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Celebrating my friend Tim…
Today would have been my friend Tim Fairholm’s 44th birthday.
He was one of the funniest, sweetest and most loyal people I’ve ever known and had more true friends than any of us could ever hope to have in our lifetimes. Those who knew and loved Tim think of him often – especially on days like today.
Tim was systems editor at the LA Daily News where he worked for over a decade. The paper where I also worked until two months ago has seen better days for sure. But for so many years, those of us who worked there were like family and getting to be friends with Tim was one of the great rewards of my time there.
I was very openly gay but did not know Tim was gay until we had already worked together for a few years. Once we became friends, it was always quick sneaks away to the cafeteria for a diet coke and dishing about our weekends and good times hanging out. He even went to see Bea Arthur perform with me! And I took him to bingo night at Hamburger Mary’s and he won!
Good times.
There was also the time I spent an afternoon at his house in Santa Monica watching the entire season five of Queer as Folk early – and eating homemade pizza – because a friend of ours had scored a DVD before the episodes even aired. Then there was the time we were having lunch at The Abbey and he could not stop laughing because when I bit into my turkey burger, a temporary crown on my tooth popped out!
I think of Tim every time I look at a framed poster I have on one of my walls of Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and Marilyn Monroe at the premiere of How to Marry a Millionaire because we bought it on the Venice Boardwalk during a long walk. The walk was even longer on the way back to his house as the frame got heavier and heavier and we kept taking turns carrying it. Finally, exhausted, we just stopped at some diner with terrible service and had an early dinner.
I always liked to embarrass Tim in a public place because he would be mortified but laugh so hard. There was the time we were at A Different Light bookstore (sadly closed last month) and there was Christmas music playing loudly. I picked up a copy of The Guide to Anal Sex (or something like that) and said loudly: “Hey Tim! Here’s the book you were looking for!” Just as I said, “Hey!” the music stopped playing and the rest of my sentence could be heard – clearly – by every customer in the store.
They laughed, I laughed, Tim laughed.
Tim died on Feb. 6, 2006 of complications from Lupus. He was just 40. It showed me how quickly someone can be gone from your life and to appreciate them when they are here.
We had breakfast at Eat Well in West Hollywood one Saturday morning – he ordered oatmeal, I had a Buddah Bowl – and went shopping at Out of the Closet after, digging through VHS tapes and CDs. I remember being so excited that I had found the “Chuckles the Clown” episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show! I saw Tim in the office a few days later and remember him walking up to me, wearing a white shirt, and saying, “I really had fun Saturday.”
He went into the hospital just a few days later and I never saw him or spoke to him again. I was among the many people who spoke at his memorial service – on the beach – and I wore the same loud Hawaiian shirt I had on during that last breakfast. The one that Tim assured me really wasn’t all that loud.
I love that I hear from his niece, Wrandi Greenwalt, every now and again – including this morning. She helps to keep her uncle’s memory alive.
So, I just wanted you to know a little about my wonderful friend who adored Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Diet Coke, The Border Grill in Santa Monica and – don’t tell anyone – was an expert knitter! Most of all, he was kind and decent and gentle … and very loved.
Comments
(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)
Melissa Lalum says:
Thanks, Greg. I, too, have been thinking a lot about Tim this week. He was a loyal, wonderful friend. We loved sneaking off to Follow Your Heart for lunch for a veggie fix and laughs. I’m so glad you mentioned the knitting. He knit my oldest son, Sean, the most beautiful green cashmere sweater and gave it to me when he was born. He was almost done w/ another sweater for my second son Kelly when he died. Jen Martin found the sweater when she was cleaning out Tim’s apartment and gave it to me at the memorial service. My friend Pamela finished the sweater as her gift, and Tim’s, to us when Kelly was born… April 27,2006. Tim… I love you and still miss you.
Jen Martin says:
Thank you, Greg, for such a moving and beautiful reminder of our Tim. Since I’ve been traveling, dates get away from me, but I’ve been thinking so much about Tim the last few days — now I know why.
Can I ask a favor? I don’t have Wrandi’s contact info here in New Zealand. Would you please ask her to drop me an email next time you talk to her? jen.martin@mac.com Thanks. I hope you are well. Now that I have your blog address, I can spy on you. 🙂 All my love! Jen
Sharon says:
I miss him, too, Greg. I think about him so often. He was one of my dearest friends and the sound of his laugh is one I will always remember. That … and his wicked sense of humor.
Dusty says:
Thank you for remembering my uncle by writing such a nice article. Tim was an amazing person and touched the lives of so many. I’m so lucky to have had him in my life, he was an important person in my life and was there for my brother and sister and I when we were young. I’m not sure what we would have done without him! I think of him daily, and our family misses him terribly and will truely never be the same without him. I love you Tim, happy birthday!
Love always……Dusty
Aliesha Hall says:
As a niece and someone who misses Tim everyday, I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoy hearing other stories and memories of Tim. A person who hated buying toilet paper because it embarrased him! His laugh. I will never forget how his laugh would brighten my world. Im glad he shared it with others.
Thank you for this.
Aliesha Hall
Aliesha Hall says:
Happy Birthday Tim!
JoAnn says:
Tim was a great guy. I still remember “Trainer Tim” coming to the Daily News to show us the new pagination system. Thankfully, he never left. Tim was funny, kind, gentle and an amazingly good guy. I miss him too.
Thank you for the tribute.
Briana Hall says:
Greg, I just want to say that I think that it is very cool of you to write all this great stuff about Tim. I love Tim so much. I go and talk to him often. But I think that it is bull shit for you to post for the world to see that he was gay. He odviously didn’t want everyone knowing, as it took him years to tell you. I don’t think that he would appriciate you telling the world plus all his family.
We love Tim exactly the way he is, but it was his perogative to keep his life private. Next time please try and think a little about other’s feelings before putting it out there for everyone.
Reva Petersen says:
I am two months late, but I just found this today, and I can’t stop crying. I really hope someone sees this.
No one here knows me, because Tim and I were friends in Utah, before he moved to California. But when he was in Utah, he became my best friend, and to this day, he is still the best friend I have ever had.
I don’t remember the day I first met Tim, but I vividly remember the day I realized we were friends. We were both attending Weber State College in Ogden, Utah. I was the editor-in-chief of the school’s newspaper, and had hired Tim as an editor.
I was a non-traditional student, having returned to school at thirty, so I was about ten years older than all of my staff. I had a good, but distant rapport with the students. They would usually come into my office, chat for ten minutes, and then leave with their new assignments. There was one exception–Tim.
Tim would stop by and chat, but he would stay longer than the obligatory ten minutes; he’d stay fifteen minutes, soon a half hour, and then the day came that he stayed and talked to me for an entire hour. I was stunned–this kid really liked me. I was ten years older than him, fat and homely, and Tim could not have cared less. He liked me, and that was the day I realized we were truly friends.
You captured Tim so perfectly. I have the best memories, and funny stories, as well, and just like yours, some of my favorites are of when we would cut out and just go have fun. We’d hit a movie, an arts festival, go golfing, or rent a movie and stuff our faces. In fact, that is one of my favorite memories. It’s going to lose a lot in the telling, but here goes.
We had cut class and had rented A Fish Called Wanda. As I remember it, there was a running gag about a woman with a number of little, yippy dogs, and Michael Palin’s animal-loving character kept accidentally killing them off, one by one. I laughed harder with each demise, and Tim just glared at me, because he had grown up with one of these critters, and thought I was being insensitive. Right.
Palin killed off the last one by dropping a crate on it, and I just lost it. I roared. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe, and Tim just glared at me. His expression was hard, his mouth stern with admonishment. But I just kept laughing and soon his glare turned into a small, quivering smile as he tried to keep up the façade. (If you’ve seen Tim try not to laugh you know exactly what I’m talking about.) Of course, he couldn’t stop himself, and he started roaring. We laughed so hard we probably woke up some of the neighbors, and I have rarely laughed that hard since he moved away.
In fact, that was Tim’s gift to me–he taught me to laugh. EVERYTHING was funny to Tim, and I’d never been around anyone like that. He showed me how anything could be turned into a chance to stop being so serious, and just find something funny in the most benign things. I adored him for that.
For example, another favorite memory is the time we were at the gift wrap counter at Penney’s. The poor girl had obviously never wrapped a package in her life, but there was no one there to help her. Tim could not help himself, and started laughing, but was tactful enough that he made it look like he was teasing her, which he was. But I knew there was more to come.
Finally she had the package wrapped, and I thought sure she could stick a bow on it herself. So I gave Tim some money and went to the rest room. I came out–and there was Tim with his head bent over the counter and his shoulders shaking hysterically. I knew it–I KNEW he’d never make it long enough for us to get away. He had already lost it, and as soon as I saw him, I had to walk away because I was ready to pee my pants again I was laughing so hard.
Tim also got me through one of my life’s crises when my husband had an affair. I was paralyzed with pain and grief, and withdrew from everyone. But Tim was the one person I could still talk to, because I knew that he truly cared for me the way I was, the person I was. He would take me out to eat, or to a movie, or just hang out at my place. With Tim I could come up for air, and that bookcase that had fallen on me lifted a bit when he was there. Somehow Tim kept putting the books back in that case until the day came I was no longer buried by them. I’ll never forget how he loved me through that.
Here’s the hard part. I visited Tim a number of years ago and we had a falling out. It was terrible, awful, horrible. I was in the worst place I’ve ever been in my life, and was very suicidal. All I could talk about was death, and to this day, I cannot believe some of the things I said to him.–to my friend who had a potentially, and horrifically terminal disease. I can’t get it out of my head what I said to him.
He was also in a horrible place, and, uncharacteristically, he got mean. I’d never seen him that way before, and in my state of mind, I recoiled. Our last day was spent in tense silence, and when he dropped me off at the airport I turned around and left. I didn’t even say goodbye.
I didn’t even say goodbye, and it’s breaking my heart, because I always thought we’d survive, physically and emotionally, come together one day, and be Tim and Reva again. Obviously that day never came, as Tim did not survive, and I can’t stand it.
I’ve visited his grave, and everything about it is so wrong. He can’t be gone. He can’t be in the ground, in that place. He belongs with me, just as he belongs with all of you.
I can’t adequately express my shame and regret at our last meeting. I’m an atheist and don’t believe he knows the sorrowful agony I feel, and can’t shake. It will be a year in October since I discovered he was gone, and every time I think about it it jars me as badly as it did that day I first read about it on the net.
I don’t know why I’ve written about the awful things I did. I think I need people who loved Tim to know that I hurt him, and to have compassion for him that I did that. I can tell you loved him like I did, and would never, ever, have wanted him to hurt. I also think I need people to know I’m not that person who said those things, and I’m not that person who turned away from him so cruelly. Maybe I can have some peace with this if other people who loved him, know.
I don’t know what happened to him, how it happened that he died. I don’t know anything, and if one of you wouldn’t mind, I’d really like to know. I’d also like to know how he spent the last years of his life. I do know all he wanted was to be in love and raise a family, and he would have been the best dad/mom any kid could ever have had. Best of all, his kids would have laughed. Laughed and laughed and laughed.
I want to comment about Tim being gay because I think it is important. It hurt him terribly he didn’t feel comfortable enough to tell everyone, especially some members of his family. It was one of the reasons he was in such a bad place the last time I saw him. He was not ashamed of being gay. He was hurt by people who he believed would shame him. Knowing him, I think he would be glad everyone knows now. Being gay was not something he was, it was who he was, and telling his story would be incomplete without acknowledging that.
This is my favorite memory of Tim: We had taken my then six-year-old daughter to see “Beauty and the Beast.” I’ll never forget leaving the theater and Tim taking my daughter’s hands to dance with her, calling her Belle. She had a huge crush on him, insisting she was going to marry Tim when she grew up. So that day when he danced with her, she was pure joy, as was I watching them.
I mourn Tim terribly. Every day. I loved him so much, and I’m so glad to see other people loved him as well, but then, I’m not surprised. I defy anyone to have known Tim to not have loved him. I just want him back.
Reva Petersen
Rspetersen2009@live.com
Lynette says:
I recently found out about Tim’s death. I haven’t been in touch with Tim for years. My heart hurts. He has been lost to me twice now. All of the above comments are so familiar to me. His embarrassment about buying toilet paper, his laugh. Love you Tim.
Wrandi says:
Happy Birthday Tim. It still hurts just as much without you.
Wrandi says:
Cheers Tim ❤️
Wrandi says:
I absolutely love this article. I read it every single April 25. I miss you Tim. Cheers to you.
Greg Hernandez says:
I read it again today too 🙂 I’m going to put a photo in it again – not sure what happened.