Lois has been gone for almost 3 years but I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye because of COVID. Sheri has been gone for a little more than a month but none of it seemed real because I hadn’t seen her since before COVID.
Oh, we had talked on the phone. Exchanged a few jokes on email. But, I hadn’t seen her in 3 years. I think I was pretty clear that she was now gone “home” as she often cried to me on the phone (“I just want to go home, Elizabeth, but Jesus is making me wait.”) but something in my heart and my mind and my soul hadn’t quite registered the reality enough for me to cry.
I clearly remember our first meeting. It was the winter of 1977. Ms. Conroy and I had “run away from home” in December of 1976, carefully mapping out an 8-hour ride from where we lived to anywhere, in either of the four directions. We figured an 8-hour ride would be one that would not only prevent family from “just dropping by” but also allow us time to (ahem) “straighten up the house”.
We decided on Bar Harbor, Maine – the end of the world – near the ocean we loved and the mountains that offered us inspiration. In February, my then-husband came up to have a weekend visit with the children. He picked them up in the morning and, just around the time we were starting to get worried about their return, called from the home of my parents to say that he had the children, was moving in with my parents, and they would work together to make certain that I would never see them again.
I can’t even begin to describe that moment or the next few days. Panic is a good place to begin. Devastation is also a good word. Crippling, immobilizing pain and despair born of a sense of isolation and a nagging sense of carefully-taught Catholic guilt that we somehow deserved this.
When I was able to gather my wits about me, I happened to have a copy of Ms. Magazine and, in the back ‘classified’ section, saw a small advert for an organization called DOB ("Daughters of Bilitis") and a PO Box. I immediately handwrote a letter and, by the end of the week, got a phone call from Sheri who said, “Come to Boston. You’ll stay with us. We’ll find you a lawyer. Hang in there. Help is on the way.”
We made plans to travel the next weekend, flying into Logan from Hancock County Bar Harbor Airport. We picked up some fresh Maine lobster on the way as a gift of gratitude. I still remember Sheri saying loudly (she only had 3 volume settings for her voice and loud meant 11) in her T H I C K Bawston accent, “Oh for Gawd’s sake! You can’t be spending your money on lobstah! What are you, Rockafellahs? You’re going to need it for your lawyer.”
Lois was away on assignment – in those days she worked as a Producer for the WGBH Public TV station program for children called “Zoom” – so it would be a weekend with this short, fierce, unapologetically Irish dyke, the first lesbian we ever met face to face and shook hands with, in her home in the South End of Boston which was about 10 years away from gentrification.
One of the last conversations I had with Lois was her laughing at Sheri’s description of us to her on the phone that night. “Oh, Loey,” she reportedly said, “these two kids are so scared I just want to feed them and hug them for a while until they calm down enough to make sense to the lawyer they are going to need. They have no idea how hard this is going to be.”
And, it was. Hard. Very hard. We were one of the first open lesbian custody cases in Bristol County Massachusetts. Not that we sought that distinction. It just was what it was. Our lawyer, Rick Rubino, had represented other lesbian women in custody court cases but not in Bristol County and not with the results anyone hoped for.
Lois and Sheri were there, every step of the way. They called every other day. They helped us budget money for the expenses. They gave us lodging every time we came to Boston. They introduced us to other lesbian women who shared their stories and their courage and their hope and their wisdom.
And, they provided the healing gift of laughter. Oh, my goodness! Did we laugh!?! And, laugh! There, in their South End home which had the phone wires tapped by the FBI for “subversive, deviant activity” (thank you Herbert Hoover).
That’s when I learned the Sheri Barden Philosophy On Life: When faced with the unthinkably illogical, unbearable, and evil absurdities of prejudice and oppression, laugh right in its face.
We. Would. Not. Have. Made. It. Through. Without. Them.
I told much of this story as part of my reflections at their Memorial Service, which began with a clip of the 10-year reunion of the documentary “Gen Silent” in which they are one of the “senior couples” interviewed. The documentary chronicles this first generation to come out of the closet publicly, those whose work of activism laid the foundation for the freedoms we enjoy today who were now anxious and, often, flat-out afraid about how they would be treated in a Senior Living Center or Extended Care Facility.
I’ve included that clip in the first comment. It’s classic Barden and Johnson, in their 80s and still sharp as a tack in intellect and wit and, especially with Sheri, sarcasm – which is a frequently-employed survival technique of early LGBTQ activists. Drag queens have a particularly biting, sharp-tongued version of sarcasm. I wish it weren’t necessary but for some of us, it is. It does seem to help ease the sting of prejudice for daring to be who you are.
I did find myself choking up a bit when I finished my reflection by thanking them for being “family” for Barden & Johnson in their final years. Barden always called that facility, “Gawd’s waiting room.” Many of them nodded in understanding. Not a bad place to hang out for your final years, really.
One quick note that I told them. They knew Sheri as Claire. And, that was her birth name. Sheri was her “gay name” – a custom many people used in the 50s as a form of protection for their jobs and homes and, for some, their marriage. Many of their contemporaries knew that some called her Sheri and others called her Claire but even they had no idea of the kind of prejudice they lived through. They were shocked.
I can hear the Millennials sighing, “Okay, Boomer.” Sure, okay. Just you wait till you try to explain tablets and electric cars and SCOTUS Judges Alito, Scalia, Thomas, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch to the generations that come after you. You can roll your eyes now. It’s okay. I did the same with my parents and aunts and uncles and their friends. Just you wait.
I felt the earth shift under my feet just ever so slightly. Then, an odd sensation found its way up my spine, rested a bit on my shoulders, and then up my neck. Suddenly, my eyes began to burn and sting, my mouth dropped open, and I heard a sound something like a wail and a moan, and realized that it was coming from me.
I gave into it and found myself stooping over their gravesite in great paroxysms of grief and tears. Our friend, Penelope, who had driven me there, gave me space, waiting nearby on a bench overlooking the Mary Baker Eddy Mausoleum and Pond.
I pressed my face to the cold granite marker as tears fell freely and kissed their names, saying the only word that would come to my lips. I said it over and over. I said it as reality. I said it as a prayer. I chanted it as an antiphon to an ancient psalm. I said it from my heart and the deepest parts of my soul. I said it with every cell in my body that ever was, is now, or will ever be.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I am so grateful. Deeply. Richly. Blessed.
I am filled, even as I write this, awash with gratitude and in awe that God saw fit – found us worthy – to send them to us when we needed them most.
Sheri and Lois were together 57 years. Now they are together forever.
I am looking forward to seeing them again “in that great by and by”. I can’t wait to introduce my parents to Barden and Johnson – if they haven’t already sought each other out. I am who I am today, in great part, because of them.
I want to chant my antiphons of gratitude. I want to shout my Alleluia’s to the Love that is at the start and center of all creation.
That will have to wait because I’m not quite ready yet. I think I’ve got a few more things to do, a few more amazing places to make pilgrimage to and marvel at, and even a few more sermons in this heart of mine.
I’ll grieve and rejoice until then as a form of thanksgiving for all that was, all that is, and all that is yet to be. And, laugh. And, find the goodness in things. And search for the light I know will always be there, no matter how dark it gets.
Indeed, there might yet be a young LGBTQ who needs some advice and direction and perhaps God will deem me worthy to be of some help to them.
Until then, I will make my song from my broken heart, “Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!”
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