PFLAG parents get a second chance at love

BY SHARON GITTLEMAN
FARMINGTON HILLS – When Tom Nelson's wife died of brain cancer in 2004 – after nearly 50 years of marriage, he thought his life was over. Then a strange experience changed things forever.
"Nobody can understand the grief of losing a spouse until it happens to you," said Nelson, 76. "I was really in the depths of depression."
He stayed with his daughter for a while.
The day he returned home, Nelson started to weep.
"I must have cried for a couple hours," he said. "I looked up and said, 'Trish, how could you be so dammed happy up there – and I'm so miserable down here?'"
Then he experienced a private miracle.
"A veil dropped over me and I felt so calm," he said. "She came to me in my head, like she's talking to me. I could hear her voice in my head and my heart. She said to me, 'listen, listen, listen.' Then she said to me, 'go back to PFLAG, it's more important than I thought.'"
Nelson and his wife, Trish had been PFLAG Detroit members for more than a decade, joining after they learned one of their six children was gay.
After several years, the couple only came to occasional meetings and events.
Nelson decided to return to the group.
"I felt, 'wow,'" he said. "I thought what she was telling me was so important and mind-boggling. I immediately fell asleep – the first good sleep I'd had since she died. I went to the next PFLAG meeting."
At that meeting, he ran into Linda Karle, 66, who'd been friends with the couple.
Nelson and Karle met for dinner after a Dignity mass following the meeting.
"I felt so warm to her because she was so close to my wife," he said.
Those feelings kept growing.
"She is the most gentle loving person I've ever known," he said. "She is a marvelous woman.
Nelson and Karle will be getting married next weekend.
"I'm so nuts about that gal. I'm so excited I feel like a 25 year old," he said. "I haven't talked to a single person who hadn't told me you're a lucky man."
Nelson is an unusually sensitive man, said Karle, a Grosse Pointe Woods resident.
"He's very able to show his feelings unlike a lot of other men," said Karle, a widow for the past 16 years and the mother of three grown children. "He treats me like a queen."
The couple thinks alike about most things, she said.
"Having a gay child helps," said Karle.
Last month, Nelson and Karle became co-presidents of PFLAG Detroit.
Karle joined PFLAG more than a dozen years ago when her youngest son told her he was gay.
"I had a hard time with what other people would think or say. It takes you a while to come out of the closet yourself," she said. "You meet other people in the same situation and you just blossom and grow. PFLAG was a godsend to me."
Today, the couple help present the program "Putting a Human Face on Homosexuality," at churches, university classrooms and conferences.
"We say if we didn't have gay sons our lives would be very, very different," she said. "I can't imagine not being involved in the projects I have and not knowing the people I've met or the friendships I've developed. Having a gay son has certainly been a gift."
The couple's children have important roles to play on their big day, with Nelson's son acting as his best man, Karle's daughter her maid of honor and other relatives singing at the mass and reception, she said.
Karle said she hadn't planned on getting married again.
"We're so lucky to have whatever time we have together," she said. "We're trying to make the most of it."
Love is what life is all about, said Nelson.
"It's not being loved, it's loving," he said. "I found that out when my wife was dying. I was able to give to her without any return. We all think about being loved, but loving unconditionally is a marvelous thing. That's what PFLAG is all about – loving our children unconditionally."