It turned out I was one of the luckier ones and after a cat-and-mouse game with officials, almost two years after my vision of Michael at the foot of my bed, I got a call from a government worker. They'd found my mom and she agreed to have contact with me. I was terribly excited, and afraid, at the prospect of meeting my mom for the first time in 36 years. She had moved to Toronto a few months before so the possibility of actually meeting face-to-face was real and imminent.

That happened sooner than I imagined and I wasn’t prepared for a meeting with the women whose belly I’d ridden around in for nine months -- only to be snatched away an hour after being born. I certainly wanted to meet her but I was scared too. I’d never really thought that a lifetime of feeling apart from others had to do with lacking connection to my birth family. I thought that was a bi-product of being gay. Yet I’d always been out, and comfortable; my depth of loneliness stemmed from being apart from those I came from.

Mom had a downtown address but she didn’t want to meet there. She wanted us to have a hug, and a meal, in public. She said the strain was hard on her, too. She suggested a nice Italian bistro, in an old house near where she was staying, where we could have some privacy and still be in public. I offered to come round to pick her up but she refused. We’d meet at Angelino’s at 1 pm on Thursday. She’d make the reservation in the name of "Bellows". My last name at birth was her maiden name and she’d since married twice.

Before we met, though, we talked on the phone almost every day for two weeks and I asked her all kinds of questions about her, my father, and my siblings. And of course she wanted to know all about me. My dad had been a pretty smart guy in the 60s, but a free spirit, and when my mom told him she was pregnant, he didn’t stay around very long. She said my dad was very scared to learn of her condition but that two years after I was born, she did get one letter from him. It was the age of protests, and hippies and my dad had moved to California. She hadn’t heard from him since.

I also had a sister, living on the west coast outside of Vancouver, and mom had been in touch with her about being found. Lynda wanted to fly out to Toronto to meet me right away but my mom said no. She and I would connect first.

But the best news was about Ben! I had a brother! And mom loved him and praised him in our chats. But I couldn’t figure out why she wouldn’t tell me where he was or what he was doing lately. I wanted to see pictures, I wanted to call him, I wanted to be a boy with him; could it be that I could finally drop the psychic energy I had to this day around my imaginary brother Jeff? I ached to know Ben.

I’d also figured out why mom was in Toronto and living where she was. She was taking cancer treatments and staying at a local long-term hospice. She wasn’t that strong but she was coping and things looked promising for the future. I wanted to rush over then and there but again she refused to meet me. She promised to bring pictures of the family and my bro and sis growing up. She said she might even have a picture of my dad. Thursday’s lunch couldn’t come too quickly!

When it did come it was again a November afternoon, but this one was sunny and warm like a spring day. The leaves had turned, and many fallen on the ground, but others clung on. There was a slight breeze and it was ideal for walking with a light jacket. Angelino’s was close by, through the park a couple of blocks from where I lived. In fact, it was just on the outskirts of the heart of the gay village. I didn’t tell my mom that I had, secretly, gone to the cancer hospice more than once and stood outside at night just trying to be closer to her. The hospice was only a couple of blocks from Angelino’s so my mom said she’d walk over.

I was early and dressed smartly, but casually. I fussed and fretted over my hair, how well I’d shaved, my breath -- like meeting a new lover for the second time. But this was my mom! And I still didn’t know what she looked like! I stood on the steps until five minutes before the appointed time and then went in, asked for Bellows and was seated, alone. I’d brought some flowers -- I couldn’t think what else! -- and fidgeted with the menu. Until at last . . . !

I lept up when she entered the room and rushed over to her, not really looking closely at her face and wrapped my arms around her. I melted into her arms and babbled quietly, "Hello! Mom! So glad to . . ." and my voice trailed off as the lump in my throat choked off the words. I sobbed very quietly and hugged her, hoping not to squeeze too hard. After a long time, she pressed back to disengage and kissed me on the cheek. "Shall we sit down? I’m very tired, Jase".

My heart fell at my selfishness and I helped her into a chair. I sat down next to her, and held her hand and looked into her face really for the first time. It was strangely new and strangely familiar. I knew the face and yet . . .

Lunch was leisurely and mom kept having to rescue her hand from mine in order to eat. We had a glass of wine, and some light pasta and salad, and talked and talked. Of course, I already knew her voice from the phone calls, but in person it was sweeter still, an angel’s voice. And what a smile! Gawd! She’d look into my eyes for a while, then look away. She asked me to stop staring a few times but it was hard to take my eyes off her.

We ordered a sweet dessert to share and she pulled out a small album with snapshots. One by one, I devoured them, searching for my own life in them. There weren’t many but I suppose if she’d brought a thousand it would not have sated me. There was one picture of my dad, on a sailboat, taken around 1968, that was contained in that one letter my mom received after I was born. His hair was long, not shoulder-length, but long; and another guy about his age had his arm around him. They were shirtless and laughing. Mom didn’t know the name of my dad’s friend in the picture.

And there were some pictures of Lynda growing up and more recent ones, too; and some of Ben as a kid, on his bike, and at Christmas. And Ben and Lynda’s father, my mom’s first husband and then one of my mom and Jack Bellows, who came onto the scene around the time Ben was ten. Ben and Jack never got along very well, apparently. I suddenly had a hundred more questions about Ben and all mom would say was we’d discuss it later. I felt angry, and fearful; but I also was so hungry for more I didn’t want to spoil things.

Mom turned the conversation back to me and I talked a little about my growing up. She seemed very comfortable with me being openly gay and wanted to know about my current partner and how it was growing up with my adopted family. But I was the little boy in this meeting, trapped in thoughts about me being in those Christmas pictures, or beside my dad on the sailboat, or going to school with Ben. He’d have only been a couple of years behind me; given the way our birthdays fell, maybe only one grade at school.

I paid the bill and mom and I had agreed to go for a little walk in the park. We left, slowly, she carrying her flowers, and me with my arm around her. It was still a gorgeous afternoon and there were already a few kids in the park who’d left school a bit early. As we walked quietly, at one point she paused, squeezed my hand, and stood in front of me, blocking my way and, looking into my eyes, the other hand on my cheek, her face suddenly clouded over in sorrow.

"Mom?"

"Jase, it’s none of my business but ... well, I worry so. Since the moment you told me you are gay. Are you ... are you ... alright?"

"In what way? I am so over-the-moon meeting you!"

And it was at that moment that I suddenly realized where she had been leading me in our stroll. The national AIDS memorial, monolithic slabs of names of victims, set out in a circular garden, was just ahead. My blood went cold.

"D’you mean something else, mom?" My voice was a tremor, cracking, gasping.

"Jase, just tell me, please, that you are ok. I don’t want to lose another son ... "

I could barely stand, and I felt mom’s hand grip my arm to steady me. And she led me forward, solemnly.

"Oh my gawd, mom ... is Ben on this list? Is Ben gone? No, no ... I am ok ... oh my gawd, mom! Why didn’t you say something?"

And we walked, my heart pounding, and tears in my eyes, as she led me into the garden, her hand gripping my arm tightly, and I felt her body begin to tremble. We stopped, finally, after row after row of monoliths, at 1995. She searched the board, looking for Ben’s name but all I could do was sob and look at her. She fumbled at her purse, now, and pulled out a picture but kept it from me. She looked at it, kissed it tenderly, and slowly lifted her head and as her fingers dragged over the monument, name after name, they finally rested on one and she caressed it.

"Benjamin Michael Harrison (1967-1995)"

I cried out and wailed and shook ... but no sounds came. Mom steadied me a little and in doing so I saw a little of the photograph she was clutching. It was Ben, with one eye partially shut, laughing that wicked laugh of his, a beer bottle in one hand and a cowboy hat rakishly tilted to one side. Ben was Michael. My Michael had been Ben. Mom hadn’t mentioned her first husband’s last name and for some reason I’d never asked. Like a lot of kids, when he moved to the big city, my brother used his other name. I’d always known him as Michael but to his mom -- our mom -- he was, forever, Ben.

I was vaguely aware now that mom had her arms fully around me and I was crying, almost out of control. I wanted to run, I wanted to jump in front of a truck, I wanted kick sand in God’s face for this terrible loss. I don’t know how, but we managed to get to a park bench and sit. I laid down, curled up with my head on my mom’s lap. I could feel her sobbing silently, as her cool fingers soothed my temples, in a tender, caressing circular fashion. I shook, and moaned, and felt so completely lost. But my mom was there and I knew I’d get through it. But not yet. Not yet.

I was finally able to sit up and put my arms around her again and look her in her sad, sorrowful, grieving eyes -- and tell her that I knew Ben, as Michael, in Vancouver. Her tears began to flow again but she managed to tell me that she knew, or thought she knew. The night Ben/Michael ended his life, he hadn’t just called me. He’d called mom, our mom, the mom in my arms. She’d heard a bit about this "Jase" guy before, and he told her that he’d called me. She knew we were so very close. And when I came looking for her, mom panicked wondering if this Jason was Jase. By the time we began talking on the phone, she said, she knew.

Although this first meeting was three years ago, it was not the last with my mom. She got better and has stayed in Toronto and I’ve been out to meet Lynda more than once in Vancouver. And I tracked down my dad, too, and met him last summer, finally! He didn’t have any more kids, and never married, but he’s healthy. And the young man with his arm draped around him on the sailboat turns out to be a great cook! What were the odds my dad’s friend’s name is Jeff? It’s proof, if ever one was needed, that someone is watching over me. And hopefully Ben is there at his side. Somehow I just know he is.

Alexander Inglis (November 18, 2002),
In Toronto