I prepared for the trip to the ashram as best I could. I made a ritual of putting Don's ashes in the carrying urn, using the urn whose colors were the complement of the ones in the vase we had picked out for my birthday last year. I burned incense on the little alter to our love I've constructed in the library/meditation room.
Before going to bed, I stood before him, apprehensive, almost frightened. What if the pictures did not arrive? What if I dropped the urn with the ashes? What if they wouldn't let me through the security check or onto the plane with them? I thought about what I had said to him the night he died: you have entrusted your body to my care, and I trust you to do what you need to. That comforted me then, so a similar thought took shape in my mind. I opened my arms and said, "You are safe with me, and I am safe with you." That seemed to be the right thing to say, and I went to bed greatly calmed.
Ready to Go
I got through airport security without any hassle whatever, though I made sure to take along a copy of the letter the mortuary had written, an official death certificate, and the permit to transport cremains. None of them were needed.
Kent picked me up at Baltimore/Washington International. As soon as we got to their place in Silver Springs, I looked up the UPS website to see where the pictures were. They had not yet arrived at Brian and Kent's. To my dismay, the tracker said the package was being returned to California because the addressee had moved. I felt like an idiot. Of course, I knew Brian and Kent had moved, but I had been using their old address for the past 6 months because the USPS forwards mail. UPS, of course, doesn't. All that work and worry for nothing. I tried to tell myself that no one would be disappointed because no one knew the photos were coming, but in fact there was one person who was very disappointed: me. I looked at that and tried to figure out why. The best I could come up with was that I wanted to astound and amaze people on the ashram with how good a husband I had been and still was. It was a competition: I am a better lover of this man than any of you could have been. It was jealousy. Now, I would have to present myself to the ashram just as I was, full of errors and ignorance.
I had been taking the "You are safe with me" part too seriously, and was ignoring the "I am safe with you." It was always Don's way to love me as I am, not for what I could do for him. So, here I was, reduced to being simply the man whom he loved, and not someone extraordinary after all. Or just as extraordinary as that.
Despite assuring me that he would e-mail me directions to the Ashram, Murph did not, so I looked it up on the Internet. The Satchidananda Ashram's own website had rather convoluted directions. I found them nearly impossible to follow, but fortunately I was able to use an Internet map service to find a more direct route. I wondered why this more direct route wasn't posted on their website. Could it be a metaphor for making something that is essentially simple needlessly esoteric? Or had their information simply not been updated since the completion of a nearby bridge over the James River?
I stopped for a late lunch outside of Charlottesville. While there, I was surprised to see a Whole Foods market a few blocks away. I had thought they were strictly a West Coast phenomenon. I promised myself to check it out on the way back, and to stop by Monticello and perhaps the University as well, two tourist stops Don and I had planned on making on the trip we didn't make this summer. I find myself doing that a lot: trying to complete plans that we started but were unable to execute because of his illness.
After a very pleasant drive through the Virginia countryside, I arrived at the ashram and headed for Sivananda Hall, where Murph had said he would meet me. I ran into Murph's housemate, Mercedes, in the gift store. She didn't think Murph was around, so she called the house they are renting. He didn't answer, so she decided to give me directions to their house. (We didn't know it at the time, but Murph was actually elsewhere in Sivananda Hall, making arrangements for tomorrow's puja.)
Mercedes went with me into the parking lot to give me directions to their house. As she was talking, a bee flew up and buzzed in her ear. She got a cross look on her face and brought her hand up quickly. But instead of batting it away, she interrupted her dirctions and said, in a cross, dismissive way, "Yes, thank you very much," then continued with her directions. The bee flew off.
Murph joined me in the house a short time later. We talked a bit, and he asked me if Vivekan was HIV positive.
"That's a touchy question with me," I said. "When Don first had his hemorrhage, I insisted he be tested for HIV. It was a shot in the dark, but I knew that some HIV infections manifest themselves with strokes and other brain disorders. The person who had - or rather, claimed she had - medical power of attorney over him at the time refused to have him tested."
"Why did she do that?" Murph asked.
"For no good reason that I could see," I said. "To be fair, she wondered if I had considered the effect a positive result might have on his medical coverage. But for God's sake, I was an out gay man who had already lived through fifteen years of the AIDS epidemic. Who was she to try and tell me about the consequences of being HIV+? And I didn't think she had any idea of what an active and adventurous sex life Don had. I certainly wasn't about to tell her these things, but I thought she should take my word for it, being Don's partner. I said I still thought ruling out HIV was important. But she wouldn't listen to me. I finally got so mad at her I hung up."
"Why was it up to her?"
"She had his medical power of attorney. Or, she claimed she did. Turns out it wasn't a legal document, and I think she knew that. It doesn't matter. Someone had to make medical decisions for Don, and if it hadn't been her, it would have been Don's father, who was in no shape to make any decisions. When Don came down with pneumocystis pneumonia this June, one of the first things the doctors asked was, 'Have you had an HIV test?' We authorized a test right away. I got checked, too. We were both negative."
"It was the pneumonia that got me thinking about it," Murph said.
"I can see why. One of Don's friends said she didn't think he could be HIV positive because 'he was such a quiet person.' It's unbelievable to me that we're nearly twenty years into this epidemic, and people still think AIDS is something you somehow deserve. Besides, your immune system can collapse from things other than HIV, which is what happened to Don."
We drove out the the Memorial Grove to pick out a spot to inter Don's ashes. Murph pointed out the three tress that were ready to accept and he told me a little about the puja planned for tomorrow. I mentioned that Lalitananda would not be able to attend, but that she might come for a visit around Thanksgiving.
"Lalitananda is in a state of difference," Murph said.
"What's that?"
"The ashram is run by monks who sometimes run at a different level than the outside world," he said. "Lalitananda had problems with that, and when she brought the problems to Gurudev, he suggested she leave the ashram and take up life as a householder."
"So, she left the ashram and went to live in Florida."
"Yes."
"Did Don tell you why he left the ashram?"
"No, or if he did, I don't remember."
"He told me he was tired of 'the guru business.' I don't know how literally he meant 'business.' Certainly, having a holy man in residence can attract patrons, but he may just have meant 'the whole rigamaroll.'
I was walking around, narrowing my choices. There were three trees: a flowering crab apple, a red-leaf plum, and a oriental pear. I looked at all three sites and the views from each.
"What'll it be?" Murph asked.
"I think the red-leaf plum," I said.
"I'd like to make a pitch," he said. "The oriental pear is in line with the temple." He pointed to the dome of the Light of Truth Universal Shrine.
"Yes," I said, "I thought of that." Truth was, you could draw a line from any of the trees to the temple. But what I thought he probably meant was that you could see the temple best from the location of the oriental pear without any other trees in the grove or in the field across the road getting in the way.
Murph was continuing his pitch. "And all this has got me thinking I'd want a spot here, too, somewhere over here." He indicated a large open space beside the oriental pear. He turned to me. "It's your choice, of course."
I felt a pang of jealousy. He was pitching a spot so he could be next to Don through all eternity. Such a simple request should not have bothered me, since it was only symbolic. But I had my symbols, too.
"There's a red-leaf plum outside our house," I said. "When it blooms in the spring, I'll know this one is blooming, too, and I'll think of him here."
"Of course," Murph said. "It's all at the feet of the guru."
I knew he was referring the hill above us, and the house on the crest of that hill, Swami Satchidananda's house. It was a beautiful location, a good two miles from the rest of the ashram, on a ridgetop overlooking a gentle bend of the James River, with the Light of Truth Universal Shrine rising from the bottomland like an enormous exotic pumpkin.
I thought of something Don frequently said as we drove past the stately homes that sometimes perch atop the hills and ridgelines of the Marin headlands, or on the foothills of the Sierras. "There should be a law against building on ridgetops," he said. I wondered what he would now think about being "at the feet of the guru," and had a new appreciation of what he had meant by "the guru business."
The Light of Truth Universal Shrine
1. Puja Preparations
2. Don's Pictures
3. Beneath the Red Leaf Plum
4. The Memorial Grove