When they came for me there was no one left to say anything.”

After holding and then leaving my wonderful dear lover in the LA Hospital in July of 1978 I was bereft by the truth that I would never see her walking strong again nor hear her voice against my ear. The next day she would have a tracheotomy and a stomach feeding tube, that would be the last surgery she would have. There was nothing more that could be done. I would take her home after and weeks later she died. We held each other that evening and I heard her tell me she loved me, then I had to go. I wasn’t family, could not stay overnight. I passed a theatre on the way back to the cottage we rented while she had undergone the series of horrible treatments for her aggressive, rare head and neck cancer. We had moved from the Bay Area and left all our friends behind. The theatre I passed was playing Word Is Out, so I stopped to take my mind off my sorrows. I sat alone in the theatre but all around me were my people. I was so proud to see the brave ones on the big screen, coming out to the world. And at the end of the film when the credit’s started to roll the screen went quiet and there was the San Francisco Pride Parade that happened just the year before. And there came my marching Jacquie, walking tall and proud and smiling right under the middle of that big flag declaring “When they came for the Jews I said nothing. When they came for the Gays I said nothing. When they came for me there was no one left to say anything.” There she is still, always marching. Tall, proud, happy, strong. I had lost my old tape I had purchased back then. Just a couple weeks back during a conversation with a young woman she told me she was the Adair’s cousin! She gave me the new 30 year CD! And there was my sweet love marching forever. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. --Jewels Joyce Marcus