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Back to Finding the Daddies, Within, or back to the Main Menu... In my last column, I talked about how losing our loved ones to AIDS has caused many of us to shut down, keeping us safe from further hurt, but blocking us from the close, intimate friendships and lovers that we crave. Now, I'd like to talk about another part of this issue that we need to acknowledge, before we can progress. The dictionary describes Nostalgia as a word formed from two Greek words: "nostos" (meaning "a return home") and "algos", (meaning "pain"). It further defines the word as "a longing, usually sentimental, to experience again some real or imagined former pleasure." In my own case, I have behaved as if I had turned 100, instead of 40 - Complaining about the younger generation, reminiscing about the "good old days", disliking just about anything modern, and defiantly dressing in ways that were popular during my happiest times (twenty years out of date). The losses I've seen prove that tomorrow is promised to no one, and that I want to treasure each day like a precious gem. If we remember someone who died years ago as a wonderful mentor or intimate friend, it might feel disloyal to remember them as anything other than perfect. Many times, when they died, we still had issues that we had never completed with them. Our grieving process may be incomplete, without some form of closure. We may even feel Survivor's Guilt for any number of reasons, and may put the past (and the members of our tribe who are no longer among us) on a pedestal. Keeping our memories sharp, fresh and current can be a comfort, and can even provide meaning to our lives, but it doesn't encourage us to move forward into the next phase. Our memories are becoming covered in dust, while the next generation is waiting for us to snap out of it and provide them with leadership, mentoring and a positive example. As a culture, we aren't taught how to grieve properly. In fact, we are taught any number of ways to avoid grieving: we are told things like "You'll get over it eventually", "It's better this way", "Big boys don't cry" or "Time heals all wounds". These are all fallacies, and they bring no closure, or real comfort. Our grief can become like a scab over a serious wound that never heals - We are "sort of okay" on the outside, but the underlying pain can remain unchanged for decades, unless we can really get down and grieve. There are excellent grief workshops available, and I recommend them strongly - Look in the phone book under "Grief". These workshops provide safe spaces for honest, open, and deep-level discussion, with homework assignments and true closure over the course of several weeks. I remember the folks I've lost, but I'm not crippled by the memories any more. These workshops are a great way to learn grieving techniques that we didn't learn from our family and culture. However, as I said before, they are only designed for dealing with the loss of an individual. In my own example, I felt like I had been dragging around a huge, unendurable sack of grief over a lost generation of gay men. I have lost so many of my tribe that I felt like I'd never catch up with the debt that I felt to them. I believed that I would best honor their memories by keeping those memories fresh. I lacked the key to moving on, though. I've found it now, and I'll be glad to share it. It has been said that no man can truly become a man until his father has died. I remember my loved ones and miss them forever, but I had to make a conscious decision to be their replacement. Our community needs more Daddies. I've said this before, and I can't stress it enough. Reaching outside of myself has been my salvation. I think of it as throwing open the protective storm-cellar doors and stepping out into the world again. If you feel inadequate for the job of mentoring others, please remember that you may be comparing yourself to an unreachably high goal, based on an idealized view of a perfect past that may never have existed. The Daddies that we may remember so fondly had their bad days and their faults, and it's not disloyal to remember that. You're good enough, now. Please reach out to others and make a difference, no matter how small. It's very therapeutic. Onward to Redefining the Tribe...

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