Summary of Ruth Coker Burks & Kevin Carr O'Learry's All the Young Men

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In the early spring of 1986, I was at the hospital watching my best friend, Bonnie, who had tongue cancer and had never smoked a day in her life, get her feeding tube removed. She was thirty-one, and I was twenty-six. I was scared for her and her friends, who were all alone in the hospital.
#2 I eventually had to tell Jimmy’s mother that her son was dying, and that he was a homosexual. She hung up on me twice, but the third time was the charm, as she finally came to visit him.
#3 I went back to the hallway with the red door, and before I went back in, I had a little conversation with God. I knew that was Him working through Bonnie telling me I had to go back to Jimmy.
#4 I spent the night with Jimmy, and when he died, I called every funeral home in Arkansas. Every time, the mortuary refused to take him because of his condition. Finally, I called a black mortuary in Pine Bluff, and they agreed to cremate him.

Sujets

• Médecine
• Spécialités médicales
• Homosexualité
• Homosexuality
• Homosexualité
• Medical
• AIDS
• HIV
• Sexualité
• sexualité
• Sexualité

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669398271
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Ruth Coker Burks & Kevin Carr O'Learry's All the Young Men
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In the early spring of 1986, I was at the hospital watching my best friend, Bonnie, who had tongue cancer and had never smoked a day in her life, get her feeding tube removed. She was thirty-one, and I was twenty-six. I was scared for her and her friends, who were all alone in the hospital.

#2

I eventually had to tell Jimmy’s mother that her son was dying, and that he was a homosexual. She hung up on me twice, but the third time was the charm, as she finally came to visit him.

#3

I went back to the hallway with the red door, and before I went back in, I had a little conversation with God. I knew that was Him working through Bonnie telling me I had to go back to Jimmy.

#4

I spent the night with Jimmy, and when he died, I called every funeral home in Arkansas. Every time, the mortuary refused to take him because of his condition. Finally, I called a black mortuary in Pine Bluff, and they agreed to cremate him.

#5

When I was ten, my grandmother died in an automobile accident and was buried, like all of our kin since the late 1880s, in Files Cemetery. My mother had a big family fight with her brother, my uncle Fred, pretty soon after. She purchased every available plot in Files Cemetery.

#6

I knew I would have to bury Jimmy at night, as I could not afford anything nice for his burial. I went to a friend, Kimbo Dryden, who worked at Dryden Pottery, and he gave me a chipped cookie jar. I poured Jimmy’s ashes in it.

#7

I waited for a full moon to dig Jimmy’s grave. I placed him in the grave, and I prayed for him. I rearranged the pine needles to hide what I’d done, and I looked around as a wind blew through the trees.

#8

I would never want to steal Sandy’s man, because she was the only one who could keep me busy with conversations. I didn’t like my husband, and I didn’t want another man. I was born ugly and would die ugly, so I didn’t think I would get another chance at saying yes to any man.

#9

I was so close to Jimmy in the hospital, and yet I was still so scared. I was selling time-shares at the resort, and my job was to sell people something they didn’t need.

#10

I had a reputation for being able to sell houses quickly. I would sit with my arms crossed, and the buyers would eventually uncross their arms, a little bit at a time, and then eventually pull them back up again. I had to keep breaking that pact and getting them to agree to buy.

#11

I had bought a house in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and I was doing well on my own. I wanted a husband. I could hear the phone ringing as I got out of the car. Is this Ruth. It was a stern voice. Yes. I said. This is Sister Angela Mayer. We have a patient that we need removed. We cannot care for him here.

#12

I met with Ronald Watkins, the patient, and his sister. I could tell he was close to death, and I felt guilty for taking care of him, but I did it anyway.

#13

I began to spend a lot of time at the county courthouse, visiting the judge to get indigent patients buried or cremated as quickly as possible. I would bring in the patients, and the nurses and doctors would think I was the first person to tell them it was wrong to have a child there.

#14

I would bury the ashes of the patients I’d killed, and by the end of the summer, I’d buried eight men from all the hospitals. It seemed like so many then.

#15

I would visit patients at the hospital, and one in particular, Howard, changed everything for me. He had pneumonia and what looked like bad thrush in his mouth when I got to him. I knew his doctor could see it, even if he was just standing in the doorway. The doctor was all done up in his space suit standing there, and he scolded me for not wearing a mask.

#16

When I went to get tissues, I found a group of nurses staring at the food tray. I told them not to disrespect Howard like that, and that one of them had the strength to help him.

#17

I took Bonnie to her oncologist, Rabbi Bruce Leipzig from New York. He told me that Bonnie had only a three percent chance of living through the chemotherapy. I’m gonna die anyway, try it on me, she said.

#18

I was at St. Joe’s looking for a doctor one day when a nurse told me about a library at the Med Center in Little Rock. I went there and began researching AIDS. I learned that HIV is a virus spread through sexual contact, blood transfusions, sharing needles, or mother to child.

#19

I had to help Bonnie with her feeding tube in and out of the house. She had lived like this even before she was sick, making do. I called the housing assistance office for her, and they gave me the runaround. We just went down there and solved the problem ourselves.

#20

I was open with Bonnie about helping people as they died, but I kept Sandy at a distance. I knew she hated gay people, and she would say that men were unnatural and against God.

#21

I was raised in a Southern Baptist family, but I wanted my daughter raised in a softer religion. I chose First United Methodist Church because it was sacred to me. It was where God lived in Hot Springs.

#22

I was divorced from my husband, and people assumed he had hit me because I had chosen the social death of divorce in Arkansas.