We spent about half an hour just holding each other, and crying, and talking, and then we kinda got through it.”

Larry was adept at getting through isolated moments like these, but the grief—writ large—felt like it lasted forever. It was too hard for Larry to accept that Gene was gone. Dr. Leeat Granek, head of the Grief and Loss Project, a cross-national consortium on the study of grief and loss in Canada and the United States, explains, “Grief and loss are normal, expected and constant.”

Sitting with the grief, as Larry did, is a necessary part of getting to good feelings again. Dr. Granek elaborates: “There is often an attempt to banish the negative feelings because they feel so bad, and while that is understandable in the moment, what happens when you cut out one end of the emotional spectrum—sadness—is that you also inadvertently cut out the other end—joy. We have to fully feel all of our emotions in order to alchemize them into something generative.”

Larry kept replaying the day in his mind: Gene had left a reassuring message early in the day saying he and his co-workers were evacuating, but what happened after that? Not knowing the details of that day, of Gene's last moment, drove him crazy—and knowing that he would never really know left him restless. He could not avoid feeling anger as he wondered what had prevented Gene's escape.

But the anger was softened by his knowledge that Gene had been helping people out the day that he died. Larry flashed back to their most recent family reunion, in April 2001, when he had fallen ill from severe viral pneumonia. Gene refused to leave his side in the hospital, calling in sick to work and requesting that the nurses bring in a cot so he could sleep next to wheezing Larry. Of course, one would expect that kind of care from a loving partner, but Larry knew that Gene didn't reserve his care just for his nearest and dearest. Gene felt a responsibility to reach out to perfect strangers with similar tenderness. As much as Larry grieved losing him, he was also proud that his partner had died being his generous, courageous self.

In early October of 2001, Larry headed to the Family Assistance Center at Pier 94 to file for Eugene's death certificate. Scores of people who had lost a loved one in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade towers made their way along the West Side Highway to the vast, aluminum-sided building on Pier 94. Larry made his way past the uninviting exterior and into the main hall and was stunned to find the most beautifully decorated space he could have imagined for grieving families. “They carpeted the whole pier in soft blues,” he describes. “It was like being in heaven, surrounded by angels. These people had come from all over the country as volunteers.”

One such volunteer was assigned to usher Larry around and offer him food and drink. He was taken first to a lawyer, who filed the affidavit, and then to several other stations, including the Red Cross and the Crime Victims Board. Larry couldn't believe that something he'd dreaded so passionately had turned out to be such a gentle experience, just like his day at the armory. It was still painful, but the kindness of others was a powerful balm.

That evening, Larry decided to treat himself to dinner at his and Gene's favorite restaurant, a tribute to having gotten through such a difficult day with such sweet assistance. The maître d' recognized him instantly and asked, puzzled, “Just you?”

“Yes, I've been at the family center all day,” replied Larry. All New Yorkers at that time knew what the family center was.

“Did you lose someone?”

“Eugene,” Larry answered as tears started to well up in his eyes. They hugged each other for a very long moment.

After all the arrangements pertaining to Gene's death, Larry wanted to do something to honor his life. In October of 2001, he invited friends and family to a big celebration of Eugene Clark's indomitable spirit.

As guests started arriving at noon, Larry stayed at the top of the stairs of his duplex, giving people huge Gene-like greetings and hugs as they came up—a loving tribute to Gene's warmth and life-of-the-party presence. Larry also bought an extravagant arrangement of orchids that leaned, long and thin, just like Gene, over all the beautiful food that his guests brought.

Although the afternoon was a blur for Larry, he still has the guestbook from the party, signed by ninety-six people. He also has the transcripts of hundreds of messages left on his voice mail in honor of Gene, dating back to 9/11. These are the artifacts he returns to when he wants to remember how loved his dear partner really was.

Larry stayed in New York for a couple of years following Gene's death. He worked hard, spent lots of time with friends, and cooked up plans for a West Coast homecoming with his children, who also had their hearts set on living closer together. (They either already lived on the West Coast or planned to relocate there.) But no matter how much Larry packed into his schedule, no matter how many wonderful friends he managed to spend time with, the Big Apple wasn't the same without Gene. “I was lonely, even when I was busy,” Larry remembers.

Larry's loss left him lonesome, to be sure, but it also provided him with an opportunity to honor Gene's outspoken legacy. Among the heaps of mail that Larry received after Gene's death, a letter from Cambridge Insurance caught his eye. It notified him about an upcoming workers' compensation hearing. Larry had not even considered filing for workers' compensation, believing that his homosexual relationship, although technically a domestic partnership recognized by the state of New York, would not qualify him for spousal benefits. But as he heard the stories of other widows and widowers filing claims, he began to grow uncomfortable with his assumption. Why shouldn't he be afforded the same rights as heterosexual people in his same situation? Gene wouldn't have been meek in a situation like this. He would have said something. Larry decided to go for it.

At the first hearing Larry went to, the insurance agent told him that he didn't have any standing because he was not Gene's legal spouse. The judge at the hearing advised him to get a lawyer who could fight for his rights to compensation. The Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund had been reviewing the cases of more than twenty gay partners of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and had found that the law did not define “spouse” by the existence of a marriage certificate. Larry became one of Lambda's pro bono clients, and together they took their fight to Albany.

The lawyer advised Larry to gather letters from his friends and family, confirming that Larry and Gene had been a long-standing couple. But even with all the strong support (friends responded generously), the judge continued to request additional hearings. Larry's determination did not wane. At the end of the fourth hearing, the state of New York finally not only ruled in Larry's personal favor but also instituted a public law that recognizes surviving domestic partners' right to workers' comp for those lost in the attacks of September 11th. Larry is now set to receive four hundred dollars a week for the rest of his life.

Larry's case became big national news. He was interviewed by Katie Couric and Anderson Cooper. Though he was nervous to be featured on such big media outlets, he drew on a strength born of his relationship with Gene. “He would be proud!” Larry exclaims.

In March of 2004, Larry made the final leap to a new life.

The house he found in San Jose, California, was small but quaint. It was a far cry from the dream house Larry has been drafting sketches of since he was a child, but it was a peaceful home, a place where Larry could get away from the New York hustle and heal.

But he didn't leave New York completely behind. Somehow, he managed to reconfigure his new place with the same layout as his New York apartment—a little piece of his life with Gene that he held on to. Additionally, he hung a big portrait of Gene in the living room so he could walk by and see his smiling face every day. The sting began to soften. He explains, “I see the face of a friend I can just talk to. It doesn't bring back heart-wrenching grief anymore.”

San Jose was serene and quiet, although very much a city, and a mere forty-five minutes from lively San Francisco. Larry was also just twenty-five minutes from the beach, where the roaring majesty of the Pacific Ocean had a calming effect for him.

Perhaps most surprising to Larry was the fact that he now had a roommate—one of his daughter's friends. After getting used to living alone for the first few years after Gene's death, he was amenable to the company, especially that of someone so respectful and unobtrusive as Davey—a Hawaiian who had two sweet dogs and made a great lunch partner. Before long, Davey's partner moved in, and the three of them happily coexisted for a short time before the two younger men decided to return to Davey's tropical home. Larry's daughter helped him find a great apartment of his own, in the comforting shade of palm trees.