Photograph

I'm outta luck, outta love
Gotta photograph, picture of
Passion killer, you're too much
You're the only one I wanna touch

I see your face every time I dream
On every page, every magazine
So wild and free, so far from me
You're all I want, my fantasy

Oh, look what you've done to this rock n' roll clown

~ Photograph - Def Leppard

There was a photo of my sweetie at the memorial that just captured him beautifully. He's sitting on the grass basking in the sunshine, eyes closed, head tilted back, a smoke dangling casually from his lips, his long hair glowing golden orange in the sun. I'm pretty sure his mother took the picture but I'm not sure why she didn't give me a copy until after he died. The date stamp in the bottom corner is cut off, but the year is an '0 so I know we were together at the time. She had given me so many pictures of him over the years - why not this one?

There's no doubt she loved her son, but she apparently caused him some trauma in his youth. After her divorce she began hanging out with a feminist crowd and as a young boy he was subjected to a lot of anti-male rhetoric - something he would rant about a lot when he got drunk. Eventually she transitioned from radical feminist to a more hippie-like hugs make everything better mindset, but the damage had been done and it followed him the rest of his life. I'm sure she wanted to undo the damage, she just didn't know how. She had wanted to raise her son to respect women and had somehow alienated him in the process. Years later as his girlfriend, I would bear the brunt of it. 

She tried very hard, but it was clear she didn't really know how to relate to him. As an adult he had some very different opinions and viewpoints than the ones she'd wanted to teach him - and that's where I came in. As I said in earlier, he and I were on the same wave length. We were two pages from the same book, but where he was very outgoing and social - I am a quiet and shy homebody. Several times over the past year, his mother had said to me "he really gets you T..." but I think that translated to "he really gets you, but we don't really know you at all". I usually keep most people at arms length and I tend to dislike people touching me (my sweetie had carte blanche but everyone else was hands off). His mothers side of the family are very 'huggy' people, and I think my aversion to their hugs confused them somehow. Like they couldn't figure out who I am without hugging me. All I can say is hugs never made me feel better unless they were from my sweetie - anyone else and it just felt suffocating and wrong. They were just going to have to get over it, and my sweetie was a staunch defender of my no contact policy.

They kept trying though, forcing hugs on me at family events... Eventually I started to withdraw and stopped going to his family's house for holidays, it was nearly always too crowded and someone would inevitably want me to hug them - I just couldn't take it anymore. After a while, he began to follow suit - much to their consternation. He simply decided he'd rather hang out at home with me instead. I tried to tell him 'Don't let me stop you - go and have a good time. Tell 'em I said hi.' But for some reason he didn't want to.

If I had to hypothesize, I'd say it might have been because I turned out to be the one constant in his life. I loved him unconditionally. Even when he was a drunk and I was pissed at him, I still loved him and he knew it. I kicked him out of the house from time to time to go sober up, but I always let him come back home. His family had passed him from relative to relative like a joint. His mom couldn't handle him as a boy and shipped him off to his dad and he was bounced from parent to parent to aunt and uncle and homes for troubled youth until he reached adulthood. As an adult with a drinking problem and they continued to limit their contact with him, telling him that they cared about him while keeping him somewhat at a distance. Once while he and I were talking about it, we did the math and figured at that point in his life he'd lived with me longer than he'd lived with anyone in his family. When he sobered up, that all changed. They suddenly wanted to spend more time with him and I think that while he was initially pleased to be welcomed back into the fold, it also bothered him on some level that their acceptance of him hadn't been unconditional.

His loyalty to me hadn't gone unnoticed in any case, and members of his family were unable to figure out what was so special about me that he frequently chose my company over theirs. They realized that just didn't know him the way I do. I lived with him and I got to see a version of him that they and the rest of the world weren't and never would be privy to and he got a version of me that the rest of the world never sees as well. I think a few folks may have been just a bit jealous about that.

Now I have a copy of that photo from the memorial. I made an 8x10 print of it, it's been matted and framed and I've hung it on the wall in our living room. I still feel butterflies in my stomach when I look at him. 

I don't know why I was never given a copy before - but I'd like to hope it was just an oversight.