NOVEMBER 11, 1994 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 27

ENTERTAINMENT

Finding gravity's rainbow beyond rocky terrain

by Blake West

When you are new to grief, you learn that there's no second-guessing it. It will have its way with you.

Landscape Without Gravity

When Barbara Lazear Ascher's younger brother Bobby Lazear died of AIDS in 1989, she was ill-equipped to grieve. Expecting her grief to pass in time, she frequently second-guessed its hold on her until realizing that the only way out of the chasm was to journey through it.

The result of that journey is Landscape Without Gravity, A Memoir of Grief. It chronicles Ascher's process of grieving and serves not only as a personal catharsis, a literary work, a love song to a brother, but also as a road map guiding wary travelers through demon-filled rocky terrain.

"When you are first bereft you feel as though you're dropping off the edge of the world and that you're completely alone," says Ascher. "As you work through it, it's a rejoining of the world, but not as the person you were. It really is the classic hero's journey," she says of the grieving process. "You journey from familiar shores off into the unknown, which is terribly dangerous, and then back into the community as a wiser person."

Not unlike Sir Gawain, Ulysses, and the classic literary heroes who enter the abyss, Barbara Ascher set out on a pilgrimage to confront her fear. That pilgrimage took her to New Orleans' French Quarter to spend time with Bobby's lover, George, and full days talking to Bobby's friends in the gay bar where Bobby worked.

Going to New Orleans was crucial to rediscovering her brother, with whom, prior to his illness, she had a politely strained

relationship. “I fell in love with my brother through his friends," she says. "I would sit in that bar from morning until night and people would come tell me Bobby stories. He was wild and he was crazy and he was brilliant, and somehow, in the context of the love his friends had for him, I became less judgmental about the things that I wish I hadn't been so judgmental about. It was wonderful and I continue to go down there to be with George. I just like to go down there and soak up Bobby."

One of the reasons Ascher did not visit Bobby while he was alive, she admits, was a subtle fear of his life as a gay man. "I just didn't get it," she says. "Not only did I not get it, I was scared. I don't know what I thought and I felt foolish that I just didn't say to Bobby, 'What happens in a gay bar?' and then he would have laughed and said whatever he said. I'm sad about that, but I can't go back now."

Having essentially come out of a closet of misunderstanding in relation to the gay and AIDS communities, Ascher says the welcoming response from the gay community has been "the most heartened, most satisfying and most surprising. I was very worried because I was completely honest [in the book] that I didn't get it. I thought, 'Whoa, the gay community is really going to hate me for having been such a terrible sister.' So for me the most moving response has been the response of the gay community. The gay bookstores treat this book with such love and care, they push it, they support it, and to me it has been just amazing.'

Equally amazing has been Ascher's assistance of other siblings in grief. “Sibling grief is totally unacknowledged [in our society]," she says. "People say, 'How is your mom doing?' They don't say to surviving siblings, 'How are you?' To remedy the

situation, she heads Sisters,

an organization she developed in New York City, with off-shoot groups in many cities and smaller communities around the country. Sisters offers not only grief healing groups, but also volunteer oppor-

tunities, such as working with or visiting people with AIDS. "To go back to the heart of wound as a healer rather than a victim has great healing power," says Ascher.

While the group helps make the grieving journey a little easier than it might otherwise be for siblings, it has also given Ascher the opportunity to heal other sisterly wounds. "I wasn't the kind of sister necessarily that I wish I had been for my brother," she says, "but now I'm being a sister to other brothers and a sister to other sisters."

✓

Barbara Lazear Ascher (right) with her brother in 1988. This was the last time she saw Bobby before he died.

Jeffrey J. Gerhardstein, L.I.S.W., A.C.C. Individual and Group Psychotherapy

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