A Time to Smell the Flowers
The sun has cooked the petals brown, and the branches could stand some pruning. But otherwise, Mario Ceremano’s rosebushes appear strong and healthy. Mario was pleased to hear that, because there are few things he misses quite like his roses.
The flowers are a comfort. One Saturday some years back, he had clipped dozens of roses and wasn’t sure what to do with them. Then he read somewhere that singer Minnie Riperton was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park, also the final resting place of Marilyn Monroe. Mario admired Riperton’s music, so he decided the flowers should be for her. This became a Saturday routine, delivering roses to Minnie Riperton, sitting for hours beside her marker. The roses were for Minnie, the ritual for Mario. It helped him come to terms with the knowledge that he had contracted HIV.
A licensed vocational nurse, Mario understood that HIV might affect him in a variety of ways. Three years ago, he rubbed his right eye as if awakening from a nap, but the fog didn’t clear. His vision grew darker day by day, month by month. A few weeks ago, he awakened, rose from bed and felt his way around the room. “I was blind. I had totally no vision.”
Now his days are as dark as his nights, and the only time he can see is in his dreams.
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Look around you. Take it all in. There is beauty and ugliness and everything in between.
Now close your eyes and keep them closed. No peeking.
“When guests come over,” Mario says, “I’m constantly telling people, ‘Do you have enough light? Put on your glasses. Make sure you turn on the light.’ ”
He makes other prosaic recommendations: Take better care of yourself. Use a condom.
Mario’s blindness was caused by CMV retinitis, an affliction that occurs frequently in AIDS patients, often in the later stages of the illness. Mario’s case is somewhat unusual, for apart from CMV, he seems to have dodged other afflictions common with AIDS, so far.
His sense of humor shows itself from time to time, but Mario’s manner is glum, a distinct contrast to the plucky, upbeat types who gamely step to the fore in sad causes. Mario is nobody’s poster boy. He’s just trying to cope.
Like the roses in his garden, the decor in his neat Sun Valley bungalow suggests someone who keenly appreciated the visual world. Photos of family, friends and former lovers are exhibited in the living room. In the dining room are two curiosities: an impressive collection of Betty Boop memorabilia, and a photographic shrine to actress Elizabeth Montgomery.
He collects Betty Boop, it seems, because he couldn’t afford Limoges china. “My dream was to collect Limoges and then when I turned 40, I would open up a little antique store and sell it off.” He’ll be 40 in November.
Why the fascination for Elizabeth Montgomery? “Oh, I don’t know. It was something about that nose,” he jokes, a reference to Montgomery’s trademark twitch in the old sitcom “Bewitched.”
“I’ve just always been obsessed with her,” he says, more serious now. “I just think she’s beautiful and talented and I like these trashy movie roles she takes on TV.”
Mario had a chance to meet the actress a few years ago when she served as grand marshal for a gay pride parade.
“We talked like we had known each other for years. She told me about her kids,” he recalls. “She was just wonderful.”
Mario still speaks to her from time to time. She’s a friend, he says.
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He grew up in the Valley, in Shadow Hills, and figured out he was gay while attending Polytechnic High School. In the ‘70s and early ‘80s, he frequented the gay discos in West Hollywood. There was casual sex and serious, long-term relationships. “I really don’t have any regrets,” he says.
What he misses most, he says, is his independence. He doesn’t like to depend on others, though he is grateful for the help. He receives regular visits from a nurse, a maid and a gardener. Family and friends come by, and sometimes take him out to dine or shop. He is effusive in his praise for the Center for the Partially Sighted, a Santa Monica-based agency that has provided services, equipment and training to help him live as independently as possible.
But even when visitors come, darkness is a lonely place. “If people move around quietly, I always ask, ‘Are you there?’ ” he says. “Being with a group of people, I feel the isolation.”
He believes in God and says he is comfortable with dying. His visits with Minnie Riperton helped, he says. And this week, he visited Westwood Village Memorial Park once again, with his parents and sister this time, to make plans for his own burial.
“I’ll believe I’ll go to a better place,” he says. “I really do.”
