Celebrating the life and generous character of Darryl Gossett

 

Jack and Darryl at Tybee

Photograph Credit: Steve Killian

On June 7 we took Darryl's ashes to The Graveyard Fields and Waterfall on the Blue Ridge Parkway to flow in the waters there. Nearly one hundred people: friends, family, acquaintances, neighbors, and many who knew Darryl as long as I did or longer, expressed their affection for him, the sense of loss we all feel, the sadness of such a sudden and unexpected death. The beautiful mountain landscape and waterfall provided the ideal setting for those of us who made this pilgrimage to honor Darryl. Long may he remain in our hearts, our feelings, out memories, and our thoughts. I still recall Darryl's reading me the story of spirits who said that they would exist so long as loved ones remembered them. 

Here are some photographs of our ceremony. I want to emphasize that for me the task now is to move from grief to celebration. Darryl deserves our admiration and praise for his generosity, his contribution to medical writing, his sharp wit and intellect, his lack of selfishness (almost to a flaw). He had incredible empathy for others, always kind words for all but the most wicked. 

As a volunteer, in the 1990s, he worked in a hospice for those dying of AIDS. In 2008 and 2010 he served as a volunteer at Kalani on Hawaii's Big Island, working in the kitchen and helping with high tech development in Kalani's administration. In his decade of service as an editor and writer at the Emory School of Medicine, Darryl published extensive articles on health research, including an article on Alzheimer Disease that won an award from the American Medical Association in Atlanta. Darryl served as President of the Atlanta Chapter of the American Medical Writers Association. Darryl also attended numerous medical conferences, including a program in Neurology given by Harvard University in New England. After Emory, Darryl served as a medical editor and program director at WebMD. Among other accomplishments, Darryl taught Creative Writing in the Adult Education Department of Emory. He also wrote numerous articles for the Arthritis Foundation. 

Few people have the blessing of such a remarkable 35-year relationship, one  that has made my life rich and rewarding. Darryl gave my life passion, appreciation for the good qualities of life, the joy of an intense and beautiful intimacy. We traveled over much of the world together year after year. How fortunate I was the night that handsome young man walked into our mutual hallway, wearing a long nightshirt, carrying a copper candlestick with a burning candle, and telling me, yes, he knew who Karen Finley is, that he loved her art work and performances. 

Steve, John, Carl, Lillian, and Kelly

Darryl waves from the Top of Graveyard Falls

On the Blue Ridge Parkway.

 

Morning Ceremony

 

In a private, intimate ceremony this morning, I gave some of Darryl's ashes to Black Rock Mountain, pictured here beside our favorite cabin. It is a halcyon day, quiet, only a few birds chirping their songs. Several of us will give more of Darryl's ashes to Mount Pisgah and Graveyard Falls, where we have enjoyed being together.

As a secular mystic, today, I have felt a psychic presence. I wore Darryl's shirt that fits me to a T, pictured above. Is it a message to me from Darryl's after-life,  urging me to continue finding joy in life? Of course it is. He loved me beyond boundaries.

Amsterdam and Paris

 

Notre Dame

"Before me all at once was the Place de la Concorde, beneath a deep navy sky. Fountains, Olympic statues, and music from within the park brought a profound harmony. I sat in this glow, staring out over the Seine, which itself was sparkling with lights and boats, toward the Eiffel Tower, to the side of which a crescent moon and Jupiter dominated the clear azure. On the other side of the tower, Venus shone. My blood rushed, moved by the perfect coherence of all the light, fountains, river, tower, parks, The Avenue des Champs-Elysees, and kaleidoscope of people who seemed to share my sense of wonder. " 

Journal 5: July 12, 1970. Paris.

Paris and Amsterdam have been such  major players in the episodes of my long life. Darryl and I went there many times. We first went with the Killian brothers, Steve and David, in the summer of 1993. We took the train from Paris to Amsterdam, meeting a host of zany people on the rides. Dar and I went to the French Open as well as lounging in the Luxemburg Gardens and seeing all of the glamour of Paris day and night with the Killians. We all naturally enjoyed Amsterdam.

In 1995 Dar and I met in Paris and watched Lindsay Lee play Amelie Mauresmo, future #1 in the world, at the French open. It went three sets. We all hiked up to Sacre Coeur after her match.

In 1998 Darryl played in the Gay Games in Amsterdam. He played tennis and appeared in a play about Poseidon and Pelops. He won a medal.  

In 1999 we took Mom to Paris and Amsterdam: She loved the art of the Louvre and the ambiance of Amsterdam. She met a favorite author of hers there at our hotel. 

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/13398697/1787205128942691823

Pont des Arts

  

Amsterdam. 

God

 

"There are moments when music is to me the very presence and magnificence of God. Pure ecstatic being flows forth, an ethereal fount to refresh the weary soul. My tattered spirit drinks with gratitude this morning, as fog billows through the towers of Midtown.

How is it that I am so blessed to be able to sit here contemplating the mystery of being, as I hear this purifying music, in the elegance of this high office? I hope my meditations will one day offer others recompense for this Epicurean Ataraxia. "

Journal 42: December 15, 1990 

(Written in the Library of the High Museum, which I designed, and decorated with furniture from the Decorative Arts collection, five flights above Peachtree Street, facing the Richard Meier building. It no  longer exists, alas.)

After viewing several art gallery openings with Darryl in Manhattan, I wrote,

"The best show by far, better than the contemporary art, was the show of Egon Schiele watercolor, gouache, and crayon studies of himself, his wife, other portraits, and children. The emaciated, powerful, multi-colored  figures, many nude, stared from the gallery walls with a presence missing from the works of the contemporary art we saw.

January 13, 1991

Reading my Journals from the early 1990s is more moving and rewarding than I expected. It is stepping back into the world then, stepping back into my prior person to experience him with all the immediacy and the passion. I post the two short quotes above for a reason; then, I was so aware that if god had any meaning, we find it not in church, but in art. I think I still believe that, god is manifest in gorgeous music, in painting, in literature, in dance. God is not some bearded old man full of judgment, not even a he or she, but rather the enduring beauty, the sublime manifestation of our collective spirit in, say, Mozart's 24th piano concerto, or Egon Schiele's self portraits. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5umKzcLwHPQ

Mozart's 24th played by Glenn Gould.

Red Glove

Darryl and I had this print of Schiele's study of himself in our living room for many years.

Home Sweet Home

 In the summer of 1991, I wrote in my 44th Journal:

" The emotions, the feelings coursing in my blood, in Darryl's blood, are so powerful, so intense, that I wonder when we are together that the world doesn't shatter and hurl all there is into oblivion."

In 1992, as we were both embarking on new jobs, Darryl as a medical editor for Emory Medicine, and I at the Ben Franklin Academy as philosophy teacher and Library Director, Darryl found us our new home:

We have lived here for 33 years.

 

A small sample of the art we both collected and loved:

 Buddha Handmade in Nepal     

Painting by

Larry Connatser

(detail)

 Whirling Dervish

   

Day of the Dead

Aristide Maillol:

Pan and Psyche

Woodcut

The City that Never Sleeps: New York

 

New York has been such a formative psyche shaper for me ever since Buz and I drove there in the 1960s in his Yellow Karmann Ghia. 

Darryl and I had such brilliant times there. Our very first trip together in January of 1991 was to New York on the train with a stopover in Washington, DC. Teacher that I always am, I had to share every painting in the Metropolitan Museum that I love. We looked at every Post-Impressionist painting, the Picassos, and enjoyed a display of the art of Gilbert and George. 

Naturally, we also had to go to Cafe Reggio and Greenwich Village, old haunts of mine from the 1970s. No doubt Darryl had to roll his eyes at all the things I wanted to share. But this trip set the stage (so to speak) for so many visits to this high energy city for theater, art, tennis at the U.S. Open, calmly crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, eating wonderful dinners at the fabulous restaurants, and seeing shows in the Oak Room of the Algonquin, our favorite hotel.  

 

Of course, on our first trip to NYC, Darryl's experience of the Brooklyn Bridge was not so calm. After an exciting night at CBGB, Darryl was swept up by a protest march against the Iraq War. Some fell from the bridge when police cars pushed into the crowd. Darryl phoned me at 4 AM (we didn't have cell phones then) to tell me he would take a taxi back to our hotel. 

New York is so exciting in the winter. Here is Darryl walking on the Avenue, 5th Avenue, along Central Park which was so gorgeous in the snow: We even watched ice skaters gracefully enjoying the cold

Here is another fabulous stay we had there:

https://zonetotal.blogspot.com/2008/09/lights-were-bright.html

And another:

https://zonetotal.blogspot.com/2005/07/recalling-jamie-cullum-and-algonquin.html

We were always so engaged with New York, comfortable in its parks, enjoying gallery openings, one where I introduced Darryl to Allen Ginsberg who was showing his photographs, too comfortable at a club watching the Academy Awards when Brokeback Mountain won best director but lost best film. We took the subway everywhere, including the U.S. Open, enjoying every season, going to venues Darryl introduced me to, such as the Oak Room. Darryl often knew everything that was happening in the city, taking us to see the profound two parts of Angels in America on Broadway. 

Darryl even flew alone to New York a few weeks after September 11 (9-11) to see Strindberg's =Dance of Death= with Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren. Intellectually, and in the art world, New York was Darryl's Theater. 

 Darryl in Central Park

 

Darryl and Jack: Rendezvous in the Hallway

Karen Finley

 

https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/karen-finley-performance-art-kembra-pfahler

The story of how we met deserves a retelling. One night in the apartment complex Darryl and I called Barcelona Heights, because it reminded us of the Spanish buildings we saw in Barcelona, the power went out. Darryl and I lived in adjacent rooms. Darryl emerged from his in a long nightshirt, carrying a copper holder and lit candle. He was to my mind Wee Willie Winkie.

We talked a while in the hallway. The power returned. I asked him if he had a VCR. "I am showing an artist to my class at the Atlanta College of Art," I told him. "I need an edited copy of a video I already have."

"Who's the artist?" Darryl asked.

"Karen Finley."

Not another person outside of ACA that I mentioned her to had ever heard of her. Darryl loved her work and her performances, he said. Yes, he would lend me his VCR to make the edited copy and wanted to see it when I was done. 

Years later when we saw her performance in Atlanta of "Martha and George," we met her backstage and told her how our love began because of her. Laughing, she replied how charmed she was, how glad she had played such a part in our relationship. 

After I had taped the copy, shown it to my eager class at ACA, Darryl and I watched the episodes over a glass of brandy. Thus began our romance.

_________

{ In 1990, the year that began our relationship,  Karen Finley mounted her poem, “The Black Sheep,” cast in bronze right at the corner of Manhattan’s First Avenue and Houston Street. “We are the sheep with no shepherd,” she wrote. “We are the sheep with no straight and narrow. We are sheep who take the dangerous pathway thru the mountain range to get to the other side of our soul.”} 

--From the Interview above. 

Everything and Nothing

 

Since you left

Absence has moved in

The rooms of our home

We filled with our art

Our travels our nostalgia

The Whirling Dervish

You brought to me from Egypt

The wooden Vermont cow

Shaking its head

At the loss of you

Feel the emptiness

For you are everywhere and nowhere

We are ghosts you and I

Among the spring azaleas

As the dogwoods open

As the honeysuckle fragrance

Reminds me of I forget what

The blooms fade as we have

And I am the sole vessel

Of our feelings our dreams

Our desire to grow old together

You are my compass 

With no magnetic pole

Our joy I can only recall

The guide to  every action adrift

My mind is filled by you

Though the sails of our lives

Can not unfurl

Though your fingertips tap

Subtle love upon my navel

Darryl Gossett

 

Darryl, weeks before his death...

Husband, brother, uncle, cousin, friend, writer, editor, kind and generous humanitarian, Darryl Gossett served as a medical editor for over a decade at the Emory University School of Medicine. He won awards for articles he wrote on Alzheimer's and other medical advances. He also served as a medical editor at WebMD. He was the president of the Atlanta Chapter of the American Medical Writers Association. He also taught Creative Writing at Emory, and published a music review in one of Atlanta's journals. Darryl was a man of great creative ideas and an astonishing empathy and sensitivity.

Darryl spent the last 35 years of his life with his husband and life-long friend Jack Miller, and with the many friends and relatives they both loved.  

Darryl's death was not expected. A month before his admission to Emory Hospital, Darryl was fine, in good health. Yes, he did have Diabetes. His doctor recommended and prescribed Ozempic for the Diabetes, the high blood sugar Darryl had, and his being overweight.  Gradually, Darryl ate less and less, even had nausea and vomiting when he drank water or anything else. Gradually he grew weaker and I encouraged him to see the doctor, and then to go to the hospital. Neither he nor I saw his condition as life-threatening. 

On the Monday when he finally agreed to the hospital, we called 911 and medics carried him to an ambulance. Emory Emergency admitted him weak and seriously dehydrated.  The next 20 days, first in the ICU, then in a regular hospital room, and finally in hospice were as traumatic and grueling as any either of us ever experienced. The Liver specialists and the Kidney specialists at first gave us hope he would recover. Yet, after dialysis, protein nourishment, and of course, water and hydration, Darryl did not recover. He suffered kidney and liver failure, though the liver specialists told me he would have recovered if they could restore his kidneys. 

Darryl was 64 years old, soon to be on Medicare. He came in and out of consciousness. Most of the time he was convinced he would die. He felt he was dying, he told me. though I told him he would recover throughout the first week. That is what I believed and hoped. But he did not. The doctors told me he would not recover full consciousness or strength. On one evening, Darryl told me he was afraid, but only that one time. 

To watch him continue to weaken was heart rending. Even on his death bed, Darryl was beautiful, kind, without pain, and smiling. We bonded those 20 days on a deep level I am unable to convey. His changing face and his comments, his expressed feelings for me and our love for each other, all will accompany me into old age and my own death. Contrary to popular belief, life really doesn't go on. It transforms into a zombie-like state for the lovers who remain a while longer in this world. We do not lose our humor or our sense of beauty. Our values remain. Yet, our world, which itself is under misguided human control, is failing. 

Friends and I shall carry Darryl's ashes in early June to The Blue Ridge Parkway, a place Darryl and I loved, where we spent so many times together.

Darryl in Hospice.

Darryl waving from Graveyard Falls on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

From Valentine's Day to Springtime

We have enjoyed Winter and Spring in Rabun County, including The Rabun Lake Hotel, Helen's Cottage in Dillard, and dining at the Woodfire Grill in Highlands, and  Hush Cuban Restaurant in Clayton. We have also stayed at Blackrock Mountain State Park with its trails and sweeping mountain views. What a perfect area of North Carolina and Georgia to be in touch with nature, to have tranquility, to hear ones own thoughts.

 

Lake Rabun Hotel

 

  Hush Cuban Cafe

Art History has also been a pleasure.

Here Jan Steen shows us how

a 17th Century Dutch family

enjoyed living, a lesson for us all. 

The Arctic Vortex (snow, sleet, freezing rain)

Enjoying Cora, the Winter Storm, converting Druid Hills into a winter playground. 

Best of All Possible Worlds (Thoughts from the Mountain)

 

    

Giotto: Judas Kiss

     The Monadology of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz fascinated me. My own interpretation of it came to be that the Supreme Monad, the Greatest Being, was God; all other beings, all monads, of which there are many, channeled that Being as adequately as they were able. Leibnitz was a panpsychist who held that everything possessed some form of consciousness. Humans were the highest form of being after God. As such, the creations of humans: art, science, literature, monuments to God, all  embodied what emanates from the Supreme Being. Plato's Forms of Beauty, Truth, Justice, likewise come from God. Our world flows from Godhead; hence, this is the best of all possible worlds. 

  Let us consider the humans who became Gods. Jesus comes to mind, as do Quetzalcoatl, Ganymede, Siddhartha-Buddha, and a host of holy men. Monads become the Supreme Monad, Yes? Yet each of their stories are tainted with suffering, violence, betrayal. Think of Saint Peter cutting off the ear of a Roman Soldier as Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss. Are the Greek philosophers correct that evil is no more than the absence of good?

     Hasn't History proven Leibnitz wrong.?  Ten thousand years of war, torture, starvation, violence, rape, and murder; but not one century of Peace, how can this be? 

    Despite the life long efforts of pacifists, bodhisattvas, activists for civil disobedience, missionaries, humanists, philanthropists, of all the monads who have worked for Peace and prosperity, the Supreme Being, hasn't The Great Monad failed? Or more truthfully, there is no Supremely Good Monad, just as there is  no Supreme Evil. There are only flawed, limited monads whose confusion, whose inaction,  like that of Hamlet, causes more violence and death. As Hamlet mouthed it, Nothing is either right or wrong, but thinking makes it so. We are all Hamlet 's ghosts. 

   The world today is as confused as ever, violence and cruelty in every dark gathering of compass-less monads. Today, I stand on a balcony, viewing the fog as the mountains and world beyond fade into seeming non-existence. 

   Humans are mostly windowless monads (to use the Leibnitz term), unable to see or feel beyond their private needs, their private desires. Empathy and compassion escape us as does the universal harmony Leibnitz or even Pythagoras dreamed of. Ours is not the best possible world; and we are destroying what exists with our greed and lack of vision. People, monads, would rather cut off their ears, blind themselves like Oedipus, cut out their own tongues, than face the truth of our undying original sin, indifference. Our pretense of caring falls far short of action. We crucify our entire planet rather than admit the truth of what we are doing. 

    The fog, the light rain, the stillness have their own beauty. Think of what nature there is, of the art, literature and music we create as a vast mandala, such as Buddhist monks make. We shall brush it all away. Yet how divine, how sublime, that such beauty ever existed at all.