JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Time now for "My Unsung Hero," our series from the team at the Hidden Brain podcast. "My Unsung Hero" tells the stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else. Today's story comes from Stephen Parker. When Stephen was a teenager, he developed a romantic attachment to his best friend. The two men were inseparable but never labeled themselves as gay. After they graduated from high school, Stephen went to college in Minnesota and his friend moved to California. Their romance faded, which left Stephen heartbroken and bereft.
STEPHEN PARKER: I was really lost in grief, and in retrospect, I recognize that I was seriously depressed. And at some point during the first year of school, I sat up all night to write a paper. And in order to prepare for that, I made myself a giant pot of coffee, drank the whole thing, gave myself an incredible panic attack, and in the midst of that panic attack, all this grief and depression came up. And there was a housemate in the house where I lived. I knocked on his door. We had been pretty friendly, and he ended up sitting with me through the night as I told the whole story of that relationship from start to finish.
In retrospect, I know that Bob, my housemate, was a gay man. So when Bob was listening to me, he showed enormous restraint. He didn't ask me, have you ever thought you might be gay? Because I couldn't hear that at the time - it would have been too much. It might even have pushed me into being suicidal. He just listened with an open heart through that whole night. And the crisis passed. Somewhat later on, Bob lost his funding in the theater arts department at the university. And he made his living by collecting flat stones from the shore of Lake Superior, and he would paint stuff on them and sell them as a craft. He made one of those for me before he left, and it has a picture of a drum and just the phrase - to a different drummer.
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PARKER: It was a wonderful message for me to really understand later in my life that he knew what was going on all along. And the fact that he exercised such careful restraint seemed to me to be so loving and so respectful at a time when I couldn't have heard him ask me whether he thought I was gay. Thank you so much, Bob, and if you should happen to hear this, you kind of saved my life that night. It was wonderful. And I'm so grateful.
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SUMMERS: Stephen Parker lives in Minneapolis and is a retired psychotherapist. You can find more stories of unsung heroes and learn how to submit your own at hiddenbrain.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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