Growing up, June was the time of year I looked forward to the most. The excitement of the school year ending paired with my birth month was enough to make any kid burst with anticipation. The last day of school would change year to year but even the latest day had me out of classes days before my June 12 birthday.
As I got older and graduated high school, birthdays didn’t seem as big a deal to me as when I was a kid and June became just another month in the year-round cycle of working. June started to buzz with excitement again for me once I started to work at Watermark and became more involved in the LGBTQ community. It became not only my birth month but LGBTQ Pride Month, which would start with Gay Day at the Magic Kingdom and all the events that went along with it and it would end with a big parade in St. Petersburg with St Pete Pride.
Because June was filled with so much to do, my birthday became a more intimate, quiet affair. It generally consisted of dinner out at a restaurant and a movie with friends. Then back to the house for cake and coffee. This is how I spent my birthday in 2016.
A small group of friends and I had dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and then saw a film called “The Lobster” at the theater in Winter Park on Saturday, June 11. We ended the night back at a friend’s house watching “And The Band Played On,” a 1993 HBO film about the early days of the AIDS pandemic.
Change out the restaurant and film and that is how most birthdays were spent, but I can’t tell you what restaurants we ate in or what films we saw prior to 2016. The details of the night are etched on my brain because, in the early hours of June 12, we watched the social media of friends and local news to find out that a man entered Pulse with a gun and started shooting. The hours and days to follow were chaotic, hard and emotional as media from around the world came to Orlando.
Details of those days are etched on my brain as well. The trampled plants outside the Subway on Orange Avenue that became a makeshift hub for reporters. The staff of Watermark grieving with our community while also working to find out what happened, and then standing together in our office as Jamie Hymen, with tears in her eyes, read the statement that would appear on the cover of the next issue that read, in part: “[I]t is more important than ever that the Orlando LGBT community join together and bolster each other, as a message to those who hate us: You cannot silence us. You cannot destroy us. We aren’t going anywhere.”
It was from that day that June became something different. Still a month of celebration, June is also a time to reflect on what we lost and how the community responded. Then last year, June changed for me again. Father’s Day became the last time I saw my father alive. He had been battling cancer for several years and the doctors said there was nothing more they could do.
I didn’t know that would be the last time I saw my dad face-to-face but I still remember details from that weekend that, when I think of him, will pop into my head. He had a hospital bed in the living room in front of the TV in those final months, and when I walked in he was watching the TV show “Agent Carter” on Disney+ and I remember him asking me if I had watched it. When I told him I hadn’t, he lit up like a kid with a new toy telling me about it and how good it was. I told him I would check it out. My dad and I always compared film and TV notes and recommended stuff to each other all the time. I still get sad when I watch something I know he would have liked.
I remember his laugh on that trip, more wheezy than his regular laugh but still enough to make me smile. I always felt proud of myself whenever I could make my dad laugh. When we said goodbye I told him I would see him later and headed home. He died less than a month later.
This will be the first Father’s Day of my life without him here. He wasn’t much of a chat-on-the-phone guy but I always called on his birthday and Father’s Day and enjoyed hearing his voice. This year, since I won’t be able to call him, I might just sit down and watch some “Agent Carter.” I hear it’s a pretty good show.
In this issue, we look at how the community is remembering Pulse, five years after the horrific event on June 12, 2016, and those impacted by the tragedy. We hear from Pulse owner Barbara Poma, Pulse survivor Brandon Wolf and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, and how they are feeling as we approach the five-year mark.
