Sylvia


It’s Wednesday, January 17. I wrap my arms around myself as I look down at one of my dearest friends. She’s in a coma, beyond my reach, beyond all hope of survival. All night, her friends and family have been arriving to say their goodbyes. Nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, cousins. Friends from the library and the geriatric center where she worked. Friends from the town where she went to art school. Friends from different political movements she was involved in. Friends from the feminist, lesbigay, and Wiccan communities. I wish she were conscious. She would love seeing all these different people come together in one room. And in different circumstances, she would love being the cause of it.

Sylvia Stone and I met in March of 1992 during a self defense class called Model Mugging. Syl was a shining star in that class, making friends (and lovers) left and right with her easy smile and her charmingly intimate self-disclosures. I was a little intimidated by her and kept to myself. (Years later, Sylvia told me that all during the class, she’d assumed I was a homophobic Republican. Wrong on both counts.).

On the last day of class, we had a chance to order videotapes of our graduation. Sylvia was between paychecks, a few dollars short, so I loaned her the money. It was only five dollars or so, and I didn’t think she’d bother to pay me back, so I was surprised when she called me and asked for my address so she could drop the money by.

That “drop by” lasted almost three hours, as we started talking and discovered we had many things in common. We both loved action movies with strong female leads, Broadway musicals, all things Disney, stuffed toys, and camp. We bonded over Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Sylvia figured out right away what I was still half afraid to admit to myself. She took me to my first gay bar and gay pride march. She saw me through my first crush and broken heart.

She found out that I loved to write, and encouraged me to write for the local National Organization for Women newsletter. Shy about calling herself an artist (though she was one), she never tired of proudly introducing me, “…and this is my friend, Debra. She’s a writer!”

We were never lovers. What we had was better. We were best friends.

January 18. Midnight. There’s just a few of us left now. Me. Allyson, Sylvia’s partner. Sylvia’s brother and sister and their spouses. And a niece. We move around Sylvia’s bed, rubbing her hands and feet, tucking the covers around her more snugly, whispering words of encouragement and singing songs that she can’t hear. I teach the others some of the “revised” lyrics that Sylvia and I wrote to Christmas Carols (“Rockin’ Around the Solstice Tree,” and “There’s Nothing Like War for the Holidays”). Through our tears, we laugh.

The copyright of the article Sylvia in Lesbian Issues is owned by Debra L. Stang. Permission to republish Sylvia in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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