When we no longer touch

The choir director at Central Christian Church was Kris Anthony. He was a member of the Turtle Creek Chorale, their composer-in-residence at the time. In addition to writing and arranging music, he was a talented pianist/singer. Among other works, he wrote a song cycle for chorus called "When We No Longer Touch" based on poetry by Peter McWilliams combined with parts of the Latin text for the Requiem mass. It's a song cycle about confronting the five stages of grief, and finding a way to survive, when a loved one dies of AIDS.

I came across this beautiful piece written by Eric Watts, who was deeply moved by Kris' music. Reminded me of myself, singing at Kris' memorial service and crying so hard I missed my cue.

The local PBS station produced a movie about the Turtle Creek Chorale, the many singers lost to AIDS, including Kris, and the struggles of the survivors to continue living after losing their loved ones. I found this quote from the video that is really magical to me:

"When you come to the edge of all that you have known, there will be two possibilities awaiting you: There will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly."

The video is hard to watch but it's so moving. Here's what the National Catholic Reporter has to say about it:

Inspirational is far too pallid and inadequate a word to describe the next video, which I very much wish to bring forward, not only in relation to grief recovery, but in the war against homophobia. It is "After Goodbye," originally an hourlong broadcast on PBS in mid-1994. Since then, our parish and our campus ministry have used it time and a again, to gut-wrenching effect, as one viewer put it. Quite simply, it is the most powerfully moving video I have ever seen.

The focus is on the Turtle Creek Chorus in Texas, which had lost, at the time of production, 60 of its 200 members to AIDS. The film chronicles the men's efforts to grapple with death, loss and grief in their own ranks and, indeed, in their own persons.

Timothy Seelig, the director, recounts with humility and courage how he has been obliged to function only 10 percent as conductor and 90 percent as spiritual guide, father and "love symbol." There is also a support group for parents whose sons have died of AIDS, whose sharing we are privileged to hear. Friends and lovers nobly tell of their own intimate struggles and feelings, as do some who are themselves battling AIDS. Indeed, one of the most emotionally devastating features of this video is that several of those we meet were dead by the time production was completed.

Among these is Kristopher Jon Anthony, whose friend, caregiver and musical partner, Carolyn, tells her story, but who never speaks to his himself except through the eloquence of his music. During the year before he died, he composed a choral setting for a series of poems by Peter McWilliams, which follows the non-classic five stages of grief outlined by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross.

McWilliams himself sets an excellent tone in his own interview, affirming that the numbness and denial we experience in the face of grief is a healthy reaction, a "transformer" that "steps down the pain" so that we can gradually absorb it. Still, it is Anthony's music that is the soul of this video, surrounding it and suffusing it lovingly, connecting its tissues and acting as interlude between spoken segments.

Kubler-Ross participates fully, interviewed at her farm in Virginia, and she is superb. An exquisitely wizened Swiss-German woman psychiatrist, she has both earthy tenderness and raw strength. Almost an archetype herself, like some ancient sibyl or sculpted tree on an alpine summit, from her furrowed visage come statements that emanate from the depths of wisdom and pierce the heart. She compares the souls of homosexual people with AIDS to the Grand Canyon, carved by the elements and "open for all to see."

"They have been fabulous," she says. "They have taught us much about love."

This is an incomparable video, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in dealing not only with grief, but with prejudice and with death itself.