He was there every Thursday evening. I was going around to meetings like this one—a regular support group meeting on depression in men held at a local church hall—for the whole semester as part of my practicum assignment. When he had first arrested my attention, he was sitting four pews in front of me and across the aisle. I saw him in three-quarters profile, as he was concentrating hard on the speaker of the day. I remember thinking how handsome he was. Handsome and sad looking. He could have been anything between forty and fifty, I suppose. The pepper-gray, neatly trimmed hair on his head and in his beard and mustache leaned me toward fifty, but his sharp features and the fact that he seemed to have been depressed for some time indicated that he might be considerably younger and just was slowly giving up on life. Not that he had given up on himself. He looked in good trim and always wore well-pressed sports shirts and khaki pants.
I don't know what made my attention always return to him on those evenings. Maybe it was that he was always paying such close attention but never asked a question or made a comment of his own. Or maybe it was that little gold earring he wore in his left ear, catching the light off the chandeliers high overhead whenever he turned his head, catching my attention at the periphery of my vision. He seemed apart from the others around us, and that earring helped define that apartness. He just didn't fit in with what seemed to be a conservative crowd.
It was weeks before I got a glint into why he was there. For once I'd gotten to the meeting early—before he had—and I saw him enter the room. He was leaning heavily on a cane as he entered, his left leg appearing to be almost useless. And then I saw that his right arm hung limply at his side as well, as he shuffled to his seat. I turned and asked the man next to me if he knew the gentlemen who had just made this painful entry and long struggle to his usual seat.
"That's Tim," he said. "Tim Malloy. Guess you noticed that he has a limp and a problem with that arm of his."
"Yes, How, if I may ask . . ."
"Automobile accident. Killed the man he was living with and left him in this condition. Guess that's why he comes here. Guess the combined loss is what sent him into depression."
It took me three more weeks to build up the courage, but I finally hung around after a Thursday meeting, waiting for the room to clear. Tim, of course, was waiting as well, not wanting to get between anyone else and the exit and thus impede their effort to get on with their lives with some speed.
"Excuse me," I said as I encountered him struggling out of the pew. "You are Tim Malloy, aren't you?"
"Yes, yes, I am," he responded in a rich, low baritone voice. "And you're that college kid who's been monitoring our class, aren't you?"
"That's right. I'm Dennis. I just wondered if you are free and could catch a cup of coffee with me this evening."
Tim looked a little surprised at the invitation, but he responded with a little, wry smile. "Yes, I guess I could do that. I have nothing but time on my hands now."
Tim didn't even ask where we were going, and didn't even notice that I had worked my way back to near the university grounds, in a residential area, until I was parking.
"There's a coffee shop around here?" he asked, as I turned off the engine. "I hope it's not far. I can't move too . . ."
"I thought we might as well just come back to my place," I said. "I make a good pot of coffee—certainly cheaper. And, no, it's on the ground floor. Just over there. I'm sure we can manage, if you'll let me help you."
Tim seemed a little self-conscious about my supporting him to my front door, all tense and apologetic. But I did my best to help him feel he was doing most of the work in moving himself.
As we sat at the table, leaning over cups of hot coffee and a plate of cookies, I managed to get him to open up to me. I didn't say anything about being curious because I needed to collect case stories, but I'm sure that's what he thought I was doing—collecting case studies and giving back pat advice from the textbooks I was reading. In this, I couldn't help but thinking that he was being incredible patient and tolerant with me. He either was a very nice man or he was so clinically depressed that he had no pride left.
I could see his eyes moisten up as he, eventually, told me about his accident and the lover of his who had been killed in the car wreck. Getting to this point, however, admitting to me that he was gay and that his lover had been a man, seemed to be his greatest hurdle in our conversation. Once he saw that I didn't react negatively to that information, his story just gushed out of him. All of the loneliness had been bottling him up, and I could see the tension melt away from him in having someone to tell of his tragedy.
"And how long ago was this accident?" I asked
