Part 4

since he passed, long story but i know no one here where he died, but a very few... we had lived most of our time together in Florida, since we moved there when we were 26 and 27. I am so sorry for your loss Brent as well and have not read your story yet but i will! BRENT, I LOVE YOU AS WELL! I too am here for you! Literally anytime! my personal email is stevenoct204@gmail.com we cane talk more because as with you im sure, there's 26 years of stories with us and as of yet i have no friends here. Please lets talk more and email me anytime just let me know here if you do  so i can look out for it especially in my spam. AGAIN I LOVE you. I am so sorry for your loss of your DEAR Todd! I know every feeling you must have! I too am your brother, your family! anytime! Much love and faith in God! Shane

part 3

he too was a religious person..,., right at that moment his breathing slowed to one breath every minute then slower then his heart stopped and he stopped breathing, at that moment he was peaceful, more peaceful that i had seen him in 4 years, so for that part i was thankful!. After his passing, his family put all of his arrangements on me, which was ok with me, but its a very difficult situation with his family and the two sides, his parents divorced when he was 5 years old. so you get the idea. So he was cremated and i thought what a more perfect day for his memorial than his 50th birthday, June 9th. So this past month it has been so hard making all the arrangements,  ordering the flowers,  making that memorial video, i did that on my laptop. I have had to do every step without any help from his family, until his mother finally reached out to me and i met her and we picked out the flowers for around his urn at the service( which i paid for lol but that's ok she is 71) but you get the picture... i have had no support, he was my soul mate and my best friend for 26 years...

part 2

About 2 years ago when he progressively got worse, his lung capacity was 30% of a normal working lung. so at the end of march 2013 his wonderful dr. a woman who is truly a beautiful soul and has been taking care of him for the past 15 years, told us and i still remember the words she said to him in the ICU that day, at that time he was responsive, she said Billy this time i don't think your going to recover i want to be honest with you!  She so loved him, she cried with us, kissed him and hugged him and later she came and stayed with us daily for 2 to 3 hours each day had she said im here not as a Dr but as his friend. Anyway she was right, that conversation was on Saturday and on Monday evening he became unresponsive, he had to be on a morphine drip to ease the breathing and was getting morphine every 10 minutes, she said so he wouldn't feel as bad as he would have without it and it would make him not feel as though he were being smothered to death even though that was exactly what was happening to him. It was such a sad thing ..long story short his estranged family came and was there with me, i was his power of attorney, healthcare power of attorney and health care agent luckily we thought to get all this taken care of well in advance. he only trusted me. But on Thursday morning the nurse said he is holding on, that i should tell him its ok to go to be with god, to rest, to not fight anymore. This was the absolute worse thing i have ever done, but in some respects the best too. so i held his hand, kissed him all over and told him we loved him, i was there, i told him every family member that was there as well and that it was ok, he could rest, not fight anymore, i told him to just always go to the light..

My Dearest Brent

What a wonderful touching note you left me. First let me say it is so awesome that you too have such faith in God's plan. Now days not many do. Your words were so kind,  so touching. I can tell what a caring wonderful human you are! Forgive m,e as i am not as eloquent with words as you are but i think you will get what i am trying to say. I lost Billy on April 4th 2013, he was 49.. I am 51. We met when I was 24 and he was 23. (He will be 50 on June 9th, which is the day we are having his memorial) When i met Billy back in 1987, he was my first boyfriend, my first gay experience i n adulthood, as i was a very sheltered child growing up...lol. My first gay bar i was ever in i was 25. Billy was everything to me! One month after we started dating and had become boyfriends, he tested positive for HIV. I tested negative. He had been worried because a past lover had tested +. We (he especially) was so fortunate as a whole generation of young gay men our age were lost to this horrible disease. Many many of our friends. We lived in a town with a major university medical center, a teaching hospital. The infectious disease dept had started a hiv clinic a year after he tested + and he was followed closely, he had access to all the new meds, and quite remarkably did extremely well and up until the day he passed away, his HIV status (t cell counts and viral load) was GREAT. Sadly it was NOT HIV that would take his life even though he had survived 26 years being +. I will try and condense this but Billy was diagnosed with chronic lung failure 4 years ago. Over the past year he became worse, in and out of the hospital with pneumonia’s. At the end of March this year he was taken to the ER and found to have pneumonia in both lungs.

Just received word my sister is very near the end.  She's been fighting COPD for years.  Last week I saw her in the hospital and she wasn't good.  She's home now and there is not much more they can do.l just don't need this right now but life on life's terms.  And it sucks.