Shawn Wray, Good Day!

Yesterday’s interview with Shawn Wray of Cosmic Potato went well, I thought.

 

It was a hoot to go from interacting with Brits, with their proper English accents, to chatting with a Texas Trek fan who was raised in Alabama.   I found myself wanting to talk to gentleman Shawn (a great interviewer, by the way!) about De’s westerns!  But Shawn kept me pretty well on track, as I recall…

 

Like Wayne Emery, Shawn Wray (host of Cosmic Potato–what a compelling title for a podcast!) read the entire book before interviewing me. Shawn said I’m the first person he’s interviewed who actually knew someone from Star Trek personally. Usually he interviews Trek fans and asks how Trek has affected them as far as their outlook on life and as human beings.

 

He asked me a few of the same questions that he asks Trek fans, but he also took ideas from my book and asked me about specific individuals–and he wanted to know more about the end of Carolyn’s life, too, since my book ends with De’s passing.

 

Last night as I was going through all of my files I ran across a bunch of letters that the Kelley’s attorney and I exchanged during the time I served Carolyn and for several years after… and a few I sent to Carolyn and kept copies of…and letters from long-time friends of hers who were doing their darndest to hold me together during the toughest times I faced while caring for her.

 

It was amazing to run across these letters because I don’t remember writing them, but everything in them reminded me again of exactly what happened. Nearly twenty years on, they have informed and comforted me again.

 

I had forgotten that Carolyn did return home for a time with Amy Kelley (as had other caregivers before her) but it didn’t work out, so Amy ended up caring for her again back at the hospital where we both advocated for her like crazy–sometimes successfully, sometimes not. I even ran across emails that I exchanged with Dr. Kaaren Douglas, who was also advocating for Carolyn.

 

I won’t go into the agonizing details, to protect Carolyn’s privacy and legacy, except to say that it was a supremely challenging time for all concerned. Reading the letters again brought it all back to me in living Technicolor.

 

I’m glad I found them. I was able to re-confirm that I truly did all I could to ease her transition from wife to widow to permanent patient.  It was a cruel fate the day De was taken from her.

 

I think De would have survived as a widower easier than she was able to survive as a widow. He had interests that were wider-ranging. He would have been devastated, as she was, but he would have handled it better and sooner. I feel certain of that.

 

Although he was shy, he wasn’t saddled with a cruel social anxiety disorder. He had many good friends, an active mind, and lots of enthusiastic invitations to remain involved in life and living. All Carolyn had was De and an immense love for animals–neither of which she was ever able to embrace again as a hospital-bound patient.

 

It had to be sheer torment for her to lose him, in every conceivable way. It’s no wonder or surprise to me that she was inconsolable, angry, and masterfully miserable.  In her exact shoes, and with the tragic upbringing that devastated her confidence in any degree of self-worth, I would very likely have been the same way. “There but for the grace of God…”

 

I’m glad I never stopped loving her, even for an instant, no matter how hard things got.

 

Not long after she passed away I received a spiritual (unseen, but keenly felt) visitation from both of them. I sensed them side by side, leaning over the left side of my bed. I could tell that Carolyn’s mind had been freed to clearly see what had transpired while I was serving De and that she no longer harbored any ill will toward me.

 

I sensed that she knew, now, that her suspicions had been false and that I left her employ not because I stopped loving her but so she wouldn’t be saddled with having to interact daily with someone who she felt had betrayed her by falling in love with her husband. (More objective persons have considered my relationship with De father-and-daughter-like. And I believe that Carolyn felt motherly toward me–you can see it in the book–until she began to harbor baseless suspicions during the couple of months I was sequestered inside hospitals helping De.)

 

I cannot deny one fact, and neither can you if you knew him: Everyone who knew De loved him intensely. (He never gave us a single reason not to!) And anyone who knew him knew of his devotion to Carolyn, and hers to him. No one in their right mind would ever have tried to come between them–least of all me. (As many of you have since learned, I was either born intersex and surgically altered to female, or I am naturally transgender; I have always considered myself a man consigned by fate–or 1950’s physicians–to a female frame.)

 

So there you have it. My intentions are always honorable when it comes to establishing friendships. There is no hidden agenda with me. Like you, I’m looking to be celebrated, not just tolerated. That’s how De made everyone feel.  He was a man worth emulating.

 

As I told him in a letter one time, “When I grow up I want to be just like you.”

 

(“Good luck with that”–eh?)

 

It’s a worthy goal.

 

I’m doing my best.

 

Maybe someday…