Pat Bond was a pioneer lesbian performer. She began performing after her moving and funny interview in the 1977 documentary on gay people, Word is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives. She toured the country with her solo shows, beginning in 1979. For most members of the audience, it was the first time they had ever seen an out lesbian performer.
Gerty Gerty Gerty Stein Is Back Back Back was her most popular performance. She played the legendary Gertrude Stein and recounted humorous stories of Gertrude's life in Paris with her lover Alice B. Toklas. The show was a huge success and was televised repeatedly on PBS stations across the country. Her other well-known stage shows were Conversations with Pat Bond, centering mainly on reminiscences of her wild youth in San Francisco; Murder in the WAC, focusing on the Army's lesbian purge in the late 1940; and Lorena Hickock and Eleanor Roosevelt: A Love Story. (Wikipedia) This last play inspired my own play on the subject of Hick and Eleanor.
I was one of Pat's closest friends in her last years. She was a wonderful combination of hilarious and irascible.
Pat was diagnosed with cancer in 1990. By the end of the year, she had descended from the rehab hospital to the regular hospital and from there to the dreaded nursing home (although this one was very nice).
Christmas was approaching. Pat always had a Christmas Eve party. This party was the ONLY party she ever had, and it was a very big deal to her. Not that she did any work other than putting her little plastic tree on the table in her tiny studio apartment, and opening up several cans each of marinated mushrooms and smoked oysters. It was up to the guests to supply more food and holiday decor, and we did. We had no choice. If you were her friend, you were REQUIRED to attend the Christmas Eve party.
The thought that she might not have a Christmas Eve party because she was in the nursing home distressed Pat. So I promised her a party in her room, and invited ten friends. As Christmas Eve approached, Pat was clearly moving toward the end of her life. On December 23, her friend Donald visited. She seemed comatose until he said goodby to her. Then she suddenly opened her eyes and said sharply, “You’re coming to my party, aren’t you?” He assured her he was. I think those were her last words.
On Christmas Eve morning, I got a call about 11 am from the nursing home that Pat was going fast. I jumped in Pat’s car and zipped over the bridge to Marin.
It is my experience that one needs a minimum of three for a decent support system. Kind of like a stool needs three legs. Pat had that: Me, Gail and Little Sun. All three of us pulled in to the parking lot at the same moment. That seemed rather cosmic, as I was the only one who had gotten a call. We rushed into Pat’s room. She seemed unconscious and was breathing in a very labored, rasping way. I guess it’s what they call the death rattle. I panicked and ran to the nurse and pleaded, “Can you give her some oxygen right away?” The nurse said to me very gently, “Dear, I think oxygen would make YOU feel better. But I don’t think it would help Miss Bond at this point.”
I will always be grateful to that nurse. I had written a play about the cruelty of extending a life that was ending. I had performed that play countless times. But when I was actually confronted with the situation, my automatic impulse was to try to turn back the river.
I went back to Pat’s room. The three of us stood around her bed, holding hands. Listening to those labored gasps. What should we do? After all, it WAS Christmas Eve, and Pat loved Christmas carols. We began singing, very tentatively. It just so happened that our voices blended beautifully. Our singing got stronger. We harmonized. The sound was really lovely. We went through all the carols we knew. Then we started on folk songs. Gail and Little Sun and I had talked endlessly on the phone with each other, we’d conferred with doctors together, but we had never sung together until that moment. Who would have thought our three voices would make such a glorious sound?
As we sang, Pat’s breath came at longer and longer intervals. We kept singing. Her breath wouldn’t come for 30 seconds. We kept singing. Michael Row the Boat Ashore has a lot of verses, and when you run through those, it’s easy to make up your own.
Such as: Patty Bond’s a crazy gal Hallelujah She’s my buddy and I’m her pal Hallelujah
At some points, it would seem like Pat had stopped breathing, but then... there would be another labored gasp. We kept singing. We kept singing and singing, and finally there were no more breaths, and we kept singing. We sang for a long time after what turned out to be Pat’s last breath.
Then we were quiet. I felt peaceful. I didn’t feel grief or sadness yet. It had been so perfect for the three of us to sing Pat across the bridge.
Then the guests started arriving for Pat’s last Christmas Eve party. As Donald pointed out, Pat had always had a great sense of timing. Charlotte had brought champagne. She poured everyone a glass and we stood around Pat’s still body. We toasted this courageous lesbian pioneer, this great storyteller, this loyal and cantankerous friend. Pat Bond, laughing that great honking laugh, as she regaled an audience -- or a few friends -- with tales of gay life in the 50‘s in San Francisco -- like the time she had friends lock her in her room so she wouldn’t go out carousing.
Donald had brought marinated mushrooms and smoked oysters. He put two each on little paper plates and passed them around. The beautiful music, that Pat's three-legged stool had made, still resonated in that hospital room. We felt her spirit, hovering over us. We all knew that even death was not keeping Pat Bond from having a good time at her last --and best-- Christmas Eve party. | 
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