From: danny.ingram@business.gatech.edu (Danny Ingram)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: and finally, the tears
Date: 15 Oct 1996 14:15:24 GMT

I had a wonderful time in DC at the Quilt display.  I spent time with motss
friends who become more loved by me everytime we meet, and I met new
friends, including the legendary Paul Hastings, no less a legend in person.
 I danced, hiked, protested, raged, and ate a lot of very good food.  It
was everything I could ask of a vacation.  But I hadn't come to DC for a
vacation.  I had come to say goodbye one more time.  I came bearing a 3 by
6 foot memory of a lost dream. I came expecting to cleanse myself again
with grief that grasps my hurting heart and makes me feel alive.  But I did
not cry in DC.

I waited for the right time to check in Darrell's panel.  I waited for the
feeling that told me it was time to make it happen.  It was a blur of
efficiency as the panel was joined quickly to others and displayed with
40,000 new neighbors.  That panel that I have seen everyday for the past 3
years lay in the bright sun unchanged.  I expected, needed, prayed for the
tears to come.  But they did not.  I left my 3 by 6 foot memory and walked
away.  The next day I returned too late for the closing of the Quilt, and
the panel was wisked away.  Gone.  Still, I did not feel.

Last night I came home to Atlanta.  I was eating dinner when I realized I
had to go back to my bedroom where something that has been a part of my
life for three years was not there anymore.  I didn't need to see the spot
where it had lay to know what its absence from there looked like.  I did
not need to hear names echoed across the lawn.  And finally, the tears
came.  Healing, living tears that choked me into life again.  How can I not
remember how loved he was.  How can I not remember.  Finally, the tears.  

danny