Here’s some quick biographical details so if you’re new to me and my story, you won’t get too confused. I was raised in Seattle, Washington, the eldest child of three. My father was a professor of oceanography at the University of Washington and my mother taught various sciences at the local junior college. I grew up in the city proper, just east of the University in a neighborhood which was faculty ghetto at the time my parents moved in but which is far too expensive for that these days. I went to a well regarded prep school, Lakeside, for high school and then headed off to Stanford University for undergraduate (much to the chagrin of my mother who had gone to UC Berkeley). I returned back to Seattle for medical school, and then went back to California and UC Davis for residency, fellowship and my first faculty position in geriatric medicine.
I met Steve (Jon Steven Spivey), my first partner about six months after arriving in Sacramento, finally came out officially (to the surprise of absolutely no one) and we lived there together happily for nearly ten years. In the late 1990s, UC Davis had a melt down, the clinical geriatrics program was caught in the cross fire and I was suddenly out of a job. Ultimately, I took the position I currently hold at University of Alabama Birmingham and Steve and I moved cross country. Steve became ill with pulmonary fibrosis about a year after we arrived and I cared for him for another two years until his death. A year or so later, when I was toying with moving back to the west coast, I met Tommy (Louie Tommy Thompson Jr.) who became my second partner. Together we developed a life in Birmingham full of professional accomplishments and music and theater.
Tommy, who had never had the most robust health, developed serious heart disease suddenly in the spring of 2018, was hospitalized, and died suddenly and unexpectedly from his heart problems. We had fifteen years together, including four of legal marriage. I am adjusting to being alone again. At fifty six, I’m young enough for a third act but I’m too darned tired to train a new husband at this point. I’m going to content myself with my aging self, my aging cats, my aging patients, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham, and my theater peeps.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 