146

 "Harold was, of course, wroth about my getting the apartment.  He had lost his power over me and now he was having tantrums, and I just told him to get over it, got some furniture, and moved in just when my mother was admitted to hospital with a broken hip and stage four lung cancer.  We still met regularly for prayer, the four of us, at the apartment, but not every day.  Harold was still baulking about the amount of time that I was spending with my dying mother when I really ought to be spending more time in the work and supporting him, then Doreen started to agree with him.  I left, telling them how ashamed of them I was.  So, my routine was greatly simplified.  In the mornings I would take a long walk to meet with Doreen and Dianne in Shiloh House where we prayed and chatted together.  They both became amazingly supportive.  Then I would walk into East Vancouver, starting with the house where I lived for five years before moving downtown during the eighties, and from there I would retrace the various walking routes I had taken to St. James and downtown.  This was important for me because I had so lost my sense of myself while living with Harrold , that now I was step by step recovering me by revisiting my familiar old patterns from just a few years ago.  It was actually very effective.  After returning downtown, I would go to the hospital over the bridge to spend time with Mom.  I tried to see her every day, or almost every day.

"I was also spending the evenings in street ministry, with the various punks and sex workers who had befriended me, often spending hours together chatting in coffee shops. They were also surprisingly supportive and warm towards me as I was caring for my mom.  

"Mom died January 9, 1991.  The next day, Jason, who was a rent boy,  came over and we hung out for a while.  He just wanted to see that I was okay.  Harold actually visited, ostensibly for the same reason, but Jason and I were on our way out for coffee.  Then, just a couple of weeks later, he tried to turn the apartment into a love nest for him and his ex lover, Carlos.  and that was when everyone knew that the time had arrived for Harold to leave the Community of the Transfiguration..."