With Her Last Breath
Carol Eulogizes Helen
While I have always thought of Helen as “mine,” especially now, it’s wrong to shrink her that way. She was a good neighbor, a good friend to many. In adulthood she became a mentor to younger queer women who were still trying to figure out who they were allowed to be. She sat on the board of New Mexico’s chapter of the Trevor Project. Sometimes I wish I’d known someone like Helen when I was a teenager. Hers was a life that mattered to many people. It would be dishonest to say otherwise.
But she mattered the most to me. She was my mirror, my counterweight, my anchor—the spark of joy in a world that always felt unbearable to me. She was the best reason I had to keep living in the times when the darkness inside overtook me. It did that too often. I wish I could have been more joyful for her.
Helen Umstead grew up in a big lower‑case c Christian family in Minnesota, the eldest of four, with parents who were teachers and members of every committee in town. She learned to cook by ten, learned to break up fights by twelve, and by fourteen she could talk her wild younger brother out of trouble with his teachers. It wasn’t fair that she was parentified the way she was, but maybe that’s why she had the patience for someone like me.
When she came out to her parents as gay when she was a high school senior, it happened over dinner and was met with slightly awkward smiles, followed by her father patting her on the shoulder and saying, “Well, good for you, honey. Hope you find yourself a nice girl. Ma, can you pass the gravy?”
What she found was, well… me.
We met after college, working together in a bookstore in Chicago. We didn’t like the same kinds of books at all. Naturally, the banter—mostly gently mocking each other’s taste— was snarky and funny, and it meant we clicked immediately. She was cute and clever. She looked so cool smoking outside the shop, with her six earrings and her little knit beanie. I was never cool. I wouldn’t have even known how to try.
I couldn’t understand why she wanted to be around me. But we spent weekends together, saw shitty bands I didn’t know at clubs I didn’t want to go to—but I wanted to be near her so badly I would go anywhere. We cooked each other dinner. I went to her softball games and summoned my best game face to be friendly with the other girls on the team. She was a fair‑to‑middling hitter, but she had a 67 mph fastball that would ruin any batter’s day. Other teams tried to coax her away, but she just wanted to play with her friends.
There was a goofiness and a humility to her. She never came on like she was trying to impress anyone, and then she’d just knock your daylights out—with a fastball, a coq au vin, or some trove of random knowledge that made her a danger at Trivial Pursuit. Only a real dummy wouldn’t see her for the amazing, one‑in‑a‑million human soul she was.
And I loved her. Almost immediately. I just didn’t think I deserved to be loved by someone like her. Maybe I didn’t. But one night we went for a picnic on a hill to watch meteor showers—because of course she paid attention to when things like that were happening. And I brought wine, because of course I showed up with alcohol. We were tipsy under the falling stars and… well. The most romantic night of my life was also the night I came out, fully, to myself and to the woman I’d been in love with for almost a year.
I would find out later that at some point during our picnic, she surreptitiously texted her friend Angela: “HELP I THINK I’M ON A DATE WITH CAROL!!!11!!”
Kissing Helen was like being a closed flower bud that blossomed because the sun touched it. Opening up—even to let one person in—was the hardest thing I’d ever done. At some point in our increasingly passionate making out, I started weeping because I didn’t know what it was to feel this good. It was pressing on old wounds. But I needed it so badly. Like air. She kissed every tear away.
We became the lesbians I had never dared to dream of being: constantly together, sharing our own language. We moved in together after a couple of months because we already knew each other so well. She was my cheerleader, pushing me to write, pushing me to believe in myself when I didn’t. She helped me with my querying, because the grind of submitting to literary agents and waiting months for a rejection was more than my depressive personality could handle.
And yeah, she wasn’t perfect either. She’d get frustrated with me and slam doors and sometimes even go sleep at Angela’s when she really got upset, but I know it would have happened less if I had been better. If I could have been less prickly, less defensive, less needy, less me. We had a gorgeous life, despite my best efforts, and we even prepared to have children together, though we never pulled the trigger. I froze my eggs for her, though.
We had twenty-four imperfect but beautiful years together, but I wasn't there when she fell. I’ll probably never forgive myself for that. But she loved me so fiercely it hurt her, and I never understood that until now. I always thought she was the strong one, the steady one, the one who knew what she was doing. But she doubted herself too.
Is it tragic that we couldn’t say some of these things to each other? Yes. Will I probably always grieve some of what wasn’t, some of what could have been, knowing what I know? Yes.
I don’t expect I’ll ever love anyone like that again, or that I’ll ever be loved like that again. She was my true north, and even if the world hadn’t changed the way it has, most people don’t even get to have that even once.
They tell me when she was dying that her last thoughts were that she didn’t want me to be alone. That’s who Helen was. With her last breath, she loved me.
This is from a longer fic I'm working on
