Grief is the price we pay for love: Anon
I wrote this piece in 2013 and am reposting it here today (July 10th, 2024)
I’ve told this story many times, but until now, I’ve never written it down. The last person I told said it was the best coming-out story she’d ever heard. I don’t know about that, but I do know it’s an important story for me — especially now — and it’s about a lot more than coming out. It’s a story about my best friend, Ian.
Before we get to the coming out part, I need to back up a few years. Ian and I started at the same high school when we were twelve years old, and were in the same class every year until we left the Sixth Form at eighteen.
Even at that early age we connected; we made each other laugh and we talked about things the other kids didn’t talk about: poetry, politics, theatre. We were different — and I think on some level we knew that — but it would be another ten years before either of us had any idea of how we were different and what that would mean for our lives.
After school Ian would hang out at my house — even though it was miles from his — and then make the long trek home. In the evenings, after homework, he’d phone and we’d talk for an hour or more about our day, our teachers, the other kids.
Ian’s family were pretty old school and they were the last people on earth to get a phone installed so he’d call from the phone box at the end of his street. In the winter he’d freeze and he’d finally hang up saying: Jac, I’ve got to go! My hands are blue! See you in the morning.
Around this time another kid, Kate, came onto the scene and started hanging out with Ian and me. While our peers were talking parties and giving free rein to their hormones, the three of us shuffled around in our duffle coats talking about English essays and German translations.
We lived in a small suburb on the edge of London which defined ordinary at that time: families, pensioners and a few oddballs; one Indian family, one Chinese family and a few posh people over the bridge. Gay people — whatever they were — hadn’t made it to Borehamwood in the early 70s, not even to our TV screens.
It wasn’t until I left school and came to Australia in my gap year that I realised…well I’m not actually sure what I realised; that I loved Ian? That I was in love with Ian? Kate worked it out before either of us and played the go-between until Ian and I were able to come clean in long, hand-written letters from ten thousand miles away.
When I returned to England to go to University, Ian and I started ‘going out’ together — and if I could make those inverted commas bigger, much bigger, I would. And we ‘went out’ together for four years.
Ian had just started his nursing training (I know, I know) and had a room in residence at University College Hospital in central London. So, shortly after my return I went to visit him and stayed the night. Let’s just say, we gave it our best shot, but two gay people who didn’t actually realise they were gay…? No fireworks. Enough said.
A few months later, both drunk at a party, we had a conversation that went something like this: You know, to be honest, it really doesn’t bother me, but I’m worried it bothers you. And the reply: Well it doesn’t bother me either; I was just worried that it bothered you…
Looking back, of course, it’s all blindingly obvious, but it wasn’t at the time. Neither of us could have articulated what was going on, neither of us really understood much. And if that sounds crazy now, you have to remember it was a very different time.
It wasn’t a front though, or a relationship of convenience; it wasn’t superficial or ambiguous in any way. I loved Ian and he loved me and our relationship was as genuine as any. And, of course, it gave us both the time and the space to work out what was really going on.
After university I got a job in London and moved into Ian’s room in the flat he shared with a friend. I met Jo, another teacher, and we started going out on Friday nights after school. I remember late one evening on Tottenham Court Road waving her goodbye on the bus and thinking: next week I’m going to kiss her. That was it. I didn’t think: oh my god, I’m gay! I’m a lesbian! That explains everything. No. None of that. Just, I’m going to kiss her. And I did.
And then it was a lightning bolt; an explanation of an entire life in a single kiss.
You have to tell Ian, you know, said Jo, the following morning.
I know. I know.
Have you ever thought he could be gay too?
Oh…my…God…!
I know it’s hard to believe, but it wasn’t until that moment that it finally dawned on me: I was gay. Ian was gay; we had both always been gay. And even though I was incredibly anxious about what would happen next, I knew it would be okay; I knew Ian and I would be okay and, at the time, that was all that mattered.
I left Jo’s flat, got the tube to Convent Garden and called Kate. While I waited for her, I wandered around the market in a daze of relief, elation, anxiety. I stopped at a stall and picked up a badge: Fuck you, I’m gay. I bought it and slipped it quietly into my pocket.
Over a pint, I told Kate. She told me, and we headed home to tell Ian.
Ian was on a late shift and as he walked through the door I handed him a bottle of beer. I don’t want it, he said. I’m tired. I think I’ll go to bed. He was anxious, agitated.
You can’t. I need to talk to you.
What? What about? There was an urgency in his voice. Jac, what is it? Just tell me. It’ll be okay, I promise. Just tell me!
And then I realised, of course, that he knew, and that he was going to tell me the same thing. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out the badge I’d bought.
Oh my God, he said, flinging his arms around me. Thank God for that! So am I! So am I!
After we’d hugged and cried and taken a few deep breaths, we looked at Kate who had witnessed the whole thing from the couch. Yeah, me too, she said.
What I found out later was that Ian had been coming out to himself for the last few months and just that day had told a very close friend and colleague, Theresa. Theresa had said all the right things and told him he had to tell me, and tell me soon. Ian had walked in the door that night knowing — like me — that he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer.
What I love most about this story is that Ian, Kate and I had found each other at school almost ten years earlier and, in a time and place where there was no such thing as a gay person, we’d picked each other out from the crowd and kept each other close. I got through adolescence because of Ian and Kate.
That was 1986. Fast forward to 1998 and Ian is Best Man at the commitment ceremony of Kate and her partner, Penny. He gives an awesome speech and there isn’t a dry eye in the marquee.
And in 2003 Sarah and I are in Canada when the law changes and we decide to get married. I ask Ian and his partner, Nick, if they can make it and, at ridiculously short-notice and huge expense, they do. Ian agrees to be my Best Man too.
On the way into Canada they are asked the reason for their visit by the immigration official: To attend my best friend’s wedding, Ian says.
And the bride’s name? the official asks.
Jacqui.
And the groom?
Oh no! There’s no groom, says Ian. There are two brides!
Nick thinks they are going to get deported, but the immigration guy laughs. Awesome, he says, and are you two going to get married too?
Ian and Nick wear kilts and Doc Martens for our big day. They are loud and gay and wickedly funny and the lovely, polite Canadians don’t quite know what to make of them; they could be from another planet.
And even though Sarah and I are firmly settled in Australia, we see Ian all the time. He comes to Toronto and hangs out with us at Sarah’s family lake house, and one year he and I are flown by float-plane into the Canadian wilderness and make our own way back to civilisation by canoe.
On trips to London we see plays at the National Theatre and have dinners at smart restaurants. Ian takes the kids to the London Eye, the British Museum and Hamley’s toy shop. We spend a week at a cottage in Ross on Wye and Ian makes Air Fix Spitfires for Corin and bakes scones for everyone. He buys the kids beautiful books and outrageously expensive cashmere jumpers which they never take off. Most of all, he gives them time and attention and they love him.
By the time Ian and Nick decide to have their Civil Partnership in London Ian has been diagnosed with bowel cancer. It’s advanced and already spread to his liver, but the doctors still think there is a good chance they can cure him — that’s the word they use, cure — but after two and a half years his condition has deteriorated.
They say Ian’s cancer is very resistant and it keeps coming back; they can’t get on top of it. Now, they talk about longevity. I remember the day Ian tells me over the phone. He can’t talk much, he says, just wants to let me know. It’s the worst day I can ever remember.
The Civil Partnership is spectacular; a hundred people — gay and straight, family, friends and colleagues, kids and olds — all celebrating a fabulous day. I am Best Lesbian and I get to return the favour and make a speech.
After that, Ian is able to make one final trip with Nick to see us in Australia and Kate and Penny in New Zealand. He’s very unwell — on a cocktail of drugs for the cancer and morphine for the pain, but we tour the wineries, do a lot of shopping and have a glorious week down the beach at Anglesea. In New Zealand with Kate and Penny he flies over Fox Glacier in a helicopter, does a zip wire tree-top tour and stays in places with the most beautiful views imaginable.
In the five years of his illness, Ian and I are able to spend a lot of time together and we often talk about those early days in London. The funny thing is that after we came out we had to tell everyone — our families and friends — that we had ‘broken up’, but we hadn’t really. It looked different from the outside, of course, but it wasn’t for us; it was exactly the same, only better.
At the end, Ian was cared for with exceptional skill and kindness at Trinity Hospice in South London. Nick was there, his old friend, Theresa, his nephew, Rick, his former partner and close friend Hywel, and friend, Aiden: Ian’s ‘unusual family’ as the staff referred to us.
Ian had said a while back that he wanted Kate and me to be there at the end — if we could — and I wondered whether, with all the will in the world, we would be able to make that happen. But we did.
It was a good last week — if you can say that. For the first four or five days we were able to talk and Ian still made us laugh. Can you send in the lesbian twins? he said to Nick, one day.
Ian died on July 10th, 2013 in a room filled with music and flowers and love.
It’s taken me a while to write this, but I needed to do it. I’ve learnt that people cope with grief in all sorts of different ways and this is mine. Kate told me recently she sat down and wrote Ian a letter.
I’ve learnt, too, that as someone once said: Grief is the price we pay for love.
Thanks Honey, for thirty-five years of love. And Happy Birthday for today; Sarah and I are going to have lunch together and raise a glass to you.
In Memorium
Ian George Harding: 11th October, 1962–10th July, 2013.
Jac Tomlins
