In January 2014, the fog of grief occupied my brain and body. My mother had been gone one year, but I hadn’t yet found a constructive way to heal and process my grief.
Along the way, my husband Tom and therapist Valerie encouraged me to embark on a new path that would help me recapture my creative spirit.
I decided to leave my communication consulting career. Soon after, I began to write personal stories that mattered to me. Vivid recollections inspired and spawned by grief. Observations about love and loss in my family that helped me chart a new course and publish my first book, From Fertile Ground.
With time and reflection, I wrote four more books about the tender and whimsical ups and downs of childhood, the poignancy of leaving one home and surviving to find another, the adventures of creating a new life in the Arizona desert, and the poetry that has stirred inside me for thirty years and finally escaped to land on a page.
In small and large ways, my mother is in every one of those books and numerous essays. Yet she didn’t live long enough to read any of it, except one poem I gave her on Christmas Eve 2009.
I know now that writing about her in new and different ways has kept her wisdom and generosity alive and accessible for me.
July 26, 2024, would have been Helen F. Johnson’s 101st birthday. I knew I wanted to write about that, but until my fingers hit the keyboard, I wasn’t sure what I would say … because I thought I’d said it all before.
Maybe I haven’t.
How I loved and admired–and still remember–her tenacity. Her legacy of letters. Her devotion to family, friends, and the power of nature.
She would have loved the artistic life Tom and I have created in Arizona among the buttes and cacti. Writing stories, screening movies, singing songs, feeding stray cats.
Making new friends, while remembering old ones. Doing our best to guide and encourage my sons–her beloved grandsons–as they make their way toward the middle of their lives.
Cherishing each moment of our retirement years, without ever knowing where it will lead. Never wanting to know how or when it will end.
On July 26, 2012, we celebrated my mother’s eighty-ninth birthday together. It was her last.
Twelve years have passed. I’m much older, more appreciative and impatient. But also, wiser. Healthier. Gayer. Grayer. More contented with my own life and legacy. More worried about the world’s plight.
Grief is no longer my catalyst, my nemesis, my companion. Of course, I see it in the rearview mirror. But, with the passage of time, I discovered higher ground without the ghost of grief.
I no longer think of my mother every day. But when I do, I am grateful for the moments she and I shared–the gifts of memories and photographs I treasure–and the propensity to write about it.
All of this runs through our DNA.
My mother and me, celebrating her eighty-ninth birthday in Wheaton, Illinois, on July 26, 2012.
I’m back home. Inside the furnace, better known as the Valley of the Sun.
I have begun to reemerge from an affirming, magical, inspiring five days of LGBTQ bonding and music with my chosen family at the 2024 GALA Festival in Minneapolis.
From July 10-14, 7,000 singers (representing nearly 300 choruses and presenters from around the world) inhabited the Twin Cities.
We owned the stages. Occupied the hotels. Flooded the restaurants, bars, shops and streets with gaiety and glee.
But it was more than the magnitude of this quadrennial event that has left an indelible imprint on my creativity and identity. It was the sense of joy, kindness, support, and human possibilities that dazzled me most.
At a time in this country and our world where so much hatred abounds, I was reminded that when love is present–when people truly come together to care for one another and cheer each other on–we can be that Bridge Over Troubled Water (one of the songs my Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus mates and I performed) of hope for one another.
This was my third GALA. I shared all of them with my husband Tom: 2012 and 2016 in Denver; 2024 in Minneapolis. Each one has nurtured me, deepened my sense of artistry and compassion, and reinforced the importance of rekindling/kindling old and new relationships.
In this 2024 installment, over a five-day period I was able to reconnect and celebrate with friends from Chicago (who perform with the Windy City Gay Chorus and the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus), Washington, Seattle, and–of course–Phoenix.
A friend and ex-colleague (from my past consulting career) who lives in the Minneapolis area, also surprised and delighted me by attending our performance on July 12. It was a treat seeing her again.
If you follow my blog, you know I have written five books. One is a book of poetry; the other four are memoirs or creative nonfiction. I’ve also written lyrics and librettos for the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus.
Already, I have begun to scribble ideas in a spiral notebook that were sparked by my latest GALA experience. Who knows? This may lead me to a stream of poems or lyrics I have yet to compose.
For now, I will leave you with an idea and image that captured my attention on Saturday as Tom and I watched a series of choruses perform inside the auditorium of the Minneapolis Convention Center.
A few rows in front of us, a couple neither of us knows relaxed and leaned in. Away from the heat and fire in the world, they rested their heads against one another. They held each other. They listened to beautiful music in a safe space.
Many of us in the LGBTQ community have spent large portions of our lives searching for answers, longing for love and understanding.
The beauty of the GALA Festival is that–through the power of music, relationships, and community–we can move from longing to belonging.
Moving beyond this amazing and affirming five days in the upper Midwest, we will continue to raise our voices inside our choruses and be our authentic selves outside in the everyday world.
Truly, we are much more than a large collection of singers. Together, we represent a movement of kind, talented, and diverse humans with the power to change hearts, minds, and attitudes.
Numbers–like true stories that capture a moment on a page–are meaningful.
They aren’t merely markers on the shore of life waiting to be washed away with the next high tide.
They measure our progress. They tell us how far we’ve gone; how much we’ve achieved; how many we’ve accumulated.
My dad loved numbers, especially twin digits. On his fifty-second birthday–December 4, 1965–he wrote a poem about their significance in his life as a twin.
I published Unity 66 and the Twin Digits in the context of my first book. It belongs there, embedded alongside and intertwined with the writings of my grandfather, mother, and me. In its purest form, From Fertile Ground is an immersion into our family’s writing DNA.
Despite Dad’s volatility, he could be an exuberant, charming man. He believed in celebrating life’s mundane and magnificent moments as they happened.
On the road of our family vacations in the late 1960s (from his position behind the wheel of our white, four-door, 1965 Chevy Biscayne sedan), he announced to my mother (in front) and my sister and I (in back) when the odometer of our car was about to reach a milestone.
“Hey kids … we’re about to reach 50,000 miles.”
That was our cue to sing with him like circus clowns dancing to a calliope from the backseat.
“Da da da da … da da da da … da da da, da da … da da … da da da!”
Earlier this week–on April 7, 2024, to be precise–I hit the five hundred books sold mark since February 2016 when I first became a published author.
(If you are one of those who have supported my creative writing pursuits, thank you! I’ll bet there are a five hundred more who’ve read my books free through libraries and Goodreads giveaways I’ve sponsored.)
How do I know? First, I keep track of all my book sales on a spreadsheet I update monthly. Second, my Amazon sales dashboard tells me that someone in the United States bought number 500, my book of poetry, that day.
Of course, these aren’t best-selling numbers. Not even close. I’d need to add a few more zeroes to play with the big leaguers. However, numbers–while important–aren’t necessarily equivalent to quality or creative impact. (If you’ve seen the movie American Fiction, you know what I mean.)
At any rate, for an independent writer operating with a paltry budget, my book sales numbers aren’t too shabby.
Somewhere, on the highway of life and in the universe of creative possibilities, I imagine my father smiling at me from the front seat through the rearview mirror with the wind buffeting his combed-back hair.
He’s gripping the wheel with his left hand, while waving an imaginary conductor’s wand with his right. He’s singing along with the crazy circus music from our 60s family vacations.
Like my husband Tom–last night sitting on the fold out couch in our cozy Arizona den–my father Walter–if he were still alive–would be telling me to keep writing about the things I enjoy.
Because writing, telling, and sharing serendipitous stories is what I was meant to do. No matter what the numbers say.
After my mother died on this day in 2013 at age eighty-nine, my grief took root.
With a little time, a lot of reflecting and journaling, and the support of a small circle of family and friends, I found and nurtured my own path from the branches of despair.
By 2015, I had carved out a storyteller’s life Helen Johnson would have loved. Late that year, I flew to North Carolina to visit Frances, her only sister.
Spending time with Frances in the state where both were born–and revisiting childhood memories of my grandparents’ farm in Huntersville, NC–propelled my creativity.
In March of 2016, I completed and published my first book, From Fertile Ground. It is the story of my journey and grief.
If you’ve read this story about three writers (my grandfather, mother, and me) and their love of family, you know this isn’t really the cover.
Today I’ve superimposed this photo of Helen and Frances together (in my sister’s backyard in 2003 or 2004 in northern Illinois) to remember them both.
Why? Because Frances was the last physical vestige of that rural, 1960s world for me. When she died six months ago at age ninety-one, I metaphorically waved goodbye to those years of running amok barefoot on warm summer days in the Tar Heel State.
Of course, I will always have rich memories of my wise-and-frugal mother, who wrote countless letters, and my fun-loving aunt, who traveled the world in her retirement years. In their own ways, they inspired me to tell my story.
Today–as I remember them both–I can walk into the sunroom of the Scottsdale, Arizona condo where Tom and I now live. I can pull my book off the shelf and find this passage.
“What I knew before was that the farm was a place of discovery for me and the fertile ground there was a physical and psychological refuge from the hardships of our family drama in St. Louis. What I know now is that I would need to go back to North Carolina to come to terms with my grief and integrate my southern memories with my present-day, real-life adult existence.”
I can take solace in the fact that I’ve written about Helen and Frances–who they were, who they loved.
Though they are both gone, they live on the pages.
January 1984 felt promising, but exceptionally cold, in the Chicago area.
Jean was due to deliver our first child on January 17. But that day–and several more–passed with no consequential developments. Just a few rounds of snowfall.
Late on January 23, Jean went into labor. When we arrived at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge, Illinois, the nurses examined her. They told us it would be several hours before our child was born.
Jean and I weren’t prepared for the day-and-night-long ordeal that followed. After twenty-three hours of labor, Dr. P pulled me aside.
At that point, he was worried that a traditional delivery would place Jean and our unborn child at risk. He recommended Plan B: an emergency C-section.
Jean was scared; I was worried about her welfare. I insisted on staying during the operation (masked up on the other side of a curtain, away from the medical staff, while they performed the procedure). The doctor agreed it was a good idea for me to be there for emotional support.
A short time later, at 11:37 p.m. on January 24–twenty-three minutes until midnight–our son Nick arrived intact. Jean was okay, too, but totally spent. We both breathed relief.
Our newborn son wailed as the nurses wrapped him in a blanket. His head was slightly misshapen from the birthing process, but they told us not to worry. They laid Nick across Jean’s chest. We had a healthy son.
Jean and Nick stayed at Lutheran General for a few days, which was protocol for the time. Several days later, we signed a few papers, and prepared to leave the hospital.
Jean cradled Nick in a wheelchair that morning. A nurse pushed them down the hall. I pressed the elevator button, carried flowers, and juggled a few possessions as the doors opened.
An older man already onboard smiled as we descended to the ground floor. He wished a good life for our newborn son.
We exited the building. I walked ahead in the cold to bring our car around while Jean and Nick waited with the nurse at the curb. The sun shimmered on a dusting of snow from the night before.
Day-old Nick and me at Lutheran General Hospital on the morning of January 25, 1984.
***
When Nick was born in 1984, I didn’t expect his mom and I would split eight years later. But we did in 1992, just three years after Kirk (his younger brother) was born.
In the aftermath, my sons spent Monday and Wednesday nights–and every other weekend–with me (Tuesday and Thursday nights with their mom) until they were teenagers when they each opted for a home base with Jean. Thanksgivings were with me; Christmases with her. Two vacations occurred every summer. One with her. One with me.
On “Dad nights and weekends” in the early 90s, my boys and I devoured pizza in our cramped apartment in Arlington Heights and on cold, gray days swam in the indoor pool. It was a cheap way to have fun and burn off energy.
During the school year, with their backpacks in tow, we grabbed donuts downstairs in the apartment lobby on the way out the door.
I dropped Nick off at Kids’ Corner (before-and-after-school program), then hustled Kirk off to preschool before I commuted into Chicago’s Loop for work.
Looking back, it was a tumultuous period of disarray, intimacy, and estrangement for all of us. Nonetheless, somehow, we survived. We found our rhythm as a family straddling two homes.
In 1996, I saved enough for a down payment on a modest three-bedroom home nearby. Nick, Kirk and I played catch in the backyard and tossed the football on the open field across the street.
That same year, I met Tom and introduced him to my sons. I know that Nick–particularly as a teenager–felt uncomfortable with having a dad who was different. But, in spite of it, he knew I loved him.
We weren’t your prototypical American family, but with time we found our stride and Nick and Kirk accepted Tom and me.
At first, our basset hound Maggie (we adopted her in 1998) was the comic-relief glue that adhered us.
With time, that connectivity broadened. We found more in common: birthday celebrations; grounding visits with their wise and supportive grandma in St. Louis; fun and thought-provoking movies with Tom and me in the Chicago suburbs.
Not long after Nick–and then Kirk–graduated from college, Maggie died. We all mourned her loss in 2008.
Tom and I knew at the time that our parents wouldn’t be far behind. The nest emptied quickly. They were all gone by 2015.
That same year, at age thirty-one, Nick asked if he could rent our Arizona condo while he looked for a job out west. He needed a change. He wanted to chart his own course, away from the cold, heavy responsibility of the Midwest.
Nick began a new life that January (two years before Tom and I made Scottsdale, Arizona, our permanent home) when he landed a job with a technology company in March.
Over the past nine years, I’ve watched my son’s confidence and self-esteem multiply. He has a good life here.
Of course, during that period, he’s changed jobs and apartments, discovered new loves and suffered a few losses.
But Nick is happier in the sunnier Southwest. And I’m happy that I get to see him occasionally.
After I suffered a heart attack in July 2017 on the way west, Nick helped Tom move some of our bulkier pieces of furniture.
It gave me solace seeing them bond more deeply as I struggled to regain my strength and equilibrium.
Life so far in 2024 is good for all of us. Kirk is planning to visit us in Scottsdale in March. He lives in Chicago and has found a rewarding life as a trauma counselor. He needs a warm escape now and then to stay sharp.
In spite of the vast distance, my younger son and I have managed to deepen our relationship and stay close. As Kirk quarantined in his Chicago apartment during Covid, Tom and I played Scrabble with him online and Zoomed from time to time.
We talk frequently now. Whenever we do, I realize how lucky I am to have two smart and compassionate sons who are contributing members of society.
A few weeks ago, Nick stopped by and watched Oppenheimer with Tom and me. On other occasions, we’ve shared ballgames and dinners or picked ripe citrus fruits off our condo community trees (Nick loves grapefruit).
Next week, Nick and his girlfriend Anastasia will join Tom and me for dinner to celebrate his birthday at a local Scottsdale restaurant he’s been wanting to try.
No doubt, we’ll raise a glass. We’ll toast his first forty years. We’ll recall Nick’s journey west to discover a warmer life of promise.
As a dad, I will always be there for my sons. I’m glad I stuck it out during those trying years in the 90s, because seeing them become who they are–full-fledged adults–is the most gratifying part of fatherhood.
We all endure specific days–or months–that test our best intentions and weigh on our psyches. January is that month for me.
Long before Tom’s father died January 14, 2012, and my mother followed January 26, 2013, the first month of the year represented a period of Midwestern malaise, forced hibernation, and cold, lingering darkness.
Of course, I live in a warmer, brighter climate now (despite freezing temperatures the past few mornings). I am thankful for that, especially as Tom shares images of his sister and brother-in-law snow blowing and shoveling outside their suburban Chicago home.
Since my mother’s death nearly eleven years ago, the years have passed with a gauzy flutter like pages of a book swept away by a winter’s squall.
Yet January’s weary sensations–grief masked in a cocktail of Christmas memories, vanilla lip balm, and her last graceful smiles during breathing treatments designed to ease her congestive heart failure–appear on cue.
Last weekend, Tom and I packed away our Christmas decorations and recounted cherished memories of quiet holiday moments together and the adrenalin rush of my holiday concert. Adjusting to the rise and fall of this season is always a bittersweet process.
But this week I was eager to recoup our less-cluttered space. To move ahead. To read and write new pages. To protect, nurture, and regain a more normal rhythm away from the madness of news that reminds me–frequently–just how fragile our democracy has become.
My mother and father–who survived the Battle of the Bulge in World War II–would be horrified.
In the depths of 2020, my husband and I began a tradition of buying bouquets of flowers to place in a vase in our living room. As the walls and woes of Covid and our political angst closed in, it gave us hope to see a splash of color on our coffee table.
Less than ten days into 2024, like each of you I have my dreams and doubts, wonders and worries.
But writing about this spray of lavender carnations Tom and I brought home (then displayed in a smoky-blue ceramic pitcher my mother left behind, and placed atop a Spring-like, bird-laden runner my sister gave us for Christmas) helps me breathe, reflect, and relax.
From time to time, it’s important to take stock of where we’ve been and how we’ve grown. In that spirit, as December’s light wanes, I look back over the fence at 2023.
Here are ten important things–in no particular order–I’ve learned (or been reminded of) this year. Each is connected to one or more blog posts I wrote in the past twelve months.
***
#1: Creative opportunities are rare butterflies; grabthem when they appear.
#2: Music transforms the human heart with joy and hope.
#3: Cats are resourceful, cuddly, and conniving characters.
#5: Trees keep us rooted to the places we love most.
#6: Good poetry simply IS; no explanations are required.
#7: My husband is a sweet guy, who really knows his movies.
#8: Carol Burnett is a national treasure and a kind human being.
#9: You can’t replace your mother or father, but you can remember them fondly.
#10: We all need a sense of community to connect and nourish our souls.
***
Join me on my blogging adventure in 2024. Just fill out the information on my Contact Me page. I will be sure to add your email address to my subscriber list.
Since 1981–the beginning of the epidemic–about 40.4 million people have died of HIV/AIDS, according to the World Health Organization. Another 39 million were living with HIV at the end of 2022.
These are staggering numbers, especially when you consider the emotional and economic ripple effect across all the families and loved ones of the victims, who have suffered along the way.
Tonight–on World AIDS Day–I will join other members of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus at the Parsons Center in Phoenix. We will sing as part of a vigil that will remember those lost … and provide encouragement for those who live with HIV every day.
We will be surrounded by the quilts you see here–just a sampling of those created in the 1980s and 1990s–which pay tribute to victims of this horrible disease.
Ironically, this is also the space where we rehearse every Tuesday night, as we continue to prepare for our holiday concert, December 16 and 17 at the Herberger Theater, and a weekend of holiday musical fun and inspiration.
Still today, the quilts prompt a sense of sadness and reverence for lives snuffed out. For people we will never know and never meet. For people we loved and lost. For the beauty they brought and the art they never created.
From my spot on the back row of the tenor two section, I captured fellow members of the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus–surrounded by AIDS quilts–rehearsing on November 28, 2023.
Thirty Thanksgivings have come and gone. You wouldn’t recognize the world now. It’s not the one you left on November 26, 1993–much less the country you helped defend during World War II.
Despite some steps forward, life in 2023 is far more complicated, contentious, and fragile for most people.
Nonetheless, I count myself as one of the lucky ones. Thankful to be alive. Thankful for the love of family and friends. Thankful to remember you.
I met Tom about three years after you died. In my thirties, I didn’t imagine this sense of companionship and contentment in my later years … able to marry another man with a similar worldview and creative disposition.
Nor did I imagine living and writing in the warmth of the Sonoran Desert. Creating a life far outside the bounds of the Midwest existence I called home for nearly sixty years.
Over the past three decades, I’ve often reflected on your life, your troubles, your good intentions.
Whenever Tom and I watch the film, I Never Sang for My Father, I am reminded of the deep and treacherous waters fathers and sons navigate together.
We had our share of those moments, but I don’t see a huge resemblance between our relationship and the conflicts facing the two lead characters–frail father (Melvyn Douglas) and his writer son (Gene Hackman)–who never find common ground or the language to make their relationship whole.
There is a profound line in the movie that resonates and always leaves me in tears.
“Death ends a life. But it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind toward some resolution, which it may never find.”
Thirty years later, I feel at peace as I recall our relationship in some unnamed, spiritual way. I feel it on certain occasions with my sons. Or when Tom and I commiserate over our personal losses.
Or as I consider my book of poems, which I published earlier this year. Or when I sing on stage with the Phoenix Gay Men’s Chorus and sense a ripple of emotion charging through my heart and lungs.
I can imagine how proud you would be to see how far I’ve come. You were always the first one to stand and applaud when I sang in high school and college. Thank you for that.
I never told you that I understood your struggle to be heard, even when your depression caused me pain. I observed both your successes and failures–your hopeful exuberance, love of family, health challenges, and bouts of unhappiness.
They have shaped my odyssey as a writer and given me greater compassion and empathy for the plight of the disenfranchised.
In 2023, I live about fifteen hundred miles west of St. Louis, far away from your grave at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery. So, I won’t be able to visit your marble slab today, but this letter is better.
Rest assured–long after your final breath the day after that big meal with your sisters on Thanksgiving 1993–our sometimes-messy-sometimes-sweet bond still exists.
We will be father and son forever. That will always matter to me. Because I still remember.
Love, Mark
My father’s final resting place at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery south of St. Louis.
With Thanksgiving 2013 approaching, Tom and I knew we needed to change things up after my mother’s slow-and-painful exit the previous January. We decided to escape our suburban Chicago home.
In the wake of our significant loss, we wanted to create a new tradition and plan a week-long Thanksgiving holiday in the desert (in our cozy Scottsdale condo) with my twenty-something sons Kirk and Nick, and Nick’s girlfriend Stephanie.
Early November came. Each of us cleared our schedules. About ten days before our flight from Chicago to Phoenix, Tom developed pneumonia. He was hospitalized for a few days, but insisted he would be well enough to make the trip.
Remarkably, Tom recovered enough for his doctor to clear us for take-off. When we landed at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix just west of the Papago buttes, I felt relief.
Over the next few days, Tom’s health continued to improve. We even climbed a portion of “A” Mountain in Tempe near the ASU (Arizona State University) campus.
On Thanksgiving Day 2013, Tom, Nick, Stephanie, Kirk and I dined outside under an orange tree on the patio of Mission Palms hotel, also in Tempe.
In those cool-but-sun-soaked moments–still a year before Tom and I would marry and four before we would move to Arizona permanently–I realized that the space created by my mother’s passing would mean more than a horizon shrouded in tears.
It would mean new possibilities … new chapters … for all of us.
Mark Johnson Stories 