PART III - Chapter 35: A REAL FATHER

 

 

Chapter 35

A Real Father
(Ó 2010)

Early January 2005
 

In the Intensive Care Unit of a Paris Hospital

Logan stood next to his good friend, Clive Hebert, looking down at him with immense concern. Clive was lying motionless in a hospital bed in the Intensive Care Unit, for Clive had suffered a massive heart attack. The years of “Good food … good wine … good friends … good times”, plus a good cigar “every now and then”, had finally caught up him. His rotund body lying there with tubes and wires that seemed to be coming out from all over him from under the hospital gown and blanket. The whirring sounds on the medical monitors along with the beeping of the monitor on his heart were the only sounds in the room.

The entire “entourage” was there, Logan, Miriam, Cosette, Bricey and even Claude Devereaux. The hospital staff informed them that they would only allow one visitor in the room at a time, so Logan went in first. Logan could only stare down at this man, this man that he grew to love and respect deeply. Clive’s hands were at his sides; Logan took Clive’s right hand into both his own. When he did so, Clive opened his eyes slightly.

“Well … hello … Logan my boy.” Clive said with labored breath, he also managed to smile somewhat. “I am so happy … that you are here.”

“Hey there Clive … I’m not going to ask you how you are feeling. That would be kind of dumb right now.”

“Well actually my boy … waking up to see you here … shall make my dying … so much easier.” Clive said.

“Oh come now Clive, don’t talk like that.”

“No … no Logan my boy,” Clive said, “there is something about when death comes to you … you will just know it. Strange though … when you know it is your time … there seems to be no fear.” He squeezed Logan’s hand slightly and smiled slightly, “I fear though that I shall now … pay for my sins. I hear there is no place in heaven for men like me.”

“Men like you?” Logan asked “What do you mean men like you?”

Clive smiled somewhat more, “There are those … religious fanatics out there … who say that men … or people I should say … that heaven will … reject us because … we are abominations.”

Logan leaned down to Clive and said, “I don’t believe any of that Clive. Because what I do believe? I believe that God does not create abominations. These fanatics you speak of … only they do. There is a place in heaven for you Clive … and you are going there. Why? Because you’re the greatest man that I have ever known, and I’m going to tell you something that I should have said to you a long time ago … I love you man.”

“And I you … my boy. You have been a good son to me.” Clive said. “I am so glad … I am so glad that you came back … back home to us my boy. I would have been greatly saddened … if I were to never see have … seen you again.” He paused for a moment and then a jovial smile came to his face.

“Why are you smiling like that Clive?”

“Oh I just had a thought … about our Lillian.” Clive answered.

“Lily?”

“Yes Lily. I can’t wait … to see the expression on her face … when I see our Lillian,” he said with his jovial smile, “she is going to be … so surprised … to see that they actually let me in.” That brought a smile to Logan’s face and a little laugh. However, before he could even speak Clive told him, “And when I see her … my boy … I will tell her how much … you love and miss her.”

“I can’t think of a better messenger.” Logan replied.

Clive then closed his eyes … and gently released his last breath.

* * *

That was three days ago.

Logan now sat in the front pew of the church with Cosette and Miriam on either side of him Bricey, Claude and Giselle sat in the front row with them. At the foot of the alter was the bronze gold trimmed coffin that Clive had been placed in. It was an open casket ceremony and Clive was dressed in his best pure white suit with white shirt and white tie.

Logan sat stoically with his friends remembering all the good times with Clive. He then felt a nudge in his side from Miriam. She was telling him that it was now his time to go up to the church podium and make his eulogy to everyone who were attending the funeral. Logan stood up, and for the first time he saw all those sitting behind him in the large church. He was stunned slightly by the fact that the entire church was filled, up to the rafters, and there were many people standing on the side aisles as well as any open areas to the back of the church. He began to make his way up to the podium, all the time in awe of the crowd. As he drew closer to the podium, he saw the bottle of cabernet wine and wine glass placed there and that he had arranged with the heads of the church earlier.

Logan then stepped to the podium, reached into the breast pocket of his suit coat and unfolded the speech that he labored to write over the past couple of days. He laid the speech in front of him and then looked out the large crowd. He then thought back to how large the crowd that attended Lily’s funeral was. It came to him right there; that the words that he had written down on that paper, now did not compare what was coming into his head.

“I had this whole speech that I’ve been writing for the past couple of days,” Logan said holding up the speech, “but, as I look at the size of the crowd here … well … what I’m looking at right now … at all of you here … well … that speaks a great deal more than anything that I would have to say. Look at all of you here … and all of you who are outside this church … you are here because Clive touched your life in some way. It was this way when we laid my beloved Lily to rest. The almost a count of a thousand people there … for she had touched all of their lives somehow.

“So, anything that I may have written just fails in comparison to what I am looking at right now, because no matter who you are … or how you lived you life … or whom you chose to live it with … you could not help but to love this man, and want to be close with him, and want to be his friend. He was the kindest, generous gentleman … to me … that ever was.

“Always a kind word …always respectful … and always with that big smile on his face. Whatever your lifestyle, as long as you respected others and did not judge … he did the same to you. Clive was the epitome of the golden rule. Respect and humor that was our Clive. And, all it took for him to start to like you was if any friend of his was a friend of you. Take myself for instance, in the first two minutes after I met my Lily, and she expressed her feelings for me in that first night … that’s all it took for Clive to accept me.”

Logan paused for he felt himself about to cry, he regained his composure, swallowed hard and then continued, “I loved this man and I’m really going to miss him. They say ‘God works in mysterious ways’. Well, here is one mystery that only He can explain. Why would God send this man to me, who always referred to himself as the ‘Queen of Our Little Entourage’ … this man … this good, decent and yes, gay man to me? Why would He send me this man … and have he become … the closest thing to a real father that I would ever have in my life? This man would sit with me for hours just talking to me like a father would to his son. Discussing everything from life in general to sports, and always giving me a loving fathers advice along with a reassuring hand on my shoulder to go with a loving father’s support.

“Being a father to me … a real father to me … that is what I shall be most grateful to this wonderful man about. So with that …” Logan then produced the bottle of wine, that was already opened with the cork replaced along with the wine glass and placed them on the podium, the crowd let out a combined laugh, “I arranged this with the good Fathers here at the church. With that … I would like to propose one last toast to Clive, with the toast that he said a thousand times whenever we were all together.”

Logan uncorked the bottle and poured the wine into the glass. He face Clive’s coffin, raised the glass to him and said, “Good food … good wine … good friends … good times.”