Terry Gal Gone?

[Loretta Ann]

Hi all,

I saw this posted on another forum. Can anyone confirm this?

She passed away on 20-Aug, from a combination of leukemia and
complications a fall down the stairs which resulted in serious injuries.
The notice was posted on the Yahoo TG_Fiction list.

[Beauty]

Hi Darlene,

I sure hope it's not true.

Beauty

[Lorna]

I certainly hope it's not true.

[Jaye]

I'm a member (under an alias) of that list. The person in question was a writer named Tom Parsons, aka "Princess Pervette". I don't know if he posted over here; I've not been around that long, and I don't know everyone yet. Tom was a good writer, with a great sense of humor. He had some interesting thoughts about life, as he came to the end of his, and he was kind enough to write them down. One of the list members who knew him posted this last message. It runs a bit long, but it's worth reading.

I have just received the following about Tom Parsons ("Princess
Pervette"), with his own statement about the subject attached. I am sure he would want everyone on this list -- where he participated with such energy and often glee -- to know what has happened and how he felt about it.

Vickie
************


I am sorry to inform you that Tom passed away in the early morning of
August 20 from a combination of leukemia and the effects of a fall down the stairs three weeks ago which resulted in serious injuries. One of his last requests was that the attached message be sent to those persons he was most fond of and held in highest esteem. I take no responsibility for the contents, and in fact would say "read at your own risk".

**************


Subject: Valedictory

If you're reading this, I'm dead. (I guess that's what they mean by "cutting to the chase.")

I am by no means the first person to observe that death, & the
prospect of dying, is the pornography of our time. You can discuss
the most kinky & depraved sexual activity in polite company these days, & nobody bats an eye. But mention the topic of death or dying...! On
at least two occasions in my life I have had friends who knew that they
were presently going to die. I would like to have addressed this with
them, if I could, but the conventions forbade it. People wonder how it feels to know you're presently going to die, but that's something you don't ask.

But now that I am facing my own imminent extinction I'm going to
talk about it, & the conventions be damned. I have been diagnosed
with an essentially incurable leukemia, & as I write this I'm, for all
practical purposes, dead meat. (People are beginning to bandy the word, "hospice," about.) (Details presently.)

I apologize for springing this on you so suddenly, but I've always
tended to avoid the moribund, myself. They give me the creeps--as if
they were bad juju. I don't know whether other people share this
superstition, but the dying are never treated normally. So many things you mustn't talk about when they're about... Since I wanted to be treated the same as always, I have kept my mouth shut. But now all shall be revealed, & talked about. If you find this disturbing, distasteful, or offensive, stop here & go off & read some relatively acceptable topic--perhaps the details of S&M sex between men &, say, under-age rhinoceroi. (Whips & chains...& tusks! Woo-hoo!) Otherwise, I'm going to impose on your patience while I ramble (&, I hope, gratify some people's morbid curiosity).

Details: my diagnosis is acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). It's a
killer. One's marrow is where blood is manufactured. The stem cells
there differentiate into red & white cells, platelets, & other formed
elements that enable blood to do what it does. In AML, some of these stem cells have a mutation that makes them unable to differentiate. Life, & nature, being what they are, these useless cells of course proliferate wildly until they've squeezed out the normal stem cells. So your blood gradually runs out of the formed elements that you depend on to live. It's a little like bleeding to death, only slower--& leaving no nasty, gory mess to clean up.

Chemotherapy for this is possible, but rough. *Really* rough. Not
one of those affairs where you drop in once a week as an outpatient &
can probably get back home on your own. We're talking six weeks in
intensive care, sick as a dog, bleeding from every orifice &, if you manage to survive all that, there's a 50-50 chance, at my age, of having gone through all that hell for nothing. If you do get a remission, there's no telling how long it will last, & my body has already been subjected to enough insults & humiliations by Bitch Nature that the benefits of remission are dubious at best. Moreover, even if I were cured, there would still be that sarcoma waiting for its chance. So I have elected to duck the chemotherapy & let happen what will. As I write this, I am living from one blood trans-fusion to the next--like a modern-day vampire. Believe me, there are many, many worse ways to die.

It's creepy, this, *deciding* to die. Because that's what I've
done, in effect. But you know, our culture has a tendency to value
quantity over quality. Not how good, but how much. But I'm the other
way: not how much, but how good. And when you apply that to life itself, in my situation, there's only one conclusion you can reach. Sir Peter Medawar would have had a fit. He was one of those who think that as long as you're alive, in no matter how wretched a state, that's enough. Sir Peter is one of my heroes, but in this particular case he was full of manure.

If I were in my twenties & in apparently robust health, I'd be
devastated by all this; but (a) I've been face to face with my own
mortality ever since my surgery in 2000 & (b) I'm 73 now, with a rich
& satisfying career & an extraordinarily rich & satisfying life behind
me. Nothing can take those from me.

My father, who was a Freemason, said that Masonry taught that man
was born but to die. A cheerful thought, no? But I suspect that
Nature's view is not greatly different: man is born but to reproduce & die.
Once you've passed on your DNA, or part of it, & seen it through to
adulthood, she's done with you. Well, I outfoxed her, at least a bit, by
refusing to pass on my DNA, but the old bitch is still going to have the last word.

And how do I feel about death? How does one react to the fetid
breath of Azrael, the angel of death? Supposedly, one is supposed to
go through denial, bargaining, anger, & finally caving in. I'm too
arrogant for denial; denial is for wimps. (Besides, I'd look pretty silly
denying something I've deliberately chosen by a conscious act of will.)
There's a fine line to be drawn here: you want to face up to your impending death without flinching, but you also want to continue living as normal a life as possible. Some pagan philosopher put it best: If you know you're going to die to-morrow, don't let it cramp your style to-day.

And I have no bargaining chips: I quit smoking--alas!--a couple of
years ago, & I live a pretty healthy life style. So I'm skipping all
that until anger. (It's ironic--I always promised myself that if I got
cancer I'd start smoking again. After all, you're going to die anyway;
what's left for it to do to you? And here I am with leukemia, low on
erythrocytes & on the all-important hemoglobin that transports oxygen to my cells. I need all the oxygen I can get, and can't afford to have any of it squeezed out by carboxyhemoglobin, the reaction product between hemoglobin & carbon monoxide. Oh, well.)

Anger--is that it? My natural impulse is to lash out: to say,
"From now on, the hell with everybody else. I'm going to live for
myself alone!" But that's no good, either; I've been doing that all along.
One of the peculiarities of my life has been that when I've lived for
myself alone, that's precisely when I've been of the greatest use, not only to myself, but to everyone around me. It was my youthful fits of
altruism that unfailingly left me in some hopeless dead end, no good to myself OR to anybody else: a burden rather than a contributor. So I've already *been* living for myself alone over the last few decades, with the usual beneficial effects for all concerned.

Beyond that, my feelings are inconsistent. On the one hand, I
resent Nature's great, final kick in the teeth--as who wouldn't?--on
the other hand, I find it a relief. I resent it because naturally no sane man takes pleasure in contemplating his own destruction, but also because, just when you're beginning to understand what things are all about, it's too late & you're dead. I've heard people say that once you see what things were all about, your task on earth is done. But I say, that be damned for a task. Once I've gained some understanding, I want to be around to enjoy the use of it & revel in it. Around here, I mean, not in some hypothetical wuzzy paradise that may or may not in fact exist. And don't tell me it's not for me to judge; I'm judging, whether it's "for me" to do so or not.

And I resent the increasing disabilities, indignities, & humilia-
tions with which Nature tells you that she's getting bored with you &
that you're wearing out your welcome. The alarms, the repeated visits to the physician, the repeated tests, the repeated trips to the hospital.
(It was the same in childhood, remember? If an unpopular child was at a
gathering, the other kids would mock & traduce her cruelly to show her that they wished she would go home. Nature treats us the same way when she wants to get rid of us.) And the discovery that you can no longer trust your body. (This may be a uniquely male thing; reading de Beauvoir in my twenties left me with the impression that women don't feel they can trust their bodies at any age.) And the disfigurement of your body--swellings, blotches & blains. Thomas tells us to rage against the dying of the light; but it's not the dying that's the problem, it's the waning. The waning, not the extinction. Nature is not your friend.

I'm sorry to abandon Pat this way. The bereaved have to suppress
feelings of resentment at being abandoned by the dying; Pat & I have
discussed this long since & I told her to go ahead & resent away to
the top of her bent. On the other hand, I'm leaving her modestly well off, & now perhaps she'll be able to sell this house, which she's never really
liked, & move to some place she finds more congenial.

It is a relief because I will leave so many unpleasant things
behind me (think of never again having to do taxes!) &, more
importantly, will avoid so many unpleasant things to come. This new century is going to be no picnic. The twentieth century was one of the most appalling for anomie & wholesale murder, but at least we didn't live in an anthill. In this new century, we will, and in that anthill I foresee a drastic suppression of the individual liberties that make life worth living.
The only alternatives I see are widespread, devastating disease or
widespread, devastating war. This was one of several reasons why I never reproduced: I didn't want kids of mine to grow up & live in such a world. For myself, every time I read of some new threat to (or, sometimes, from) the environment, I think I'd just rather evade all of those disagreeable eventualities; & if dying will enable me to, then maybe that's not such a bad deal, after all. (This must be one of the reasons for that resentment on the part of our survivors: we have ducked all that & left them to cope.)

And when you're about to die, you're *set free.* All our lives our
actions are constrained by their possible consequences. But now, you
have nothing to lose; there's nothing They can do to you, whoever "They" are. Subject only to your responsibilities to those close to you, you can do anything you want to do & don't have to do anything you don't want to do. (The problem with that is that I have found no particular use for this new freedom--but I'm keeping it in the back of my mind, just the same.)

Furthermore, if I die now, it will be at a point in my life where
the cost is minimal, or nearly so. For me the worst possible time to
die would have been in my middle twenties. By that time, I had invested
more than two decades of unremitting toil, of growth & learning, in the
hope of reaping five or more decades of payoff. To die then would have been to see all that investment shot to hell with nothing to show for it. But now I have enjoyed that payoff, in abundance, & while I'm greedy for still more payoff, I have to accept the fact that I've gotten a good deal more-- extravagantly more--than I could reasonably have expected, so that if I die now, I don't have much cause for complaint. If, as I do, you measure the value of life by the cost of death, & if you measure the cost of death by the imbalance between investment & payoff, then my life had the highest value in my twenties, rising from zero at conception to a plateau at that period & gently declining ever since. (It also follows that, contrary to popular cant, my life is not of infinite value. The value of my life has been variable; but infinity is a constant.)

But that's not what people wonder about, is it? They want to know,
do you (brrrr!) *fear* death? Fear it?--the fog in your throat, the
mist in your face? Well, at some animal level, I suppose I must. I assume it's a biological imperative wired into any animal with enough of a nervous system to feel fear at all. But my fear must be deeply suppressed, because I don't feel anything like that consciously. Resentment, yes, but not fear. And--for what it's worth--I haven't had any dreams that I would think indicated fear. Strange. Maybe my unconscious mind knows something I don't (it wouldn't be the first time); but I'm not betting on it.

And what do I expect after death? I have no idea. Certainly not
the Christian eschata--death, judgement, heaven, & hell. (Well, death
of course, but not the rest.) I hope I shall meet & know that sweet
goddess whom I've worshipped over the last half of my life. Logically, one would expect oblivion. Severe trauma can cause temporary oblivion; presumably death, the ultimate trauma, should also be oblivion. But that's hard to conceive, especially for someone as intensely alive & self-aware as I have been. If the long habit of living indisposeth us to dying, the long habit of self-awareness indisposeth us to oblivion. In any case, I shall find out, if one can find out, soon enough.

Regrets? They say that no man ever lay on his deathbed wishing he
had spent more time at the office. I'm suspicious of statements
beginning with "No man ever...," because human behavior is so varied that you never know when you will run up against a counterexample. But certainly *I'm* not going to wish I had spent more time at the office. I have few regrets, in fact. Most of the reason is that my life turned out far better than I ever expected in my early years. I never expected to be a professor. I never thought of myself as the kind of man who got a PhD. I never expected to be a published author, or a landowner.

If it should prove that my death is traceable to my twenty or so
years of smoking--which, according to my oncologist, it isn't--I don't
regret that either, & I certainly don't want my heirs to join a lot of
irresponsibles in suing the tobacco companies. That's sheer greed--&
evasion of responsibility. Damn that. I smoked with my eyes open,
fully aware of the dangers, & I accept full responsibility for the
consequences to myself. I want no meddler attaching my name to a class-action suit.

Most of my regrets are for things I couldn't help. Birth defects,
mostly. I regret that I was not born smarter. I especially regret
that I was not made more people-smart. I regret not having a stronger,
more athletic, quicker, better coordinated body. This disability, besides
making my childhood & adolescence a hell, because of the pervasive
athleticism & machismo among the middle-American gentile males with whom I grew up, also prevented me from being as able a keyboard player as I should like to have been--with so much of Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Liszt, Beethoven, & Schubert off limits to me--or as good a dancer. This kind of innate clumsiness isn't one of the things commonly considered birth defects, but that's what it is, none the less.

I also regret that my retirement turned out to be such a washout.
I had hoped for a rich & rewarding post-retirement career, something
that would keep me busy for another ten to twenty years & would provide--in my own mind, anyway--a sort of capstone to my life. (It would have had to be in my own mind, since your life has only such meaning as you are able to impose on it yourself, in your own mind.)

In my twenties I was bounced about by Fate in all sorts of unlikely
directions, a process that bestowed on me a breadth of background not
granted to most people (& that incidentally had the gratifying
side-effect of making me appear a good deal smarter than I actually am). This accidental bouncing around left me with a wealth of ill-assorted, oddball knowledge which has never been properly put to use.

Along with this bouncing about came a series of mysterious lucky
breaks, occurring at intervals throughout my adult life, thanks to
which I ended up much better off & a much better person than I would have been otherwise. And what I looked for, eventually, was something that would make me feel that all that bouncing & all that good fortune had not been bestowed on me in vain. It seemed to me that such a series of
extraordinary lucky breaks should properly befall someone of some importance, not me: someone who made a difference, a big difference, the kind of person about whom biographies are written, the kind of person whose papers go to some university library after his death, the kind about whom dissertations, & for whom festschrifts, are written. Not a nobody like me. And not having found this justification during my career, I hoped that it might show up after retirement. I had no idea what kind of thing this would be, & I didn't know how to find it (never in my life have I known how to find things like this--don't think I didn't look; it's impossible not to look-- but instead they have found me, repeatedly) except by sitting & waiting patiently for it to find me, as similar things have found me so many times before, which, alas, it never did.

Fond memories? Oh, lots of those, chief among them my marriage.
When I think back & realize how little I knew about the situation I
was getting into, it chills me. But my unconscious mind must have known that it was the right thing for me, & he it was who prodded me into taking that crazy, ill-advised step that has brought so much joy, peace, & contentment into my life. Better & better, year by year. Men who go on about what wonderful wives they have are a bit tedious; nevertheless, I'm going to bore you for a bit. The first weeks & months of marriage bring many surprises, & it was my blessing that the surprises were all pleasant ones. But in addition, as the years have gone on, we have become closer & closer, & she, in particular, has been wonderfully supportive. I sometimes think that in her case the Three Little Words are "Go for it." She has told me that so many times. Never questioning, never doubting, always encouraging. You hear of men who become achievers because their wives never stopped pushing. I wonder. I suspect it's more often because the husbands couldn't resist showing off: "Look what I've been able to do, Honey!"

But there are lots of other things, too. Of all the possibilities
known to me, I believe I had the good luck to live in the best time &
place. With all the appalling faults & shortcomings of our nation, I
nevertheless believe that all other places on earth are worse.

There's popularly supposed to be an ancient Chinese curse (actually
neither ancient nor Chinese, probably the invention of Raymond
Chandler), "May you live in an interesting period in history." Well, the 20th Century was an interesting period in history, & I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Interesting periods are great--provided you can observe the fireworks from a safe distance, which I did. And not just the
fireworks; the fun, too: the music of Stravinsky, the choreography of Balanchine, & the early-music revival; *Finnegans Wake*, the novels of C. P. Snow, & those of Robertson Davies; Picasso, Wyeth, & Henry Moore. Quantum mechanics & Goedel's proof; black holes & the 4 K background radiation; computers & radar. From Sen. Joseph McCarthy to gay rights & the New Left; from hearing this country called "Amerika" to the "God bless America" signs after the WTC attack. What a ride it has been.

In my private life, I'm grateful that I lived such a rackety
life between my twenty-first & twenty-seventh years. I'm glad I had
the opportunity to sleep around as much as I did. I'm glad I got away
with as much as I did. One in the eye for you, Society!

I'm glad I spent a year living as a young lady's kept man. That
year with her, humiliating & shameful as it was at the time, did much
to make me the man I am now, & if you're wondering whether that was a
good thing, believe me, it was, compared with what I was at the time, or
what I was on the way to becoming. I'm glad I experienced & did so many things that widened my horizons, while living with her--most of them illegal, or at least improper. Yes, it shamed me at the time, but you know, we all enjoy a disreputable past, once it's safely past.

I'm even glad I spent that term & a half at a theological seminary.
What a crazy thing for me, of all people, to do! Who could be less
fit to be a clergyman than I? It might easily have wrecked my life; it
was a classic instance of what I said earlier on about altruism in my life
going sour. It was a valuable & enriching experience for all that. I saw,
for the first time, an alien culture from close up; I met some remarkable
men, I learned some strange ins & outs of Biblical study & early church
history, & it was there that I made my first real contact with Hebrew, that
lovely language which has never since left me alone. It also brought me from the boondocks of the Middle West to New York, where I belonged. (Peace, you Middle Westerners who read this! I'm referring to Milwaukee in the 1930s & 1940s, which really was the boondocks, not to the Wisconsin of the 21st century.)

I'm glad I turned out to be so good at teaching & that I liked my
students & was liked by them. Such wonderful young people, & such fun
I had with them! If I hadn't finally gotten worn down by the commute, &
if the field of computer science hadn't started to drift in directions
that I found uncongenial, I would probably have continued teaching until I
dropped. At one point, that was what I hoped to do.

I'm also grateful for the series of chances that led me to take
ballet classes. Not my kind of thing at all, I should have thought,
not for a techno-geek like me; & yet my first experience of them, back in
my thirties, marked me for life. I remember wandering through an
unfamiliar building at Hofstra, in the 1980s, trying to find a committee meeting I was supposed to attend, & suddenly walking into a vast, empty room with mirrored walls, a railing along three sides, & a grand piano far off in the distance. My heart skipped a beat: a dance studio, obviously. I was surprised that the sight still meant so much to me, almost a quarter of a century after those first classes. It was as if fate, or something, was telling me that I'd be back taking classes again some day. Why? What was the attraction, for someone like me with zero talent? Why did I spend eleven more years floundering around, an obvious no-hoper? It wasn't just the pretty girls, I swear. I suppose it was because, on those rare days when everything went well, it felt so *good* to move that way.

And I'm grateful for the affection, & even esteem, that I've known
from so many people. After a childhood & adolescence marked by
neither affection nor esteem, except in rare & sporadic instances, this has been very important to me. I thank you, one & all, for that; you've
enriched my adult life; you've been terrific to know.

From a longer perspective, it has been interesting occupying one of
these bodies, even with all its defects & disabilities, here on this
incredibly ancient planet. I am no nearer knowing how I got here, where
I was before that, or where I will be after that, than I ever was.
Perhaps these answers will emerge after death, but I wouldn't bet on it. But what strange creatures we are! And what a strange place this is! People write about the strange planets & satellites we've discovered in the solar system; but is there any place around here that's stranger than this planet? --with its highly reactive atmosphere & covered with a sort of green stuff that turns out to be fantastically complicated solar-powered systems of chemical reactions, with other similar systems moving about in their midst. And among them, us: naked, bifurcated sex maniacs, running about on our hind legs, communicating by what Chesterton called an arbitrary system of grunts & squeals, & producing marvels of art & science. (And among us, *me,* possibly strangest of all...) With all the drawbacks & unpleasantness, I'm glad I had a chance to be one of these creatures. But once was enough. If there's reincarnation, it might be best if I were reincarnated on some far-off planet at the other end of the universe.

My last words? Probably some unintelligible croak as I try to
speak one final word of love & gratitude to Pat; but my OFFICIAL last
words are cribbed from Lytton Strachey, who is supposed to have said, "If this is death I don't think much of it."

Well, there you are. Not very profound--was it?--or very original
--after all that buildup. Indeed, I've hardly addressed the central
issue, the issue of being dead, at all. But how can I? I can't comprehend
oblivion, much less talk about it. So if I've done nothing but beat
around the bush, my excuse is that the bush itself is unreachable.

Maybe your time would have been better spent reading about those
rhinoceroi, after all.

Farewell...

Tom

Postscript for pedants: Yes, I know that the rhino has a horn, not
tusk(s).
But as I wrote the sentence, "tusks" had a better sound to it, so I
allowed
myself the liberty.

[Carolynn]

Hi Jaye!!

Thank you so much for posting Terry-gal's last message. Sounds like it was a life lived primarily by his own rules and philosophy, and lived well, and for the most part happily. Betty Davis said "Getting old ain't for sissy's", and I am sure he would agree, but he seems to have done it well.

[Anita]

I wish I could write back to him, but that's not the way it works, in this system at least. Yes, thanks for the reprint. It may not have been an original quote at all, but Terry Gal was the one who posted this great bit of advice to a complaining writer on another forum: "You've got to be man enough to buy your own dresses!"

[Celia]

That post brings Terry Gal to mind, alright--and Alan Watts. If indeed she's gone, I'll certainly miss her.

-Celia

[Loretta Ann]

Hi all,

I regret not having taken the time to get to know this person better.

Does any one know the tittles of any of her books. I would be interested in knowing what she wrote about.