Alicia Abbott

And, you know, that was that was quite intense for me, you know, especially because I was reading all of this without having him around to ask questions of.

So I had to sort of make sense of it on my own.

Yes.

I was of two minds about reading the journals.

On one level, I felt like journals are private and they're personal.

And you write things in a journal that you don't say to your closest loved ones.

And there was part of me that felt like I should respect his privacy.

But then there was also another part of me that felt like, A, we had been through so much together, meaning –

I cared for him as he was dying of AIDS in the last year of his life and had – you know, that's a very intimate transaction, very intimate relationship.

I didn't feel like there was anything new that I would discover or I felt that this was, you know, an extenuation of our intimacy.

And then B, I found actually in one of his journals he had – he wondered who he was writing for and he said maybe for Alicia that she might one day know where her parents were at.

And so when I found the journals, I really saw them as a gift from him in terms of they allow me a way to understand what he was up against, what he was struggling with.

He records things in our life together that I would otherwise have no access to.

Because when you are raised by a single parent without any siblings, who do you have to share memories with?

That person dies, and then you just have the memories in your own head, and you can't sort of verify things.

And as I was working on the memoir again and again, I could come across episodes and be like, yeah, I remember that.

And then I could get more detail from my father.

And so it was like a reflection of myself and our life together.

Thank you so much, Terry.

It was really great to be on the show.