I am feeling very reflective this morning and grateful for all the many people who have had an impact on my life. The 5th of October always does this too me.

I can’t believe it but 38 years have passed since my partner Barry died from AIDS. Even after all these years I keep a great sense of love and fondness for him….though no sense of grief remains….just a nice warmness and gratitude for all that he gave me. He literally saved my life. I’ve taken the good things he gave me and passed them on to the world.

Today is also the birthday of my mentor who died 19 years ago. I found a link to an old Association of Social Work with Groups newsletters this morning that includes a memorial article I wrote about Toby after her death.
https://www.iaswg.org/assets/docs/About/GroupNews/groupnews_january2005.pdf

Reading it again after 19 years brought a wee tear to my eye. There’s hardly a day that goes by where I don’t think about Toby and the HUGE impact she had on my life for those 10 years we worked together and loved each other. I think more about her than I do my dead partner!!! LOL She still influences my ‘work’ in retirement. As I was working on the report about housing and social care needs of older LGBT+ people that the charity LGBT Health and Wellbeing launched last week, I could hear her voice as I wrote. Her ideas about community, collective approaches and the link between private troubles and public issues were still resonate in my voice.

Outside of my parents, Barry and Toby had a the most impact on my life and the directions I have traveled. I will be forever grateful for what they gave me, and try to pay their gifts forward. Their lives live on in what I give to the world.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to realise that it is not what I accomplish or what I do that is important. Any physical artefacts I develop and leave behind will be quickly forgotten (if they haven’t been already). It is what I give to other people that is important. 100 years from now, no one will remember who we were. There may be some footnote or archival material about some of us….but we will be forgotten. And yet, what Toby and Barry gave me, I have given to others much younger than me. I know some of them are passing on to others what I gave them. Toby’s and Barry’s influence will live on for generations. Though it will be watered down by other important influences on people’s lives, their influence remains. They’ve contributed to the collective good that does exist in this world.

Let’s all remember the people who changed our lives and give their gifts to the next generation.