- It all started in 2009.
I had just moved from New York City to Los Angeles,
and like a day or two after I moved to Los Angeles,
I got a Facebook friend request from someone.
And I usually don't respond to friend requests on Facebook
from people that I don't know, but this guy was super hot,
so I said yes.
So then we started chatting back and forth,
and he asked me out on a date.
We had this amazing first date.
He starts talking about poetry and how much he loves poetry.
It was like, oh my God, that's so funny
because I love poetry as well, and I had found this poem
years ago somewhere online, but there was no author.
There was no name attached to this poem.
But I loved it so much that I printed it out
on a little piece of paper and I put it in my wallet.
Every so often, I would kind of remember that it was there
and I would look at it.
It was like, oh yeah, this poem is great,
and I would put it back in my wallet.
And then six months would go by and I would find it again.
So we're sitting there at dinner and I take out this poem
I said, oh you're gonna love this poem.
It's my favorite poem.
And I handed it to him.
He goes, is this a joke?
And I said, no why?
And he said, well, I wrote this poem.
My mind was blown.
I had been carrying his poem in my wallet for like six
or eight years, whatever it was.
It's still in my wallet.
Wait for the guy who kisses your forehead,
who wants to show you off to the world
when you're wearing sweats,
who holds your hand in front of his friends.
Wait for the guy who is constantly reminding you of how much
he cares about you and how lucky he is to have you.
Wait for the guy who turns to his friends and says,
That's him.
Wait for the guy who only wants you.
It was kind of like kismet, and we both realized
that it was sort of meant to be.
Four months later, we decided to get married.
And back then there were only two or three states
in the country where same-sex couples could get married.
So we got in the car, we drove to Massachusetts,
and we got married one morning on the beach in Provincetown.
So we drove back to Los Angeles and then we got an apartment
and we moved in together and everything was great.
And then four months later, he got sick.
I was at work and he was at home and he fainted.
He said he felt really terrible.
He called me and I said maybe you should go
to the emergency room just to check it out.
So he did and I left work and I met him at the hospital,
and they had immediately admitted him and I found him
in a room in the ICU.
He was severely anemic, and we found out
that he had non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
It was really shocking because he was in great shape
and he was very active.
They told us that it was really bad and they didn't know
if he was gonna make it or not.
And in fact, the very last thing he said to me was, he said,
I don't wanna die because I just found you.
Couple days into this, he went into a coma.
His organs started shutting down.
First his liver, and then his kidneys,
and then they were gonna put him on dialysis.
Then the cardiologist took a look and said,
there's nothing we can do.
He's about to go into cardiac arrest.
And they explained to me in very graphic detail what it was
that they were going to do.
And because I had a marriage certificate,
they asked me what I wanted.
And in fact, he had a DNR, a do not resuscitate.
So I said, well, if it's not gonna work,
why put him through all of this.
So let's just stop.
So as soon as I said that, they were gone.
There was this room that was filled with doctors and nurses
and technicians and monitors and IV drips and everything,
and like within 30 seconds, everything was gone.
Except for this one nurse,
who she sort of came up to me and she said, listen,
talk to him, because he can hear you somewhere in there.
And so I crawled into the bed with him and I started talking
to him and I told him that it was going to be okay.
I told him that I was gonna be okay.
I said, you're gonna be okay, don't worry.
Everything's gonna be fine.
He was still on a ventilator.
So his body was still moving.
All the other equipment had been moved out except
for this ventilator.
So he was breathing.
But there was this one moment where,
even though he was still moving, I knew that he was gone.
I don't know how I knew,
but I knew.
This body that I was holding, that that was not him.
That he was something else,
and that something else was gone.
And it was in that moment I realized that, oh,
so this, this body is not me.
It's just a body.
I kind of thought, oh, I don't have to be afraid
of death because,
I'm gonna be okay too.